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Unit 12: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-IV

The comic twist to the Friar’s Tale is that, when he meets the devil, the summoner is neither shocked Notes
nor overcome with fear. Rather, the summoner regards the devil as a curious colleague, and is
almost impressed. In fact, the narrator too seems to hold a higher opinion of the devil than of the
summoner. When the devil leaves the summoner, the devil tells him that they shall hold company
together until he forsakes him. This may be a chance for redemption that the devil offers the
summoner, just before he visits the old crone, but he does not take it.

What genres are combined in the Friar’s tale?

Of course, as well as preaching against hypocrisy, the Friar’s Tale turns it into a plot feature. How
can we know, the tale asks, who we meet on the road: a yeoman or a devil? A religious, pious
summoner or a downright crook? Moreover, there is nothing very ambiguous about the ending to
the tale: the summoner is taken to hell. A metaphorical hell, like the furnace of Gervase the smith in
the Miller’s Tale, is a far more distant representation, but when the summoner disappears, with
Satan, it is simply, unmetaphorically, to hell. What in the Miller’s tale was comedy, when stated
literally by the Friar, starts to look a little like blasphemy, and one wonders how easily Chaucer’s
original readers would have related to it.
Penn R. Szittya has written, in his essay “The Green Yeoman as Loathly Lady: The Friar’s Parody of
the Wife of Bath’s Tale”, that the Friar’s Tale might actually be a parody of the Wife of Bath’s tale.
Szittya notes such pertinent details as the appearance of the Friar riding “under a forest syde”-in
precisely the same phrase that the Wife uses in her tale - and argues that the Wife’s fairytale forest,
and the Friar’s real one in some way elide. It is difficult however to be entirely persuaded by Szittya’s
argument, and see the Friar’s tale as a closer relation to the Wife’s than it is to the Summoner’s.
Simply put, the Friar’s tale is also a reminder to watch what you wish for, and not to speak without
thinking. The devil, it seems, takes words literally - and whether you mean them or not, can decide
to act upon them as he pleases, as long as they have been uttered (note the way the widow’s curse is
made reality by the devil as the tale resolves). As Chaucer’s Tales look perilously close to potential
blasphemy, the Friar’s Tale’s warning that anything said can be used against the sayer seems doubly
pertinent; and the issue of blasphemy in the Tales, present here, runs right through the work to
Chaucer’s final Retraction.

12.2 The Summoner’s Tale

12.2.1 Prologue to the Summoner’s Tale

The Summoner was enraged by the tale that the Friar told, quaking in anger. Since, he says, you have
all listened to the Friar lie, please do listen to my tale. The Summoner claims that friars and fiends are
one and the same. He tells a short anecdote in his prologue. One day, a friar was brought to hell and
led up and down by angel, and was surprised to see no friars there. Are friars so graceful, he asked,
that they never come to hell? The angel told him that many millions of friars came to hell, and led him
directly to Satan. Satan had a tail as broad as a sailing ship, and the angel called to Satan to lift up his
tail. Satan did, and twenty thousand friars swarmed out of his arse like bees from a hive.

12.2.2 The Summoner’s Tale Text

A friar went to preach and beg in a marshy region of Yorkshire called Holderness. In his sermons he
begged for donations for the church and afterward he begged for charity from the local residents. The
Friar interrupts, calling the Summoner a liar, but is silenced by the Host.

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