A Voice for the Prioress: The Context of English Devotional Prose

Abstract

A Voice for the Prioress: The Context of English Devotional Prose Richard H. Osberg Santa Clara University Em th, initial !in, of he, invorntion-"O Lo,d, oure Locd"-to the first line ofthe final stanza-"O yonge Hugh ofLyncoln"-the Prior­ ess apostrophizes with incantatory zeal; fourteen instances ofthe trope are compressed into 237 lines, a density of rhetorical color unmatched else­ where in The Canterbury Tales.1 Apostrophe is only one of a number of tropes in the tale, but even without underscoring rhetorical strategies like comparatio, sententia, determinatio, or circumlocutio, almost everyone who comments on the tale notes its salient stylistic features: the frequency with which certain words are repeated, its rhyme royal stanza,2 and the character 1 The Prioress's fondness for apostrophe in her tale and the exquisite table manners of her portrait in The General Prologue may be opposite sides of the same coin. Geoffrey ofVinsauf remarks: "Take delight in apostrophe; without it the feast would be ample enough, with it the courses of an excellent cuisine are multiplied. The splendor of dishes arriving in rich profusion and the leisured delay at the rable are festive signs"; in Alex Preminger, 0. B. Hardison, and Kevin Kerrane, eds., Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism: Translations and Interpretations (New York: Ungar, 1974), p. 392. Apostrophe occurs elsewhere in The Canterbury Tales, of course, most notably in The Man ofLaw's Tale: see discussions of the trope inJoseph E. Grennen, "Chaucer's Man of Law and the Constancy of]ustice,"JEGP 84 (1985): 498-514, and Kevin]. Harty, "The Tale and Its Teller, the Case of Chaucer's Man of Law," American Benedictine Review 34 (1983): 361-71. All citations of The Prioress's Tale are from Larry D. Benson, gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), unless otherwise noted. 2 Rhyme royal in Chaucer's hands is always, as Charles Muscatine remarks, "an imple­ ment of seriousness"; Chaucer and the French Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), p. 192. G. H. Russell describes the rhyme royal stanzas in The Prioress's Tale as "statuesque, formal stanzas which recall an earlier, 'courtly,' phase of Chaucer's creative work," and he also characterizes the tale's vocabulary as "simple and undemonstrative"; "Chaucer: The Prioress's Tale,'' in D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron, eds., Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory o/G. N. Garmonsway (London: Athlone, 1969), pp. 213, 216. Stephen Knight observes of rhyme royal in The Prioress's Tale that "it is by no means a highly worked stanza; rather it is the easy, varied rhyme royal stanza that . . . Chaucer seems co be able co produce without strain"; Rymyng Craftily: Meaning in Chaucer's Poetry (London: Angus and Robertson, 1973), p. 29. Carolyn Collette characterizes the style of The Prioress's Tale somewhat differently: "It is as if she (the Prioress] meant us co experience the 25 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER of its syntax.3 Dorothy Guerin, for instance, argues that verbal repetition serves many purposes: to heighten emotions through liturgical and biblical associations; to elicit pathos through reiteration ofthe child's sweetness and littleness; to suggest a sincere and simple piety through a limited vocabu­ lary; and to replicate "the boy's single-minded innocence."4 C.David Ben­ son, following Alan T.Gaylord, argues that repetition in the tale means that "childlike innocence ...characterizes its artistry."5 Against the grain of critical estimation that reads the tale as the expres­ sion ofa naive and untutored piety, I would like to explore the implications religious significance ofher tale through the same intense, emotional reaction she obviously has ro the action ofher own story. In this effect the rhyme royal stanza, intensely expressive in its inherent periodicity, works as part of the story, not just as form, but as form become content"; "Sense and Sensibility in The Prioress's Tale," ChauR 15 (1980): 138-50.Martin Stevens pushes the stylistic implications ofthe stanza further than anyone, suggesting it is "an implement ofcharacterization" and a "vehicleto explore literary concepts": it reveals the Prioress as a person given to the external form ofthings; "The Royal Stanza in Early English...