Page 111 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY
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British Poetry
Notes replies that he assumes one whenever on earth. The summoner asks him why he is on earth, receiving
the reply that sometimes devils are God’s instruments. The devil claims that the summoner will
meet him again someday and have better evidence of hell than Dante or Virgil.
The summoner suggests that the two continue on their way and go about their
business, each taking their share.
On their travels they found a carter whose wagon, loaded with hay, was stuck in the mud. “The
devel have al, bothe hors and cart and hey!” cursed the carter, and the summoner, taking the carter
literally, implored the devil to take all of the carter’s belongings. The devil comments that, although
that is what he is literally saying, that is not what the carter means: “the carl spak oo thing, but he
thoghte another”. On the devil’s encouragement, the carter prays to God, and, lo and behold, the
horses pull the wagon from the mud.
Self Assessment
Short Answer Type Questions:
1. How does the pilgrim Summoner respond to the insult?
2. In what way might a sinner in the tale have the charges of the Summoner dismissed?
3. Who does the stranger he meets say he is?
4. What is the real identity of the stranger?
5. Why do the curses of the old woman have the result of sending the Summoner to hell?
The summoner suggests that they visit the widow he was originally visiting. On arriving, the
summoner gives her a notice to appear before the archdeacon on the penalty of excommunication,
but she claims that she is sick and cannot travel there. She asks if she can pay the summoner to
represent her to the archdeacon, and he demands twelve pence, a sum that she thinks is too great,
for, she claims, she is guiltless of sin. The summoner then demands her new pan from her, claiming
that he paid her fine for making her husband a cuckold (an accusation which she expressly denies).
She curses the summoner, saying that she gives his body to the devil. The devil hears this and tells
the summoner that he shall be in hell tonight. Upon these words, the summoner and the devil
disappeared into hell, the realm where summoners truly belong.
Analysis
The pattern of reciprocity and “quitting”, as seen in the Miller’s and Reeve’s tale in the First Fragment,
is reintroduced with the Friar’s and Summoner’s tale. These two would likely be, to Chaucer’s readers,
easily recognizable characters, and the rapacious clergyman was very much a stock figure for Middle
English readers and listeners.
The Friar’s Tale, like the Reeve’s Tale, seems to exist for a single purpose: the humiliation and
degradation of members of a certain profession. The Tale begins by exposing the means by which
summoners blackmail and extort persons, but does not attack the church system that allows this to
happen, but rather the men who represent this system and exploit these workings of the church. Yet
the Friar’s Tale surpasses the Reeve’s Tale in its vitriol for its main character. While Symkyn, the
immoral miller of the Reeve’s tale, is hardly an exemplary character and exists only for ridicule, he
at least is given a proper name that separates him from his profession. The main character of the
Friar’s Tale is an impersonal representation of all summoners and the fate they deserve.
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