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Penance and Poetry in the Canterbury Tales

1978; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 93; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/461959

1938-1530

Rodney Delasanta,

Linguistics and language evolution

Despite the efforts of recent scholars who have argued for an ironic reading of Fragment x of the Canterbury Tales (the Parson’s Tale and Retraction), dramatic and symbolic propriety both dictate that at this penultimate moment in the pilgrimage “earnest” should emerge from “game.” Dramatically, the imminence of the approach to the Holy City urges—as with all pilgrimages—certain penitential expectations, the sacramental obligations of which require the ministrations of the Parson. Thus, his tale—a confessional manual appropriate to the penitential occasion in both length and oral device—serves the pilgrims with an examination of conscience indispensable to the aural rubric of the sacrament. Symbolically, the earnestness of the ending is prepared by the promise of the supper (with its manifold biblical implications), by the eschatological haste of Harry Bailly in urging completion of the tales, and by his unwitting use of Pauline imagery relating to doomsday drunkenness and nocturnal thieves in the Prologue to the Manciple’s Tale (Fragment ix ).