Long comment on Laura's "A Note about the Prioress"

Good catch, Laura. So here's my breakdown.

The end note to GP lines 127-236 says that the Prioress's table manners are closely modeled on The Old Woman (La Vieille) in Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose). This poem is kind of funky because it was written by two men. The first part was by Guillaume de Lorris ca. 1230 (UCL). As near as I can tell, his part of the poem is an allegory about a guy seeking a rose to pluck (virgin to de-virginize) and has some rather bawdy innuendo (FEEL FREE TO JUMP IN ANYONE WHO KNOWS MORE THAN ME). He gets his rose and is happy. Until....Jean de Meun adds the second part, which happens to be way longer than the first. (UCL) Jean de Meun  was an antifeminist and you probably would really not like him. Neither did the WOB. Anyway, his part of the poem in my interpretation has the La Vieille telling young women lots of ways to screw men over. Chaucer translated the Romance including the Jean de Meun part, which is very obvious in his treatment of the WOB.


Here is the passage where La Vieille describes table manners.

'She ought also to behave properly at table. . . . She must be very careful not to dip her fingers in the sauce up to the knuckles, nor to smear her lips with soup or garlic or fat meat, nor to take too many pieces or too large a piece and put them in her mouth. She must hold the morsel with the tips of her fingers and dip it into the sauce, whether it be thick, thin, or clear, then convey the mouthful with care, so that no drop of soup or sauce or pepper falls on to her chest. When drinking, she should exercise such care that not a drop is spilled upon her, for anyone who saw that happen might think her very rude and coarse. And she must be sure never to touch her goblet when there is anything in her mouth. Let her wipe her mouth so clean that no grease is allowed to remain upon it, at least not upon her upper lip, for when grease is left on the upper lip, globules appear in the wine, which is neither pretty nor nice (NAEL 8, 1.221-22, lines 127–36).  (Norton)

According to Murphy's note to line 126: This is a snigger at the provincial quality of the lady's French, acquired in a London suburb, not in Paris. Everything about the prioress is meant to suggest affected elegance of a kind not especially appropriate in a nun: her facial features, her manners, her jewelry, her French, her clothes, her name. Eglantine = "wild rose" or "sweet briar." Madame = "my lady." 

According to Murphy's note to lines

161-2: The gold brooch on her rosary had a capital "A" with a crown above it, and a Latin motto meaning "Love conquers all," a phrase appropriate to both sacred and secular love. It occurs in a French poem that Chaucer knew well, The Romance of the Rose (21327-32), where Courteoisie quotes it from Virgil's Eclogue X, 69, to justify the plucking of the Rose by the Lover, a decidedly secular, indeed sexual, act of "Amor".

Soooo......I think what all this means is that Chaucer was associating The Prioress with La Vieille, in the sense of someone following her advice, as opposed to the WOB who kind of embodies La Vieille. This leaves the Prioress kind of naive but headed a bad way, lustily speaking.


WORKS CITED

 MURPHY
"The Canterbury Tales." The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Michael Murphy. City University of New York, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/murphy/canterbury>.

NORTON
 "The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages: Topic 1: Texts and Contexts." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages: Topic 1: Texts and Contexts. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/middleages/topic_1/rose.htm>.

UCL
"Le Roman De La Rose (The Romance of the Rose). University of Chicago Library MS 1380." Le Roman De La Rose (The Romance of the Rose). University of Chicago Library, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://roseandchess.lib.uchicago.edu/rose.html>.