meanings in the medieval world. Almost everything carries a story, even – from the same poem – different kinds of wood:
The builder’s oak, and then the sturdy ash;
The elm, for pillars and for coffins meant;
The piper’s box-tree; holly for whip’s lash;
Fir for masts; cypress, death to lament;
The ewe for bows; aspen for arrows sent;
Olive for peace; and too the drunken vine;
Victor’s palm; laurel for those who divine.
However, as Chaucer’s other poems make clear, this is a world in which numerous divine influences, including the gods of ancient Rome and Greece, are still felt and thought to be potent. At a social level there is a huge, complicated and expensive hierarchy of priests, nuns and their servants, always present. For the upper classes there is of course a chivalric honour code which matters more than life itself.
Yes, as every schoolchild knows – or used to know – Chaucer’s characters have bawdy appetites, are corrupt or cruel, and regularly fart. But as every student soon learns, this is a false familiarity. With its iron hierarchies of class and caste, its guilds, beggars, religious con-artists and its sense that allegory is ubiquitous, Chaucer’s England is closer to the more remote parts of Hindu India than to anywhere in today’s Britain. Far from being the rollicking essence of Englishness, his characters spent a great deal of their time overseas – as did Chaucer himself. His knight, for instance, has fought in Alexandria in Egypt, in Prussia, Lithuania, Russia, Spain and North Africa, as well as modern-day Turkey and Syria. For Chaucer’s religious characters, Rome is the real capital of the world. Or take that most famous and homely of the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury:
A good WIFE was there from next to BATH,
But pity was that she was somewhat deaf.
In cloth-making she was excellent,
Surpassing those of Ypres and of Ghent.
… Her kerchiefs were finely wove I found;
I dare to swear those weighed a good ten pounds,
That on a Sunday she wore on her head.
Her hose were of a fine scarlet red,
And tightly tied: her shoes full soft and new.
Bold was her face, and fair and red of hue.
Had been a worthy woman all her life;
Husbands at the church-door she had five,
Besides other company in her youth –
No need to speak of that just now, in truth.
And thrice had she been to Jerusalem;
She had crossed many a foreign stream.
At Boulogne she had been, and Rome,
St James of Compostella, and Cologne,
And she knew much of wandering by the way,
Gap toothed was she, truthfully to say.
We remember the five husbands, the jolly clothing, even the gap in her teeth – she starts to feel almost like a female Falstaff – but how often do we remind ourselves that the wife of Bath spent so much time gallivanting across Europe?
So why, some people will be wondering, is Chaucer still so vastly popular when so many medieval poets have faded from view? The great trick he pulls off in The Canterbury Tales is, as different characters tell different stories, discovering a multitude of voices. So the pious and learned Chaucer can mimic a foul-mouthed miller; and it’s through this ventriloquism that we hear (we hope) the voices of the ruder, cruder medieval British. We also get that wonderful, concrete description Chaucer is so famous for. ‘The Miller’s Tale’ starts with that oldest of stories – the foolish older man, in this case a carpenter, who has taken for his wife a much younger and sexier teenager called Alison. We know what’s going to happen next. A lecherous student called Nicholas becomes Alison’s lover, and persuades the carpenter that he has had a vision of the future. There is going to be a second flood, like Noah’s; to escape drowning, the carpenter agrees to be suspended in a tub, usefully well out of the way of the two lovers. But it turns out there is a third man, Absalon, who works for the parish priest and is also in love with Alison:
Up rose this jolly lover, Absalon,
And gaily dressed to perfection is,
But first chews cardamom and liquorice,
To smell sweet, before he combs his hair.
Then he goes to Alison’s window and begs for a kiss. She, the minx, has other ideas. What follows is filthy, but is also one of the most famous scenes in Chaucer:
Then Absalon first wiped his mouth full dry.
Dark was the night like to pitch or coal,
And at the window out she put her hole,
And Absalon, had better nor worse than this,
That with his mouth her naked arse he kissed
Before he was aware, had savoured it.
Back he started, something was amiss,
For well he knew a woman has no beard.
He felt something rough, and long-haired,
And said: ‘Fie, alas, what have I done?’
‘Tee-hee!’ quoth she, and clapped the window shut,
No waxing, it seems, in medieval London. But now the story takes a darker hue. Absalon vows to take his revenge. He heats up a poker red-hot and returns to the window. He begs Alison for another kiss, in return for which he will give her a present:
First he coughed then he knocked withal
On the window, as loud as he dared
Then Alison answered: ‘Who’s there,
That knocks so? I warrant it’s a thief!’
‘Why no’ quoth he, ‘Not so, by my faith;
I am your Absalon, my sweet darling.
Of gold,’ quoth he, ‘I’ve brought you a ring.
My mother gave it me, so God me save.
Full fine it is, and carefully engraved;
This will I give you, if you will me kiss.’
Now Nicholas had risen for a piss,
And thought he would improve the jape:
He
