Incident — History — Exemplum — Novella: The Transformation of History in Chaucer's Physician's Tale

Abstract

Fragment VI or group C of the Canterbury Tales, the so-called floating fragment, begins without head link or introduction with an immediate reference to the source of the Physician's Tale: Livy's monumental compilation, Ab Urhe Condita. The famous Verginia episode to be treated once again by Chaucer, material which had already inspired such authors as Jean de Meung, Boccaccio, and GoWer, is found in early form in the third book of Livy's Roman history: Its mediaeval analogues, as well as Livy's original treatment and Bersuire's French translation of it, were at least partially reproduced in Bryan and Dempster's Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, providing the textual basis for the study of this relatively neglected tale from the mid-sixties on. In order to account for Chaucer's differently accentuated presentation of the historical episode, scholarship has tried to identify and analyse deviations from and alterations to his probable sources, Livy's history and Jean de Meung's Romance of the Rose. The function of Chaucer's additions to the inherited story has been investigated, the differing characterization of the main participants, the narrative development of the plot, and the relationship between the narrator (that is, the Physician) and his story. Also, a number of interpretative readings of the tale have been proposed with some of the varying interpretations finding encouragement in the gap that exists between the meaning suggested in the moralisatio appended to this tale by its teller and that seen in the moralisatio put forth by Harry Baily, the host and leader of the literary 189 190 pilgrimage to Canterbury Moreover, both moralisations seem to fall short of plumbing the full depth of the story -- a fact recognized by recent scholarship.