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1.2. Demonstration of irony in Geoffrey Chaucer’s work – Canterbury Tales

Irony is the general name given to literary techniques that involve surprising, interesting, or amusing contradictions. Two stories that serve as excellent demonstrations of irony are "The Pardoners Tale" and "The Nun’s Priest’s Tale," both from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Although these two stories are very different, they both use irony to teach a lesson. Of the stories, "The Pardoners Tale" displays the most irony. First and foremost, the entire telling of the story is ironic, considering just who is the teller. The Pardoner uses this story to speak out against many social problems, all of which he himself is guilty of. He preaches about drunkenness, while he is drunk, blasphemy, as he attempts to sell fake religious relics, and greed, when he himself is amazingly greedy. Yet there are also many ironic situations in the story itself. The irony starts when, in the beginning of the story, the three rioters make a pact to "be brothers" and "each defend the others" and "to live and die for one another" in protection from Death, (lines 37-43) and then in going out to fulfill their vow, they end up finding money, and killing each other over it.

Even more ironic, is how they end up killing each other. After finding the money, the men plan to stay with it until it becomes dark and they can safely take it away. To tide themselves over until then, they send the youngest one out to get food and wine, and while he is away they plan to kill for his share of the money. Ironically, the youngest one is planning the same thing so he slips poison into the drinks of his companions. When he returns, he is attacked and stabbed to death by the other men. Then, in probably the most ironic action in the whole story, the murderers, to congratulate themselves, drink from the poisoned cup and die. "The Nun’s Priest’s Tale" is also laden with irony, the most obvious of which is the characters themselves. The story begins by telling of an old woman who owns several farm animals, but while the woman is described as "a poor old widow," who "led a patient, simple life," while the animals are described as royalty. For example, the animals had regal names and titles, yet the woman had none at all. The first concrete example of irony occurs after Chanticleer has told Pertelote of his dream, and she makes fun of him. Chanticleer says "Mulier est hominis confusio," which he tells her means "Woman is man’s delight and all his bliss," but in reality means that woman leads to the destruction of man. Although Chanticleer means to tease her, it becomes ironic when Pertelote’s advice for Chanticleer to ignore his dream ends up leading to his downfall. His downfall occurs when Chanticleer is tricked by the fox into his trap, but what is ironic is the downfall of the fox. When the fox has caught Chanticleer he says to him, that misfortune will come to those who talk when they should be quiet, but this lack of silence from the fox leads to his loss. The fox had captured Chanticleer by flattering him until he did something foolish enabling the fox to capture him. Later, Chanticleer flatters the fox until he does something foolish, enabling Chanticleer to escape. Both of their foolish acts involved their vanity making them brag and speak when they should have been silent. Also ironic about this whole situation, was the fact that in the fox flattering Chanticleer he mocked his wisdom and reason and in defense Chanticleer acts by displaying neither of these qualities.
Both "The Pardoner’s Tale" and "The Nun’s Priest’s Tale" utilize the tool of irony to teach two similar lessons. The moral of "The Pardoner’s Tale" is "Money is the root of all evil". Similarly, the moral of the "Nun’s Priest’s Tale" is that vanity will eventually lead to destruction. By teaching this in two very different stories Chaucer makes it very clear that irony is an extremely effective method of teaching a lesson.
One of the great characteristics of this story is the unique diversity of the characters illustrated by the author: "Chaucer's pilgrim narrators represent a wide spectrum of ranks and occupations. The great variety of tales is matched by the diversity of their tellers".⁴ Characters are well described.
Though he is paid to bring sinners to court, he quickly accepts bribes to look the other way. He enjoys women of "questionable reputation" and lots of wine, occasionally spouting off some Latin after indulging himself.
How can a man exact vengeance on God if there is nothing a mortal can do to hurt Him? The Pardoner was born sterile, which resulted in abnormal physical development. He blames God for his deformities and attempts to attack God by attacking the link between God and mankind – the Church.
In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer indirectly depicts the characters through the stories they tell. The tale is a window upon the person that tells it. However, the Pardoner’s tale seems to contradict this situation. The Pardoner, an immoral man, tells a moral story because he believes that doing this will further his ultimate objective – revenge upon God for his anomalous physical attributes. “He had the same small voice a goat has got. / His chin no beard had harboured, nor would harbour, / smoother than ever chin was left by barber. / I judge he was a gelding, or a mare”.⁵
The most corrupt of the churchmen, the Pardoner sells pardons for sins to the highest bidder. Beardless with a high-pitched voice, he is referred to by Chaucer as "a gelding or a mare."
According to the Norton Anthology, "the composition of none of the tales can be accurately dated; most of them were written during the last fourteen years of Chaucer's life, although a few were probably written earlier and inserted into The Canterbury Tales"⁶
Chaucer’s original plan for The Canterbury Tales – if we assume it to be the same as that which the fictional Host proposes at the end of The General Prologue – projected about one hundred twenty stories, two for each pilgrim to tell on the way to Canterbury and two more on the way back. Chaucer actually completed only twenty-two and the beginnings of two others. He wrote an ending, for the Host says to the Parson, who tells the last tale, that everyone except him has told “his tale.” Indeed, the pilgrims never even get to Canterbury. The work was probably first conceived in 1386, when Chaucer was living in Greenwich, some miles east of London. From his house he might have been able to see the pilgrim road that led toward the shrine of the famous English saint, Thomas à Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his cathedral in 1170. Medieval pilgrims were notorious tale tellers, and the sight and sound of bands riding toward Canterbury may well have suggested to Chaucer the idea of using a fictitious pilgrimage as a framing device for a number of stories. Collections of stories linked by such a device were common in the later Middle Ages. Chaucer’s contemporary John Gower had used one in his Confessio Amantis. The most famous medieval framing tale besides Chaucer’s is Boccaccio’s Decameron, in which ten different narrators each tell a tale a day for ten days. Chaucer could have known the Decameron, which contains a tale with plots analogous to plots found also in The Canterbury Tales, but these stories were widespread, and there is no proof that Chaucer got them from Boccacio.
Chaucer’s artistic exploitation of the device is, in any case, altogether his own. Whereas in Gower a single speaker relates all the stories, and in Boccacio the ten speakers – three young gentlemen and seven young ladies – all belong to the same sophisticated social elite, Chaucer’s pilgrim narrators represent a wide spectrum of ranks and occupations. This device, however, should not be mistaken for realism. It is highly unlikely that a group like Chaucer’s pilgrims would ever have joined together and communicated on such seemingly equal terms. That is part of the fiction, as is the unspoken assumption that a group so large could have ridden along listening to one another tell tales in verse. The variety of tellers is matched by the diversity of their tales: tales are assigned to appropriate narrators and juxtaposed to bring out contrasts in genre, style, tone, and values. Thus the Knight’s courtly romance about the rivalry of two noble lovers for a lady is followed by the Miller’s fabliau of the seduction of an old carpenter’s young wife by a student. In several of The Canterbury Tales there is a fascinating accord between the narrators and their stories, so that the story takes on rich overtones from what we have learned of its teller in The General prologue and elsewhere, and the character itself grows and is revealed by the story. Chaucer conducts two fictions simultaneously – that of the individual tale and that of the pilgrim to whom he has assigned it. He develops the second fiction not only through The General
Prologue but also through the “links,” the interchanges among pilgrims connecting the stories. These interchanges sometimes lead to quarrels. Thus The Miller’s Tale offends the Reeve, who takes the figure of the Miller’s foolish, cuckolded carpenter as directed personally at himself, and he retaliates with a story satirizing an arrogant miller very much like the pilgrim Miller. “The antagonism of the two tellers provides comedy in the links and enhances the comedy of their tales. The links also offer interesting literary commentary on the tales by members of the pilgrim audience, especially the Host, whom the pilgrims have declared
“governour” and “juge” of the storytelling.”⁷ Further dramatic interest is created by the fact that several tales respond to topics taken up by previous tellers. The Wife of Bath’s thesis that women should have sovereignty over men in marriage gets a reply from the Clerk, which in turn elicits responses from the Merchant and the Franklin. The tales have their own logic and interest quite apart from the framing fiction; no other medieval framing fiction, however, has such varied and lively interaction between the frame and the individual stories.
The composition of none of the tales can be accurately dated; most of them were written during the last fourteen years of Chaucer’s life, although a few were probably written earlier and inserted into The Canterbury Tales. The popularity of the poem in late medieval England is attested by the number of surviving manuscripts: more than eighty, none from Chaucer’s lifetime. It was also twice printed by William Caxton, who introduced printing to England in 1476, and often reprinted by Caxton’s early successors. The manuscripts reflect the unfinished state of the poem – the fact that when he died Chaucer had not made up his mind about a number of details and hence left many inconsistencies. The poem appears in the manuscripts as nine or ten “fragments” or blocks of tales; the order of the poems within each fragment is generally the same, but the order of the fragments themselves varies widely. The fragment containing The General Prologue; the Knight’s, Miller’s, and Reeve’s tales; and the Cook’s unfinished tale, always comes first, and the fragment consisting of The Parson’s Tale and The Retraction always comes last. But the others, such as that containing the Wife of Bath, the Friar, and the Summoner or that consisting of the Physician and Pardoner or the longest fragment, consisting of six tales concluding with the Nun’s Priest’s, are by no means stable in relation to one another. The order followed here, that of the Ellesmere manuscript, has been adopted as the most nearly satisfactory.
In Canterbury tales Chaucer introduced a rhythmic pattern called iambic pentameter into English poetry. His pattern, or meter, consists of 10 syllables alternately unaccented and accented in each line. The lines may or may not rhyme.
Iambic pentameter became a widely used meter in English poetry.