Chaucer's Vision of the Tree of Life: Crossing the Road with the Rood in the Parson's Tale

Abstract

At the end of the Canterbury Tales Chaucer's Parson promises To shewe yow the wey, in this viage, Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrymage That highte Jerusalem celestial (X 49–51),1 ostensibly by means of a reading from Jeremiah 6.16—"State super vias, et videte, et interrogate de viis antiquis que sit via bona, et ambulate in ea; et invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris, etc." (X 75)—which he translates, "Stondeth upon the weyes, and seeth and axeth of olde pathes (that is to seyn, of olde sentences) which is the goode wey,/ and walketh in that wey, and ye shal fynde refresshynge for youre soules, etc." (X 77–78). This promise seems a right and fitting way to end the Canterbury pilgrimage, and we might expect an elaboration of the pilgrimage metaphor with regard to penitence, a common enough topos in Chaucer's time. Chaucer's main source for the Parson's Tale, Raymund of Penaforte's Summa de poenitentia et matrimonio, does just this elaboration through its exegesis of the "viam trium dierum in solitudine" (three-day journey in the desert) from Exodus and the Virgin Mary's search for her son (III.xxxiv.7).2 Surprisingly, however, the Parson's Tale provides us with an account of penitence using the metaphor of a tree (X 112): penitence itself, Chaucer asserts, is "the tree of lyf" (X 127). But where does this tree come from? And how does this image of stability come to replace the motion of peregrination? The shift of metaphors from journey to tree illustrates the fluid conversation between the literary and visual cultures of the late fourteenth century, and is itself a product of an increasingly educated laity in an age [End Page 341] of increasingly affective religious activity. Although the Parson's Tale is sometimes viewed as a "mere" translation of Raymund's Summa, this displacement of metaphoric structure is an indicator of the transformative complexity of Chaucer's work.3 By replacing Raymund's scholarly exegetical analysis of the journey with the simple and homely image of a tree that can be found painted on many a parish church wall, not to mention actually standing in many a yard, orchard, and woodland, Chaucer presents a theory of penitence that resonates with the lay spirituality of his time, offering a process through which one can live a spiritual life in the world, rather than a choice between the worldly and the spiritual. In speaking of the Parson's Tale as a translation of Raymund's Summa, it behooves us to consider how medieval theories of translation might obtain to Chaucer's enterprise. In other words, what did Chaucer think he was doing? Paul Beekman Taylor reminds us that "Chaucer and his contemporaries considered themselves transmitters more than inventors of story," and in such a context translation is "a linguistic activity which fits his local and topical English idiom to foreign and often worn and ancient literary ideas."4 Hence, to a medieval intellect, "translate signals the act of recodifying language," and we can examine the nature of the changes that Chaucer makes to his source as such. A pattern of omissions, additions, and variations in the translation constitutes Chaucer's "hermeneutic procedure" in interpreting his sources as he performs an act of exegesis by placing material in a "doctrinal" context, just as the medieval commentary tradition relates a text to a larger body of ideas. In this case, the translator mediates distinct and divergent zones of time, space and cultural perspectives. He transforms the letter of a source text to the spirit, or understanding of an audience of which, as a rule, he is himself a member.5 Jeanette Beer adds her agreement that "in the fullest sense...