The Conclusion of the Marriage Group Chaucer and the Human Condition

Abstract

ITTREDGE, in 1912, first defined the Marriage Group as a dramatically integrated unit within the Canterbury Tales. It begins, he suggested, with the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale; after an interruption it is resumed in the Clerk's treatment of the patient Griselda and the Merchant's cynical denial of happiness in marriage; and it is concluded, after the interruption of the Squire's Tale, by the Franklyn's compromise between Christian marriage and courtly love.' There followed a protracted discussion, in which some critics denied that these tales form any kind of a group, while others, accepting the notion, suggested that the Squire's Tale, the Nun's Priest's Tale, and the Melibee are also related to it.2 But in all this no one has questioned the fundamental premise, implicit in Kittredge's argument, that the Marriage Group has at base a radically secular cast which reflects the private opinion of the author: the group is thought to end with the Franklyn's suggestion for a method of establishing domestic concord, and this solution is believed, in Kittredge's words, to be what Chaucer thought about marriage.3 This picture of the poet as a thinker disposed chiefly toward secular notions which were ahead of his time is-or should be-qualified by the fact that Chaucer wrote many works of a Christian and ascetic character. Putting to one side all those minor poems which might be considered conventional and perfunctory,4 we find that one of the greatest secular works, the Troilus, ends with an epilogue which counsels readers to turn from the love of worldly things; and recent scholarship has supported the opinion that the epilogue is seriously intended and integral with the poem. And the Canterbury Tales ends with the Parson's sermon on penitence, followed by Chaucer's retraction. Lately, however, this wholly justifiable view of Chaucer as a religious writer and thinker has been carried to an unprecedented extreme. Those critics who have come to be called pan-allegorists are interpreting notably secular tales, like the Nun's Priest's Tale, and even the Mer-