The Literature of Alchemy and Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale: Framework, Theme, and Characters

Abstract

THIS paper is concerned not with the specifics of alchemy in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale i.e., the yeoman's garbled but nevertheless very full account of the contents of his master's laboratory and of the activities carried on therein' but rather with the contribution of the literature of alchemy to other aspects of the tale: to framework, theme, and characters. Especially, it undertakes to demonstrate that in portraying the yeoman-narrator, the alchemist-canon, and the canon and priest of Secunda Pars Chaucer made significant use of the alchemical treatises and other writings about alchemy available to him at the end of the fourteenth century. Presumption of his reliance upon written documents in this instance is in keeping with his frequently avowed dependence for inspiration and material upon bokes olde and newe and is buttressed by scholarly investigations which have demonstrated his creation of complex human beings, very much alive, from bookish materials: treatises on medicine, physiognomy, dream and astrology; antifeminist writings of the church fathers; scriptural commentary and the like. One calls to mind his transformation of learned lore in the instances of the Summoner, the Pardoner, the more than half human rooster Chantecleer, that magnificently complex human being the Wife of Bath. This is not to deprecate the suggestion that Chaucer may have had personal and perhaps extensive and unfortunate acquaintance with one or more practicing alchemists of his day. Indeed, as one reads the Yeoman's account of his Canon's experimentings and as he experiences the ever-mounting bitterness of the Yeoman's denunciation of the elvysshe nice lore, he is likely to be overwhelmed by the vivid immediacy of the recital and to feel that toward its end the yeoman in his denunciation becomes indistinguishable from Chaucer himself a Chaucer who knows by personal experience whereof he speaks and delivers his advice and conclusion: I rede, as for the beste, lete it goon, with a vivid personal commitment. Several years ago Mr H. G. Richardson2 discovered in the Plea Rolls of Edward III for 1374 evidence of a canon of the royal chapel at Windsor who was also apparently a practising alchemist. At least, when William de Brumley. a