CHAUCER'S MONK: AN ERRANT EXEGETE

Abstract

In the General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Daun Piers the Monk is the fifth pilgrim to be described in detail and the first to receive the full force of the narrator's irony. Critical discussion on the Monk commonly centres on the physical evidence pointing towards carnal indulgence, this in turn being seen as not merely laxity in respect of his rule but downright defiance of it.1 The Monk's worst failings, however, lie not so much in the fleshly sins ofgula and, probably, luxuria as in inobedentia and accidia, whose consequences become manifest in his tale. There the mishandling of his exemplary material, particularly events in biblical history, reflects his wasted opportunities as cloisterer and thereby links tale with teller to degree of congruency which at one time went unappreciated. The shining bald pate, the glistening fat face, the plump body, and especially the rolling, bulging, gleaming eyes all offer character clues made familiar in the physiognomies, such as 'dull and luxurious inwit' and 'concupyscence of fleschy lustes' as well as tendency to be lecherous, envious, shameless, slothful, disobedient, and a clatterer and foole— these and other signs of moral turpitude are evidenced, according to several versions of the Secreta Secretorum, by the Monk's physiognomy. His eyes alone give him away. The token of shameless man is ryst opyn eighyn and glysinynge and of lecherous man fatte heyghen, and rollynge Swyftly in syght like wode man.2 Coupled with the physiognomical evidence against the Monk go the more direct innuendoes planted in the narrator's choice of imagery. The phrases that lovede venerie and a fat swan loved he best of any roost,3 to say nothing of the hunting terminology, bear suggestive double mean ings.4 When the whole picture is put together, there emerges an ironically presented indictment of wordly cloisterer whose gluttonous habits and immoral conduct only too pointedly confirm charges of this kind familiar in Chaucer's era. That Harry Bailly the Host certainly draws this conclusion his ribald suggestions later reveal: