Book Review Chaucer The Canterbury Tales The Monks Tale

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Prologue The Host enjoyed Chaucer’s Tale Of Melibee much more than that preceding Chaucer’s Tale Of Sir Topaz but he feels that he cannot relate too easily to the wise Lady Prudence, as his own wife is a nagging old battle-axe who likes to get him engaged in fighting duels in her honour al the time. At this point, The Monk interjects to introduce his own story, (or rather, his 100 stories (of which he only gets to deliver seventeen), which are basically a series of biographical character sketches about Biblical, mythical, classical, and historic figures who met untimely deaths. Some of the stories are little more than single paragraph statements, while others are more detailed. The Monk’s Tale The Monk begins with Lucifer, lamenting his fall from Paradise, and follows this immediately with a lament for Adam being driven out of Eden (though the Monk fails to mention Eve in this). Samson’s fate follows, but the verses give us nothing that we cannot surmise from scripture, and clearly see Delilah as the villain of the piece. Hercules is also killed by a woman’s treachery, when his wife, Deinera gives him a vinegar soaked shirt that strips his skin from his body because he is too proud to remove it. Nebuchadnezzar is mad all his life, but gets relatively peaceful death. His son, Balthazar fares worse, being murdered by mercenaries. The most interesting story here is that of Zenobia, a mighty warrior woman who, having beaten many opponents, dared to taken Rome, but failed. Captured, she was enslaved and forced to walk in rags before the Emperor who rode behind her in what was once her own chariot. Judith who seduces her way into his camp and severs his head, to save her people from a bloody war against him, kills Holofernes. She allegedly kept his head as a trophy. Count Ugilino gets the heart-breaking death of being incarcerated in the Tower of Pisa with his three sons, where they were left to simply starve to death. The Monk relates the horror of a man seeing his children perish in such a way before his eyes before sharing their doom. King Croesus was captured and condemned to die burning at the stake, but rain extinguished the fires and he escaped. He became convinced that he was now indestructible, until captured again, and hanged. The Knight eventually ends the endless catalogue of tragedy and death related by the Monk, and begs for a happier story. Arthur Chappell