Antisemitism in Canterbury Tales

2337 Words10 Pages
The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories by Geoffrey Chaucer, was written during the Middle Ages - an unstable period in Western European history. The crises of the Late Middle Ages - the Great Famine, the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and the Peasants' Revolt (Goldsmith 417) - led to drastic societal change and social mobility. Chaucer creates controversial religious figures such as the Summoner, Pardoner, Friar, Monk and Prioress as a commentary on, and means to demonstrate, the change and conflicts in English life, and specifically in the Church at that time. One of the most interesting portions of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is the “Prioress’s Tale”. The hypocrisy of this character and the blatant anti-Semitism apparent throughout her Tale are used by Chaucer to demonstrate his views on England's social upheaval. However, although Chaucer was certainly influenced by the political events of this era, the anti-Semitism in the "Prioress's Tale" appears to be a tool that he uses to highlight the incongruity of the Prioress’s behavior, and thereby provide a lesson to the readers, rather than a reflection of his personal view towards the Jews. The Prioress tells a tale of a seven-year-old Christian boy returning home from school through a Jewish ghetto in an Asian town. The child's journey through the ghetto is perceptibly troublesome as the Medieval stance towards Jews is oppressive. As the boy walks home singing Alma Redemptoris Mater, a Marian hymn, Satan says: "O Hebraik peple, allas! Is this to yow a thing that is honest, that swich a boy shal walken as him lest in you despyt, and singe of swich sentence, which is agayn your laws reverence?" (Chaucer line 73-77). Satan convinces the Jews "to hunt this innocent out of this world" (79) and the Jews of the ghetto hire a murderer to brutally "kitte his throte, and in a pit him
Open Document