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Unit 17: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-IX

Nabugodonosor, was the king of Babylon who had twice defeated Israel. The proud king constructed Notes
a large gold statue that he demanded his subjects pray to or else be cast into a pit of flames. Yet
when Daniel disobeyed the king, Nebuchadnezzar lost all dignity, acting like a great beast until
God relieved him of his insanity.
The next tragedy is about Balthasar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, who also worshipped false idols.
He had a feast for a thousand lords in which they drank wine out of sacred vessels, but during his
feast he saw an armless hand writing on a wall. Daniel warned Balthasar of his father’s fate. Daniel
warned him that his kingdom would be divided by Medes and the Persians. Balthasar, according to
the Monk, exemplifies the way that Fortune makes friends with people before making enemies with
them.
Cenobia or Zenobia, who was beautiful and victorious in war, is the next tragic hero of the tale. The
queen of Palmyra refused the duties of women and refused to marry, until she was forced to wed
Odenathus. She permitted him to have sex with her only so that she could get pregnant, but no
more. Yet the proud woman, once Odenathus was dead, was defeated by the Romans and paraded
through Rome bound in chains.
King Pedro of Spain, subject of the next story, was cast from his kingdom by his brother. When
attempting to regain his throne, Pedro was murdered by this brother.
Peter, King of Cyprus, is the next subject; he brought ruin on his kingdom and was thus murdered.
Other tragedies include Bernabo Visconti, who wrongly imprisoned his nephew. Ugolino of Pisa, a
count, was imprisoned in a tower in Pisa with his three young children after Ruggieri, the bishop of
Pisa, had led a rebellion against him. His youngest son died of starvation, and out of his misery
Ugolini gnawed on his own arms. The two children that remained thought that Ugolini was chewing
himself out of hunger, and offered themselves as meals for him. They all eventually starved. Nero
did nothing but satisfy his own lusts and even cut open his own mother to see the womb from
which he came. He had Seneca murdered for stating that an emperor should be virtuous. When it
appeared that Nero would be assassinated for his cruelty, he killed himself. Holofernes ordered his
subjects to renounce every law and worship Nebuchadnezzar. For this sin Judith cut off Holofernes’
head as he was sleeping.
The Monk next tells of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was punished by God for attacks on the Jews.
God made Antiochus infested with loathsome maggots. The Monk then admits that most have
heard of Alexander the Great, poisoned by his very own offspring. He follows with the tale of Julius
Caesar, who had Pompey murdered but was himself assassinated by Brutus. The final story is of
Croesus, King of Lydia, the proud and wealthy king who was hanged.

All of these tales are simply re-tellings of the popularly known stories: all focus
on the same theme of people of high degree falling into misery or death. Finally
the Monk’s Tale is interrupted.

Analysis
The Monk provides one of the first-known definitions of tragedy in English literature, and, though
his tale might have been fascinating to Chaucer’s medieval audience, many of whom would not
know the classical stories it largely details, it does not receive a huge amount of attention or adoration
from modern readers and critics.
The Monk’s tragedies are drawn from a variety of sources: Biblical, classical, historical and even
some that, in Chaucer’s time, would have been within reasonably recent folklore and memory. Yet
the model of tragedy that the Monk offers is not, in fact, a classical model as such, but a Boethian

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