"The Friar's Tale" (Middle English : The Freres Tale) is a story in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, told by Huberd the Friar. The story centers on a corrupt summoner and his interactions with the Devil. It is preceded by The Wife of Bath's Tale and followed by The Summoner's Tale.
On the way to extort money from a widow, the Summoner encounters a yeoman who is dressed in Lincoln green, a costume worn by outlaws and poachers. The two men swear brotherhood to each other and exchange the secrets of their respective trades, the Summoner recounting his various sins in a boastful manner. The yeoman reveals that he is actually a demon, to which the Summoner expresses minimal surprise—he enquires as to various aspects of hell and the forms that demons take. Each makes a vow with the other to take whatever is offered to them and share it between them. During their travels, they come upon a carter whose horses have become temporarily stuck. Frustrated, he says that the devil may take them. Hearing this, the Summoner asks the demon why he isn't holding him to his word and seizing the horses; he replies that the man does not truly mean what he says—that it is not his "entente" (intent)—and therefore he cannot take them. They proceed to the house of the widow. The Summoner claims he will do better than the demon and fabricates a court summons in order that the widow will have to bribe him to dismiss the case. He also demands she give him a new pan in payment for an old debt, falsely claiming he paid a fine to get her off a charge of adultery. Incensed, the old woman damns the summoner to hell unless he repents of his false charges; the devil confirms her "entente"; as the Summoner does not have any inclination to repent, the demon takes his body and soul—as well as the frying pan—to hell.
The tale is a satirical and somewhat bitter attack on the profession of summoner—an official in ecclesiastical courts who summons people to attend—and in particular The Summoner, one of the other people on the pilgrimage. Unlike the Miller and the Reeve who tell tales that irritate the other and do not get on for that reason, the Friar and the Summoner seem to have a longstanding hatred between them.
The Friar is of one of the mendicant orders which traveled about preaching and making their livings by begging. Part of the animosity between the two characters may be due to these orders of friars, which had been formed relatively recently, interfering with the work of the summoners. Once a friar had taken confession and given absolution to someone they could not be charged in an ecclesiastical court with the same sin. The Friar's tale has no clear original source like many of Chaucer's tales but it is of a type which is common and always seems popular: "the corrupt official gets their comeuppance".
The tale itself continues in the denigration of summoners with its vivid description of the work of a summoner. This includes bribery, corruption, extortion and a network of pimps and wenches acting as informants making this important clerical office seem more like a 14th-century protection racket. The Friar then says that luckily friars are not under summoners' jurisdiction but the Summoner snaps back that neither are women in styves, meaning brothels; which were licensed to operate by archdeacons. [1] Indeed the Friar in the Prologue seems to be more worldly than was acceptable: he would rather seduce women and hang out in taverns than minister to the poor and the sick or go out on a hunt rather than attend to spiritual duties in a monastery; for that matter he cares little about a poor widow who gives her last penny to him instead of feeding her starving child; Chaucer ironically remarks that the Friar is in the "business" of seeing unmarried women linked to men (see the comment about styves above). In other words, the Friar and the Summoner are hypocritical competitors in the same "rackets"(extortion and pimping) although the Friar is more "virtuous" as unlike the Summoner he does not engage in blackmailing.
Pasolini adapted the Friar's story in his 1972 Canterbury Tales. In the film the Devil is portrayed by Franco Citti, part of a recurring theme of Citti playing demonic and immoral characters in The Trilogy of Life (as Ser Ciappelletto in The Decameron and is an ifrit in Arabian Nights).
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of servants in an English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in mid-14th-century England. The 14th century also witnessed the rise of the yeoman longbow archers during the Hundred Years' War, and the yeoman outlaws celebrated in the Robin Hood ballads. Yeomen also joined the English Navy during the Hundred Years' War as seamen and archers. In the early 15th century, yeoman was the rank of chivalry between page and squire. By the late 17th century, yeoman became a rank in the Royal Navy for the common seamen who were in charge of ship's stores, such as foodstuffs, gunpowder, and sails.
Mephistopheles, also known as Mephisto, is a demon featured in German folklore. He originally appeared in literature as the demon in the Faust legend and has since become a stock character appearing in other works of arts and popular culture.
"The Parson's Tale" seems, from the evidence of its prologue, to have been intended as the final tale of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetic cycle The Canterbury Tales. The "tale", which is the longest of all the surviving contributions by Chaucer's pilgrims, is in fact neither a story nor a poem, but a long and unrelieved prose treatise on penance. Critics and readers are generally unclear what rhetorical effect Chaucer may have intended by ending his cycle in this unlikely, extra-generic fashion.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. He also goes so far as to describe two sets of clothing for her in his General Prologue. She holds her own among the bickering pilgrims, and evidence in the manuscripts suggests that although she was first assigned a different, plainer tale—perhaps the one told by the Shipman—she received her present tale as her significance increased. She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue, but to confuse matters these are also the names of her 'gossib', whom she mentions several times, as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.
"The Cook's Tale" is one of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It breaks off after 58 lines and was presumably never finished, although some scholars argue that Chaucer deliberately left the tale unfinished. The story starts telling of an apprentice named Perkyn who is fond of drinking and dancing. Perkyn is released by his master and moves in with a friend who also loves to drink, and whose wife is a shopkeeper whose real occupation is that of a prostitute.
"The Pardoner's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. In the order of the Tales, it comes after The Physician's Tale and before The Shipman's Tale; it is prompted by the Host's desire to hear something positive after the physician's depressing tale. The Pardoner initiates his Prologue—briefly accounting his methods of swindling people—and then proceeds to tell a moral tale.
The Ellesmere Chaucer, or Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, is an early 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, owned by the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California. It is considered one of the most significant copies of the Tales.
The Hengwrt Chaucer manuscript is an early-15th-century manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, held in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth. It is an important source for Chaucer's text, and was possibly written by someone with access to an original authorial holograph, now lost.
"Sir Thopas" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, published in 1387. The tale is one of two—together with The Tale of Melibee—told by the fictive Geoffrey Chaucer as he travels with the pilgrims on the journey to Canterbury Cathedral. The tale concerns the adventures of the knight Sir Thopas and his quest to win the elf-queen.
The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves. The Prologue is arguably the most familiar section of The Canterbury Tales, depicting traffic between places, languages and cultures as well as introducing and describing the pilgrims who will narrate the tales.
"The Summoner's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
"The Canon's Yeoman's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
The Canterbury Tales is a 1972 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini based on the medieval narrative poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. The second film in Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life", preceded by The Decameron and followed by Arabian Nights, it won the Golden Bear at the 22nd Berlin International Film Festival.
The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer during the fourteenth century.
In ancient Rome, an apparitor was a civil servant whose salary was paid from the public treasury. The apparitores assisted the magistrates. There were four occupational grades (decuriae) among them. The highest-ranked were the scribae, the clerks or public notaries, followed by the lictores, lictors; viatores, messengers or summoners, that is, agents on official errands; and praecones, announcers or heralds.
"The Taill of Schir Chanticleir and the Foxe" is Fabill 3 of Robert Henryson's cycle of thirteen Morall Fabillis composed in Scotland in the later fifteenth century. It is the first of the fable in the poem to be based on Reynardian and beast epic sources rather than on any strictly Aesopian original, although the closest match from Aesop might be The Dog, the Cock and the Fox.
The Prologue and Tale of Beryn are spurious fifteenth century additions to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They are both written in Middle English.
The Squire is a fictional character in the framing narrative of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He is squire to the Knight and is the narrator of The Squire's Tale or Cambuscan. The Squire is one of the secular pilgrims, of the military group. The Knight and the Squire are the pilgrims with the highest social status. However his tale, interrupted as it is, is paired with that of the Franklin. The Squire is a candidate for the interrupter of The Host in the epilogue of the Man of Law's Tale.
