Chaucer Gentrified: The Nexus of Art and Politics in the Ellesmere Miniatures
The twenty-three miniatures of the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales (San Marino, Huntington Library MS 26 C 9) have been well studied, from Edwin Ford Piper's 1924 descriptive article to several essays in the 1997 The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation, which was published in con junction with the sumptuous new facsimile of the manuscript and Mary C. Olson's chapter in Chaucer Illustrated.1 Among the issues debated over the decades has been the fidelity, or lack thereof, of the illustrations to the text. Piper, Martin Stevens, Malcolm Parkes, and A. I. Doyle have argued that the pictures are, in Stevens's words, "as faithful as possible to the verbal portraits."2 Conversely, Richard K Emmerson's close study of the miniatures denies that the artists attempted to reproduce Chaucer's verbal portraits. Olson concurs with Emmerson.3 Anyone who gives the Ellesmere miniatures more than a cursory glance must acknowledge that Emmerson and Olson are correct in stating that the artists' depictions deviate in varying degrees from Chaucer's descriptions. Such deviations generally do not detract from the pictures' ability to function as rubrics. On the contrary, the additions of the Physician's urinal, the Summoner's summons, the Reeve's keys, and the Clerk's books4 allow a reader to iden tify the characters quickly and so are included, even though (with the pos sible exception of the keys) they are inappropriate accoutrements to be carrying on horseback on a pilgrimage.5 Rendering images more easily recognizable was only one motivation for the artists' innovations, though. Taken together, the changes amount to a program seeking to deflect Chaucer's satire of the upper and upper-middle classes and of most of the religious figures while emphasizing the negative aspects of the lower orders. Whereas the text tends to the ambiguous and the equivocal, the illustrations consistently eliminate these qualities and instruct the reader/viewer in how to regard each pilgrim. The Ellesmere miniatures reveal that, within a decade of Chaucer's death, the Canterbury Tales was being turned into an icon of establishment values.
General prologue the Canterbury tales
A collection of ten critical essays on the Prologue to Chaucer's well-known work, arranged in chronological order of their original publication. >
Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins
In a series of recent articles Professor Frederick Tupper has put forward, with great skill and learning, a view regarding the plan of the Canterbury Tales which demands, on account of its originality and its importance, the most respectful and open-minded consideration. As one who was fortunate enough to be present at the inception of the theory, and who welcomed enthusiastically the promise of fresh light which it seemed to hold, I am free, I think, from antecedent prejudice. But as the theory has been developed in article after article I have felt myself compelled to dissent, with steadily strengthening conviction, from Professor Tupper's contention, and it is the purpose of this article to make clear the grounds on which it seems to me that that contention, in spite of its uncommon plausibility, must be rejected. All students of Chaucer are under a debt to Mr. Tupper, whether they agree with him or not. A fresh and original conception, maintained with an enthusiasm that vivifies dead facts, is of all too rare occurrence, and its “Forth, beste, out of thy stal” is wholesome stimulus. But Mr. Tupper would be the last to wish his vigorous challenge to gird up our loins and give a reason for the faith that is in us, to go unanswered. He has already offered hospitality to various objections in his articles, but he and his critics have not met, apparently, on common ground. In my own case I wish to accept, without question, his own choice of field and weapons.