In Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender, Alcuin Blamires, author of The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (1997) and editor of Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (1992), explores ways in which Chaucer's works engage with ethical and moral questions at issue in the late fourteenth century. Blamires's central concern is the way Chaucer reflects, complicates, and/or challenges the Aristotelian ethical paradigm and the Christian moral structure of the late medieval world. Blamires reads Chaucer's work with and against ethical and moral writings-prominently Aristotle's Ethics, Cicero's De officiis, Seneca's letters and moral and political essays as well as two vernacular didactic treatises from the late middle ages, The Book of Vices and Virtues: A Fourteenth Century English Translation of the 'Somme Le Roi' of Lorens D'Orleans and Jacob's Well. Reading The Canterbury Tales primarily, though with frequent references to Chaucer's other works to demonstrate Chaucer's engagement with issues raised in the tales, the author explores "ways in which the currents of antique ethics and Christian doctrine interweave and produce gendered ethics in the narrative" (87-88). As he considers the issues he sees in Chaucer's writings, he argues not that the ethical dimension is central or that a tale is about the ethical issue but rather that a study of treatises may lead to more nuanced readings of Chaucer's work.
At the heart of this approach is overt attention to the ways Chaucer engages auditors/readers in the ideas of the tales, to nudge his audience into considering the ethical and moral dimensions of actions and conflicts. According to Blamires, Chaucer makes such a rhetorical move not by presenting answers but by placing ideas in dialectical interaction so that they seem at times in conflict or as complications of easy moral positions. As Blamires puts it, Chaucer "uses stories rather than direct argument to raise the ethical moral questions, and . . . he thereby ties the questions to dramas of human behaviour and to behavioural patterns in women and men" (16). Rather than being didactic, Blamires argues, Chaucer juxtaposes themes and references from ethical and moral teaching, to encourage the reader to puzzle though issues concerning human behavior. Illustrating the way this approach is generative of new readings, each of the book's eight chapters considers a major theme and passages from tales that explore the ethical and philosophical questions related to that theme.
Chapter 1, for example, "Fellowship and Detraction in the Architecture of the Canterbury Tales: from 'The General Prologue' and 'The Knight's Tale' to 'The Parson's Prologue,'" suggests a thematic arcwith its focus on fellowship and its instability-from the first fragment through to the final tales. Beginning with an extended analysis of "The Knight's Tale," Blamires demonstrates "how Chaucer dramatizes a traditional reverence for amicitia (friendship) and societas or communitas (felaweshipe) as a primary glory and duty of humanity" (20). The chapter considers both the role of friendship and fellowship in "The Knight's Tale" as well as the danger of defamation, one of the "key impulses that damage fellowship" (37).
Beginning by establishing the importance of friendship and fellowship in the works of Aristotle and Cicero, the author demonstrates the ways the classical notion of friendship became the Christian concept of caritas. Turning to The Canterbury Tales, he then comments on the contrast between the pilgrim fellowship ostensibly built upon friendship, established in the final section of the General Prologue, and the ways Chaucer undermines of the possibility of the fellowship's success in the tension between friendliness and competitiveness in the portraits of the pilgrims. "The Knight's Tale" then, read with and against the ethical and moral treatises, extends the discussion of the limits and possibilities of friendship and dangers to it, most particularly the sin of ire and the act of defamation. Set against one brief expression of true friendship in the selfless bond between Theseus and Perotheus, the broken bonds of fellowship show friendship gone awry in the earthly and planetary realms.
Further complicating the ethical implications of the tale, according to Blamires, Chaucer uses the figure of Theseus to exemplify the appropriate way to counter the danger of wrath. In an interesting passage that modifies the typical reading of Theseus's act of justice when he comes upon Palamon and Arcite fighting in the grove, Blamires goes beyond recognizing the role the women play in tempering Theseus's anger. He suggests that the "female intercession is quickly replaced by an internalized judicial debate" that illustrates a Senecan "ideal of rulership that restores fellowship" whereby the Duke transcends his initial angry response to consider the intention of the young knights and thus act in a just and measured way (28).
The chapter's section on defamation demonstrates Chaucer's concern with the danger of discord and ire. In addition to its prominence in "The Knight's Tale," Blamires argues, defamation is a central focus of the first fragment, "The Pardoner's Tale" and finally the final movement from "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale" and "The Manciple's Prologue" and "Tale" and attempted resolution in "The Parson's Tale." Throughout the tales, in fact, Blamires observes, Chaucer presents a pessimistic view of the possibility of amicitia, and he argues further that the "general hypothesis of the Tales is that it takes considerable skills of ethical governance . . . to convert rancour into peace and to bring together people filled with wrath" (43).
In considering the gender implications of the theme of fellowship and defamation, Blamires reminds us that "the discourse of amicitia seems to encompass men more than women" (30), but, he argues, "Chaucer resists [a] straightforward invitation to represent woman as the actively disruptive gender" (34). Not only do his revisions of the role of Emelye change her from the flirtatious coquette of Boccaccio, but later he assigns women pacifying roles, for example, in the figure of Dame Prudence in "The Tale of Melibee." Yet, Blamires sees Chaucer's view of women as somewhat more complicated. In addition to seeing "Chaucer project[ing] a male-male amity that is everywhere liable to be twisted by deception and collusion" (31), Blamires also finds Chaucer in places taking women to task for "defying the supposed social normativity of 'feminine compassion," most obviously in the portrayal of the Sultan's mother in "The Man of Law's Tale. He concludes, "the broader evidence suggests that Chaucer's writings largely affirm 'sociable' feminine impulses and inscribe men as authors of angry violence" but include little discussion of female friendship (35, 36).
The seven remaining chapters explore various ethical issues and the gender dimensions of those issues: in Chapter Two "Credulity and Vision: 'The Miller's Tale', 'The Merchant's Tale', 'The Wife of Bath's Tale"; in Chapter Three "Sex and Lust: 'The Merchant's Tale', 'The Reeve's Tale', and other Tales"; in Chapter Four "The Ethics of Sufficiency: 'The Man of Law's Introduction' and 'Tale'; 'The Shipman's Tale'"; in Chapter Five "Liberality: 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue' and 'Tale' and 'The Franklin's Tale'"; in Chapter Six "Problems of Patience and Equanimity: 'The Franklin's Tale', 'The Clerk's Tale', 'The Nun's Priest's Tale'"; in Chapter Seven "Men, Women, and Moral Jurisdiction: 'The Friar's Tale', 'The Physician's Tale', and the Pardoner"; and in Chapter Eight "Proprieties of Work and Speech: 'The Second Nun's Prologue' and 'Tale', 'The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue' and 'Tale', 'The Manciple's Prologue' and 'Tale', and 'the Parson's Prologue.'"
In each of these chapters, Blamires's analysis leads to rich, new, and often provocative readings of the tales or passages within the tales. In Chapter Two, for example, Blamires suggests when read together in light of ethical and moral views of credulity and vision, "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and "The Merchant's Tale" show the power of women to educate men out of moral blindness. In Chapter Three, he argues that "queer readings" of "The Pardoner's Prologue" and "Tale" are based on slim conjecture while the "quasi-sodomitic act" at the end of 'The Miller's Tale" is "a more cogent allusion to sodomy" but because the tale ends so quickly after this scene, it is difficult to determine any set moral implications (103-105). In Chapter Five, he explores the thorny question of how we might connect the moral principles of the "The Wife of Bath's Prologue" and "Tale." In a provocative and remarkably nuanced reading of the relationship between Alison's sexual largesse and the old lady's "liberality of counsel," he opens up a generous reading of the Wife of Bath while acknowledging the "contradictory current in Alisoun's self-presentation" (145) and admitting that "liberality, where apparent in women, remains an equivocal virtue" (147).
In one of the most illuminating sections of the book, in Chapter Six, Blamires explores the virtue of patience as Chaucer figures it in "The Franklin's Tale" and "The Clerk's Tale." Noting that most readings of Arveragus's behaviour focus on "maistrie, on generosity, liberty, and gentillesse as the behavioural determinants of the tale," (155) Blamires argues that equally important is patience, and patience, in ethical and moral writings, required "cheerful tolerance of mishaps and harm" (159). Shifting our attention to the writings on patience then allows the reader to account for the puzzling lines in which Arveragus "with glad chiere, in friendly wyse/Answerde and seyde as I shal yow devyse:/'Is ther oght elles, Dorigen, but this?" (V. 1467-9). "In medieval moral discourse," Blamires explains, "this measured 'equanimity' tends to enlarge, as it were, into something more positivein fact into gladness." In fact, he continues, "later moralists made a point of identifying gladness as a mark of true patience" (159). "The Clerk's Tale," likewise, foregrounds the importance of gladness in patience but shows the extent to which Chaucer explores the tensions in moral and ethical dilemmas. Griselda's "glad cheer" represents her ethical strength while her humility expresses her Christian virtue. As such, Blamires argues, "Chaucer puts the narrative under strain." (175).
Throughout, Blamires acknowledges the dangers associated with "moral readings" of Chaucer's work, but these dangers are those that narrow interpretation. Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender richly demonstrates how generative it can be to read Chaucer's writings in dialogue with the ideas expressed in the moral and ethical treatises that inform the complicated world view of late fourteenth century.