The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale
Encyclopedia
The Man of Law's Tale (also called The Lawyer's Tale) is the fifth of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
, written around 1387.
Sultan on condition that he convert to Christianity
. The Sultan's mother connives to prevent this and has Constance set adrift on the sea. Her adventures and trials continue after she is shipwrecked on the Northumberland
coast.
Northumberland is a pagan country where the King, Alla (based on Chaucer's understanding of the historical Ælla of Northumbria) eventually converted to Christianity. Alla's evil mother intercepts and falsifies a letter between the couple, which results in Constance's being banished. Constance is forced to go to sea again and is found by a Senator of Rome. The Senator takes Constance (and her child) back to Italy to serve as a household servant. King Alla, still heartbroken over the loss of Constance, goes to Rome on a pilgrimage, and fortunately finds Constance. In the end the couple return to Northumberland. Alla dies a year later, and the baby boy becomes the King.
but the major theme in the tale, of an exiled princess uncorrupted by her suffering, was common in the literature of the time. Her tale is also told in John Gower
's Confessio Amantis
, and both are similar to the verse Romance
Emaré
, and the cycle is generally known as the "Constance" cycle. The oldest known variant of this particular type is Vitae duorum Offarum
. More distantly related forms of the persecuted heroine include Le Bone Florence of Rome
, and Griselda
.
An incident where Constance is framed for murder by a bloody dagger appears to be a direct borrowing from Crescentia
.
, or stories of the saints' lives, which were common popular literature of the time. Custance, as her name suggests, is constant to her Christian
religion despite the attacks and testing it receives from the pagans
and heathens she meets on her travels.
, taken straight from the manuals of rhetoric of the day, to emphasize Custance's noble character—as well as the teller's lawyerly skills—and state her case.
and The Legend of Good Women
; in the Man of Law's prologue he seems to spare most of his opprobrium for John Gower
. Two of the tales which he dislikes, Canace
and Apollonius of Tyre
, involve incest
, as did the some versions of the story. Chaucer based this tale on the Nicholas Trivet
story from his Chronicle. Gower though had recorded all these stories. Chaucer is, perhaps, with friendly banter, trying to goad his friend and fellow writer into a storytelling challenge.
, the host invites the Parson but he is interrupted before he can begin and a different speaker tells the next tale. The Summoner, the Squire and the Shipman
are listed as interrupters in the different manuscripts but it is the Shipman whose character best matches the rude remarks although the mention of his "joly body" sounds closer to something the wife of Bath may say. What it probably shows is that Chaucer had not fixed his overall plan. There are also hints, with his claim he will talk in prose despite rhyming throughout, that the Man of Law originally told the Tale of Melibee
before he was assigned Custance's tale late in the composition of the tales.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, written around 1387.
The Summary
The Man of Law, also known as The Sergeant at Law, tells a Romance tale of a Christian princess named Custance (the modern form would be Constance) who is betrothed to the SyrianDemographics of Syria
Syrians today are an overall indigenous Levantine people. While modern-day Syrians are commonly described as Arabs by virtue of their modern-day language and bonds to Arab culture and history...
Sultan on condition that he convert to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. The Sultan's mother connives to prevent this and has Constance set adrift on the sea. Her adventures and trials continue after she is shipwrecked on the Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
coast.
Northumberland is a pagan country where the King, Alla (based on Chaucer's understanding of the historical Ælla of Northumbria) eventually converted to Christianity. Alla's evil mother intercepts and falsifies a letter between the couple, which results in Constance's being banished. Constance is forced to go to sea again and is found by a Senator of Rome. The Senator takes Constance (and her child) back to Italy to serve as a household servant. King Alla, still heartbroken over the loss of Constance, goes to Rome on a pilgrimage, and fortunately finds Constance. In the end the couple return to Northumberland. Alla dies a year later, and the baby boy becomes the King.
Sources
The tale is based on a story within the Chronicles of Nicholas TrivetNicholas Trivet
Nicholas Trivet was an English Anglo-Norman chronicler.Trivet was born in Somerset and was the son of Sir Thomas Trevet , a judge who came of a Norfolk or Somerset family...
but the major theme in the tale, of an exiled princess uncorrupted by her suffering, was common in the literature of the time. Her tale is also told in John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
's Confessio Amantis
Confessio Amantis
Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II...
, and both are similar to the verse Romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
Emaré
Emaré
Emaré is a middle English Breton lai, a form of Mediaeval Romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and exists in only one manuscript, the Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives. Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in...
, and the cycle is generally known as the "Constance" cycle. The oldest known variant of this particular type is Vitae duorum Offarum
Vitae duorum Offarum
The Vitae duorum Offarum "The lives of the two Offas" is a literary history written in the mid-thirteenth century, apparently by the St Albans monk Matthew Paris.-Account:...
. More distantly related forms of the persecuted heroine include Le Bone Florence of Rome
Le Bone Florence of Rome
Le Bone Florence of Rome is a medieval English chivalric romance. Featuring the innocent persecuted heroine, it is subcategorized into the Crescentia cycle of romances because of two common traits: the heroine is accused by her brother-in-law after an attempted seduction, and the story ends with...
, and Griselda
Griselda (folklore)
Griselda is a figure from certain folklores whose name is eponymous for patience and obedience.In the tale as written by Giovanni Boccaccio, Griselda marries Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo. He tests her by declaring that their first child—a daughter—must be put to death, likewise their second...
.
An incident where Constance is framed for murder by a bloody dagger appears to be a direct borrowing from Crescentia
Crescentia (romance)
Crescentia is an Old High German chivalric romance, written in Kaiserchronik about 1150. Other versions appeared in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in prose and verse....
.
Saints' lives genre
The tale is meant as a morally uplifting story and is similar to hagiographyHagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
, or stories of the saints' lives, which were common popular literature of the time. Custance, as her name suggests, is constant to her Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
religion despite the attacks and testing it receives from the pagans
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
and heathens she meets on her travels.
Rhetoric
The Man of Law tells his story in a pompous over-blown style as if he is defending Custance in a court of law. He also uses many rhetorical figuresFigure of speech
A figure of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning. It can also be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it, as in idiom, metaphor, simile,...
, taken straight from the manuals of rhetoric of the day, to emphasize Custance's noble character—as well as the teller's lawyerly skills—and state her case.
John Gower
Although Chaucer receives some praise and also criticism from his own character with favourable mentions of The Book of the DuchessThe Book of the Duchess
The Book of the Duchess, also known as The Deth of Blaunche, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1910. Accessed March 11, 2008. is the earliest of Chaucer’s major poems, preceded only by his short poem, "An ABC," and possibly by his translation of The Romaunt of the Rose...
and The Legend of Good Women
The Legend of Good Women
The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer.The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets...
; in the Man of Law's prologue he seems to spare most of his opprobrium for John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
. Two of the tales which he dislikes, Canace
Canace
In Greek mythology, Canace was a daughter of Aeolus and Enarete, and lover of Poseidon.Canace had seven brothers and six sisters. Her brothers were Athamas, Cretheus, Deioneus, Macar , Perieres, Salmoneus and Sisyphus. Her sisters were Alcyone, Arne, Calyce, Peisidice, Perimele and Tanagra...
and Apollonius of Tyre
Apollonius of Tyre
Apollonius of Tyre is the subject of an ancient short novella, popular during medieval times. Existing in numerous forms in many languages, the text is thought to be translated from an ancient Greek manuscript, now lost.-Plot summary:...
, involve incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, as did the some versions of the story. Chaucer based this tale on the Nicholas Trivet
Nicholas Trivet
Nicholas Trivet was an English Anglo-Norman chronicler.Trivet was born in Somerset and was the son of Sir Thomas Trevet , a judge who came of a Norfolk or Somerset family...
story from his Chronicle. Gower though had recorded all these stories. Chaucer is, perhaps, with friendly banter, trying to goad his friend and fellow writer into a storytelling challenge.
- But certeinly no word ne writeth he
- Of thilke wikke [wicked] ensample of Canacee,
- That loved hir owene brother synfully --
- Of swiche cursed stories I sey fy! --
- Or ellis of Tyro Appollonius,
- How that the cursed kyng Antiochus
- Birafte his doghter of hir maydenhede,
- That is so horrible a tale for to rede,
- Whan he hir threw upon the pavement.
Sequence with other tales
The various manuscripts of the tales differ on the structure of the tales with some containing the Man of Law's epilogue and others not. In the epilogueEpilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...
, the host invites the Parson but he is interrupted before he can begin and a different speaker tells the next tale. The Summoner, the Squire and the Shipman
The Shipman's Tale
The Shipman's Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.It is in the form of a fabliau and tells the story of a miserly merchant, his avaricious wife and her lover, a wily monk...
are listed as interrupters in the different manuscripts but it is the Shipman whose character best matches the rude remarks although the mention of his "joly body" sounds closer to something the wife of Bath may say. What it probably shows is that Chaucer had not fixed his overall plan. There are also hints, with his claim he will talk in prose despite rhyming throughout, that the Man of Law originally told the Tale of Melibee
The Tale of Melibee
The Tale of Melibee is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.This is the second tale told by Chaucer himself as a character within the tales...
before he was assigned Custance's tale late in the composition of the tales.
External links
- Read "The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale" with interlinear translation
- Modern Translation of the Man of Law's Tale and Other Resources at eChaucer
- Chaucer's The Man of Law's Tale, a retelling in Modern English prose