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Unit 18: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-X

combined with the all-black Canon and blushing-red Yeoman suggests that even the characters Notes
within the frame narrative of the Tales are undergoing some sort of alchemical transformation.
There is a sliding transformation in what the characters actually say and think–but this is backed up
in the visual metaphor of them being physically “slydinge”.
The central image of the Canon Yeoman’s tale is the devilish furnace at the center of their back-
street workshop, and (rather like the alchemical/furnace imagery in Jonson’s The Alchemist) it is a
complex metaphor: for hell, for devilish behavior–and falseness, but also for money. As the Pardoner
argued in his tale, money is the root of all evil: and yet, unlike the slight comeuppance the Pardoner
is served with by the Host at the end of his tale, justice is entirely absent from the denouement of the
Canon Yeoman’s tale. The last furnace we saw in the Tales was Gervays’ in The Miller’s Tale–a
timely reminder, perhaps, of the neat interclicking justice of Absolon’s branding Nicholas. Neither
the Canon nor his Yeoman receives any sort of narrative punishment.

Self Assessment

Short Answer Type Questions:
1. In what way is the prologue to the Canon’s tale different from others in the Canterbury
tales?
2. What is alchemy?
3. What is always the outcome of alchemy?
4. According to the Canon’s Yeoman, what keeps people involved in the practice of alchemy?
Yet the way that this timely reminder of the profitability of falsehood intrudes upon the Tale also
points to the complex narrative problem of the Pardoner’s tale: just in the way that the Pardoner’s
hollow words and empty bones could bring people to salvation, so too can the Canon’s trickery
actually make him money–and, moreover, the Canon’s Yeoman can supposedly turn this experience
into a moral tale for the company to listen to. Of what substance is a tale made? Can a tale
acknowledge the desire for gold and the ingenuity of the misdemeanors of those who pursue gold
without endorsing them? As it is reaching its conclusion, the pilgrimage is waylaid by another
pertinent reminder of the tale-telling project and its questionable substance.

Tales, as Chaucer will admit in the retraction, and language, are not always
innocent.

18.2 The Manciple’s Tale

18.2.1 Prologue to the Manciple’s Tale

The Host turns to the sleeping cook, and asks whether any man might be able to wake him. Awaking,
pale and unalert, the Cook proclaims that he would rather sleep than have some of the best wine in
Cheapside. The Manciple steps in courteously, excusing the cook, and then mocking him – his open
mouth, which the devil could put his foot in, his stinking breath – to his face for his drunkenness. The
Cook is furious, but too drunk to speak, and promptly falls off his horse. Everyone lifts him up out of
the mud, and the Host addresses the Manciple, telling him that the Cook is too drunk to tell a tale,
and has more than enough to do keeping himself out of the mud and on his horse.
However, adds the Host, it is a folly to openly mock the Cook to his face, for one day he might have
his revenge, and “quit” the Manciple’s words. “No”, says the Manciple, and produces a draught of

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