Romans 15:4 and the Canterbury Tales: A Modest Proposal Concerning Chaucer’s Entente

Abstract

Critical debates of the last century and the first decades of this century concerning Chaucer’s authorial intention in the Canterbury Tales have been defined by two poles: simply put, on one hand, those who read authorial moral seriousness into the Tales, and, on the other, those who read authorial subversive ends into them. By means of a sustained engagement with some representative voices from these poles and careful readings, this article steers away from extreme positions to propose a modicum of common ground. The presence of Romans 15:4 in the moralitas at the end of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale and Chaucer’s Retraction a priori injects a dose of (unsimplistic) moral earnest into Chaucer’s entente in the Tales.