Globalizing Jewish Communities: Mapping a Jewish Geography in Fragment VII of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>

Abstract

This essay moves beyond bounds of Prioress's Tale to explore alternative texts that probably never consulted yet whose histories resonate in Chaucer's work in Fragment VII of Canterbury Tales. These tales of Fragment VII (specifically, Prioress's Tale, Sir Thopas, and two tragedies, De Petro Rege Ispannie and De Rege Antiocho illustri, from Monk's Tale) form what I term Jewish history cluster.1 Reexamining significance of Jewish presence in Ο / other texts than those traditionally documented as sources or analogues that Chaucer knew or was acquainted as W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster write this essay reconsiders texts that lie silently behind Chaucerian tales.2 Tracing Jewish presence in history embedded within sources cited in but not charted by Bryan and Dempster's volume reveals that displacement of Jewish presence haunts four tales in Fragment VII. At best, texts I discuss can be construed as soft analogues, what Peter Beidler takes to indicate work that . . . could scarcely have known.3 Such a pursuit introduces some complexity to source study, inviting us to reflect on what Giuseppe Mazzotta characterizes as the free, unbiased analysis of texts, and a different understanding of what 'influence' is.4 The stories this essay considers serve as silent reminders of other lingering histories of Jewish presence that exist alongside traditional sources and analogues. Rather than limiting our discussion to an analysis of a source or an analogue in a Chaucerian tale whose relationship with a Chaucerian text is immediately apparent, I study texts that comprise technology of (in)visible. Kathleen Biddick's work with technology of visible helps us here because Jews (and Jewish things) are deployed simultaneously as displaced and dead bodies and presently absent echoes of a painful past.5 These (in)visible texts emerge in Jewish history cluster that surfaces in and unites all four of tales in Fragment VII of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.