The Tale of Melibee
Encyclopedia
The Tale of Melibee is one of The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...

by Geoffrey Chaucer
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...

.

This is the second tale told by Chaucer himself as a character within the tales. It has long been regarded as a joke on the part of Chaucer that, after being interrupted by the host Harry Bailly, Chaucer launches into one of the longest and some would say most boring of all the tales.

The idea that Melibee is simply told by Chaucer to bore the listeners in revenge for having his first story, The Tale of Sir Topas
Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topas
Sir Thopas is a story in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales published in 1387.In Canterbury Tales, there is a character named Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's portrait of himself is unflattering and humble. He presents himself as a reticent, maladroit figure who can barely summon a tale to mind...

, interrupted and compared to a turd
Feces
Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...

 ignores Harry's reaction to the tale. Harry seems to have enjoyed the story and says that he wishes his wife had heard it as she might learn something from Dame Prudence, one of its characters. It is Harry who originally complains about Sir Thopas for its lewedness meaning boorish or uneducated rather than rude. He then asks for a tale in prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...

, something with some doctryne, which is exactly what he received.

The tale is a translation of the Livre de Melibée et de Dame Prudence by Renaud de Louens and this may account for the slightly stilted language when compared to the other tales of Chaucer's own creation. Renaud's work is in turn a very loose translation of Liber consolationis et consilii by Albertanus of Brescia
Albertanus of Brescia
Albertanus of Brescia , author of Latin social treatises and sermons.-Biography:...

 and this suggests the story was popular at this time. One final fact which argues against the tale being just a long-winded joke, is that the joke must wear thin very quickly and does not need to be dragged on for over a thousand lines. Many modern English editions of the Tales (such as the Penguin Classics edition translated by Nevill Coghill) omit it entirely, providing a brief plot summary and discussing the religious and philosophical intentions of the story briefly.

The story concerns Melibee who is away one day when three enemies break into his house, beat his wife Dame Prudence, and attack his daughter, leaving her for dead. The tale then proceeds as a long debate mainly between Melibee and his wife on what actions to take and how to seek redress from his enemies. His wife, as her name suggests, counsels prudence and chides him for his rash opinions. The discussion uses many proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...

s and quote
Quote
Quotation is the repetition of someone else's statement/thoughts. This can be in the form of words, songs, American Sign Language, written, or any other form of communication. Quotation marks are punctuation marks used in text to indicate the words of another speaker or writer...

s from learned authorities and the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 as each make their points. Dame Prudence is a woman discussing the role of the wife within marriage in a similar way to the Wife of Bath
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" and prologue are among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They give insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and are probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her prologue twice as...

 and the wife in The Shipman's Tale
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...

.

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