Chaucer’s Treatment of Outlawry in Wife of Bath’s Tale and Knight’s Tale

Abstract

The medieval outlaw appears in historical, religious, and legal texts of late Medieval England and is imagined in fiction as well, specifically in the romance narratives of Geoffrey Chaucer. Outlawry was a legal state that could be imposed. Chaucer found himself occasionally outside the law at different points of his life, an item to consider when examining Chaucer’s representation of knights acting outside the chivalric code. He populates his romances with outlawry, illustrating the ethical, legal, and social assumptions of their own times. In Chaucer, knights can sometimes be outlaws, and when they are, they are often portrayed as running amok or going mad, leading them to a quest or to an act that must be completed before they can be reintroduced into society. Early critics Maurice Keen and Eric Hobsbawm narrowly defined what they saw as outlawry in medieval literature, but the more recent work of Timothy S. Jones renews the possibility of better examining outlawry’s intersection with medieval romance. Outlawry has traditionally been associated with the narratives of Robin Hood. Yet broadening the definitions of what constitutes an outlaw narrative can lead to fresh readings of Chaucer’s work. To be outlawed, in medieval fiction, carries with it an additional displacement of a character’s connection to others. In this project, I examine fictional knights tarrying in outlawed space while grounding my argument in historical narratives. In doing so, I illuminate how outlawry intersects with medieval romance, unveiling chivalry’s ideological blemishes.