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.
Bibliography
1. Manuscripts and facsimile editions: CHAUCER, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales , Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.4.27, fols 132-443. ---, The Canterbury Tales , Philadelphia, Rosenbach Library, MS 1084/2. ---, The Canterbury Tales , Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS English 63.  ---, The Poetical Works: A Facsimile of Cambridge Univer sity Library MS Gg.4.27 , 3 vols, ed. by Malcolm B. Parkes and Richard Beadle, Cambridge: Br we , 1979-80. ---, The New Ellesmere Chaucer Facsimile of Huntington Library MS EL 26 C 9 , ed. by D. Woodard and M. Stevens, Tokyo: Yushodo, San Marino (CA): Huntington Library Press, 1995. ---, The Ellesmere Manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Ta les: A Working Facsimile, ed. by Ralph Hanna III, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989. MANDEVILLE, John, The Book of John Maundeuile , London, British Library MS Royal 17.C.XXXVIII. ---, Sir John Mandeville’s Travels , London, British Library MS Harley 3954, fols 1-69 . POLO, Marco, Li Livres du Graunt Caam, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264, fol. 2 , fols 218 -271.
Freedom and Marriage in Medieval England
M Yr EDIEVAL peasant liberty always seems to have recently died. For England a number of occasions between the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and the thirteenth century have been variously suggested as dates at which a primitive, Rousseau-esque, Germanic peasant freedom was destroyed by seigneurial oppression. Stenton saw such a subjugation as the main theme of the whole of Old English society.2 Others have attributed it to the imposition of the Norman Yoke. More recently Prof. Hilton has propounded a dramatic depression of the peasantry at the ends of the twelfth century.3 Fundamentally, these dates all rest on the assumption that what is newly recorded is new, and that what is new is worse. Such assumptions are able to dictate a pattern for six hundred years of history because during this time the direction of movement has to be deduced from unrelated, static evidence, coming almost entirely from the end of the period. Proof of the initial state of bliss is lacking, as Stenton himself allowed. Once belief in it is suspended, and it is accepted that exactions may change in form and emphasis, and oppressions become more manifest as familiar terms appear and records multiply, then it is possible to discern signs that the peasant's lot in fact improved. There is only one identifiable group of peasants and only one identifiable custom. Taken together they offer means of testing the whole thesis of subjugation. For the liberty to take a spouse and have a family is so elementary as to provide a reliable index not only of a peasant's freedom but also of his status as a human being, and of the nature of the society he inhabits.