Canterbury Tales: The Manciple's Tale by Taylor Shirley https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4 "Keep well thy tongue, and think upon the crow" en-us 2021-09-25 19:08:09 UTC 2026-01-22 19:35:06 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/1336769514/12060a06c5b573c84d71a3d58daf7e9f/manciples_tale.jpg THE CHARACTERS - THE PROLOGUE Pt. 1 tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1772894748      In the Manciple's Tale, we are introduced to two main group of characters: those from The Prologue from the Canterbury Pilgrimage, and those from the Maniples' Tale itself.

THE PROGLOGUE - CANTERBURY PILGRAMAGE

GEOFFREY CHAUCER -
     The Narrator and leader of the Canterbury Pilgrimage. The first to mock the Cook being asleep on his horse, and considers several possibilities why he may be asleep in the middle of the day (fleas, wine, sex with a prostitute all night). He demands the cook tells the next story as punishment.

THE COOK -
     A drunken cook who the Narrator demanded to tell a tale in penance for being asleep on his horse in the middle of the day. The Manciple offers to take his place in line to avoid smelling the Cooks drunken breath. This remark causes the Cook to fall off their horse in anger, and he only get back on with much help from others.]]> 2021-09-28 01:24:22 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1772894748 THE CHARACTERS - THE TALE tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1772906116
THE TALE

PHOEBUES -
     Living incarnation of the god of poetry. The most handsome amongst men in all history. A man incomparable for their singing, skill with bow and arrow, and skill with instruments. While a very chivalrous and devoted man to his wife, he has extreme jealous when any other looks at her. Phoebus has a pet white crow he has taught to sign and speak the tongues of man.

WHITE CROW -
     A white feathered crow raised by Phoebus to sing and speak as humans do. Is punished for Phoebus actions.

THE WIFE -
     Cherished by Phoebus above his own life. She has an illicit affair with another man when Phoebus is out of the house.

THE LEMAN (ILLICIT LOVER) -
     Nameless lover of the wife. Considered far-beneath Phoebus' greatness.

]]> 2021-09-28 01:29:03 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1772906116 SUMMARY - THE TALE Part I tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1773049948      The incarnation of the god of poetry named Phoebus is a man among men - beautiful, strong, skilled in weaponry, singing and instruments. He is a devoted and loving husband, but has a deep streak of jealousy. His wife, a woman he loves more than life itself, has an affair with a man despite Phoebus' efforts to keep others away. It then happens that Phoebus' white crow - taught by Phoebus to sing and speak as humans do - witnesses the lovers together and remains silent, but then tell  Phoebus of what has transpired when they see him next.]]> 2021-09-28 02:25:46 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1773049948 SUMMARY - THE TALE Part II tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1773056319      After learning of what his wife had done from his crow, Phoebus strings his bow and kills his wife, destroys all his instruments and bow, and finally turns in anger to his the same crow who told him of the betrayal. Claiming himself being to rash in his actions, he then looks at the crow and calls it a false liar and telling a false tale that ended his wife's life. In punishment, Phoebus tears off the birds white feathers and replaces them with black ones, removes their ability to sing and speak, and finally sends them out the door to be a servant to the devil forever more. 

     The story ends with the Manciple claiming while he was not a book learned man, his mother had taught him as a child to "Keep well thy tongue, and think upon the crow", for speaking scandal - for good or ill intentions - can turn ones friends into enemies, and keeping what you know to yourself is sometimes the best course of action possible.]]> 2021-09-28 02:28:18 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1773056319 THE TELL-TALE CROW - ANALYSIS AND CONTEXT Pt. 1 tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1773366532 ANALYSIS - SUMMARY
     At first glance, the short and bitter Tale told by the Manciple seems a sharp contrast from Chaucer’s other works. A overblown and slimmed down retelling of the Greek writer Ovid's Metamorphosis, many characters lose their meaning, while others are lost all together. Whereas other tales began well enough, had a conflict to overcome, and more or less all parties involved were better for it, The Manciple’s tale takes a sharp turn to throw out this formula, and create a villain of the hero, a corpse of the wrongdoer, and punishes the truth speaker. Yet it is in this sharp change in attitude where Geoffrey Chaucer, in his last Tale, is able to speak the truth of his and others lives in a time that was neither kind nor forgiving to those who spoke the wrong thing, while also showing his devotion to his faith (or protecting his neck).  ]]> 2021-09-28 04:41:31 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1773366532 WORK CITED tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1777079124 Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Prologue to the Manciple’s Tale / The Manciple’s Tale of Phoebus and the Crow.” Playful Poems, Jan. 1891, pp. 6- 12. EBSCOhost,searchebscohostcom.aclibproxy.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&d b=lfh&AN=22709104 &site=lrc-live.
 
Cox, Catherine S. “The Jangler’s ‘Bourde’: Gender, Renunciation, and Chaucer’s Manciple.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 61, no. 4, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 1996, pp. 1–21, https://doi.org/10.2307/3201164.
 
Fulk, R. D. “Reinterpreting the ‘Manciple’s Tale.’” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 78, no. 4, University of Illinois Press, 1979, pp. 485–93,             http://www.jstor.org/stable/27708553.

Fradenburg, Louise. “The Manciple’s Servant Tongue: Politics and Poetry in the Canterbury Tales.” ELH, vol. 52, no. 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, pp. 85–118,             https://doi.org/10.2307/2872829.
 
Herman, Peter C. “Treason in the ‘Manciple’s Tale.’” The Chaucer Review, vol. 25, no. 4, Penn State University Press, 1991, pp. 318–28, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25094169.

Raybin, David. “The Death of a Silent Woman: Voice and Power in Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 95, no. 1, University of Illinois  Press, 1996, pp. 19–37, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27711257.
 

Severs, J. Burke. “Is the ‘Manciple’s Tale’ A Success?” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 51, no. 1, University of Illinois Press, 1952, pp. 1–16,             http://www.jstor.org/stable/27713366.

White, Hugh. “Chaucer Compromising Nature.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 40, no. 158, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 157–78, http://www.jstor.org/stable/516497.
]]> 2021-09-29 06:27:47 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1777079124 THE MANCIPLE'S TALE - INTERLINEAR TRANSLATION (MODERN TRANSLATION) tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1779277307 https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/manc-par.htm#PROLOGUE]]> 2021-09-29 20:17:36 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1779277307 THE CHARACTERS - THE PROLOGUE Pt. 2 tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798427286

THE MANCIPLE -
ˈmansəpəl/

noun
ARCHAIC


  1. an officer who buys provisions for a college, monastery, or other institution. 

     The narrator of a retelling of Ovid's Metamorphosis - of a  man named Phoebus, his wife, a talking white crow, and the wife's illicit lover. The Manciple, after offering to take the Cook's spot in the story lineup, mocks the Cook for his awful breath from drinking until in rage the Cooke falls off horse, and though great effort is put back on. Chaucer chastens the Manciple that the Cook may want revenge for the mocking, so the Manciple offers the Cook wine to smooth things over.

THE MANCIPLE'S MOTHER -
     A mouthpiece character the Manciple claims told him the story, to teach him to keep what he knows close to his chest and "Keep well thy tongue, and think upon the crow".
]]> 2021-10-07 02:37:31 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798427286 THE TELL-TALE CROW - ANALYSIS AND CONTEXT Pt. 2 tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798470365 PHOEBUS - 
     A god of Poetry and Light Incarnate on Earth, Phoebus could be claimed to be the stories of The Canterbury Tales themselves, created to entertain and bring light on society through their telling. Yet this self-same god is a jealous one, who cages not only the white Crow he taught to speak and sing, but also his unnamed and silent wife he so quickly kills upon learning about her adultery, without any other evidence. He even destroys all his tools that give him the status of god (bow and arrows, instruments), making him more man than god.
     During this time period, it was common to call upon Apollo in their many forms, yet it was also a common practice to denounce the same god for being inadequate to the Christian God. Chaucer himself was acquainted with writers such as Dante Alighieri, writer of the Divine Comedy, who themselves had used this tactic to show calling upon such a god would lead to nothing, and it was only when invoking the true Christian God to one find a way (Kensak 143-145).   ]]> 2021-10-07 02:54:02 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798470365 THE TELL-TALE CROW - ANALYSIS AND CONTEXT Pt. 3 tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798656517 THE SILENT WIFE -
     A woman without name, voice or the opportunity to even plead her case before her death, The Wife of Phoebus was often compared to a "bird in a cage", or a "cat in a house". Whether her action was as 'nature intended' as the Manciple often claimed, or to have freedom from her cage imposed by Phoebus, it is of little matter by societal standards in Chaucer's time. Compared to other women from Tales where the wife was redeemed in the end for her action, the Wife of Phoebus herself instead, being a socially higher woman having lain with a lower caste man, committed the high treason of impacting hegemony, downplaying the higher social standings right to rule by mingling with a lower standing person (Herman 319-320). ]]> 2021-10-07 04:22:33 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798656517 THE TELL-TALE CROW - ANALYSIS AND CONTEXT Pt. 4 tshirley23 https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798683303 THE CROW -
    A trained bird in a cage, taught to speak and sing as men do to entertain at the will of their master, the god of Poetry. But what if, like the wife doing what their god thought was wrong, the bird said what their master thought was wrong? In the fate of the crow, a caged creature as the wife was, we see everything the crow knew and loved stolen away from them because it displease their master. From this fate, we get a deeper, more disturbing view into why this tale was the most important as an ending piece for The Canterbury Tales. Where the god of Poetry was both The Canterbury Tales and Audience, so too was the Crow Chaucer and a Tale speaker in themselves.
     Chaucer, for himself, lived a life where the court ruled all, and followed the will of their prince absolute. While Chaucer wished to entertain their audience, he also understood his tales exposed many truths that others would be willing to kill to hide (the wife's death), and so speaking the truth outright (the crow) without a healthy heaping of humor and absurdity would leave Chaucer in a precarious predicament if he wished to keep doing the work he loved (Frandenburg 86-88).]]> 2021-10-07 04:37:50 UTC https://padlet.com/tshirley23/qxivv90cwrgjhvj4/wish/1798683303