Meaning Through Language, Story, and Discourse: A Comparative Analysis Between the Structure of "The Wife of Bath’s Tale" and "The Tale of Florent"

        The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer and The Tale of Florent by John Gower, both tell the story of a knight’s quest to answer a question: What is it that women desire most? Both stories come to the same conclusions and share multiple aspects of plot, but despite these similarities the tales exhibit different reactions in the reader. Chaucer and Gower share an almost identical discourse in their tales, yet there are elements within the writing, itself, that turn these quests into two very different stories. Through-out the discourse of this essay, I will attempt to show that (1) the narrative flow of these stories can be broken down into a genre-form and explained formulaically while at the same time (2) delineating from the formula to reveal opposing binary themes of public vs. personal ideals (3) which is done through careful word choice and structure.

            Before continuing, I must first bring definition to some of the ideas that will be presented here. In any form of literature there is a distinct difference between the discourse and the story. The discourse of a story refers to what is actually written. In the terms of this essay, I shall henceforth refer to the discourse of the works in question in terms of their plot points. The story, however, refers to the entirety of the work, including that which is not actually written. The story, therefore, brings in the reader’s inferences (based on textual knowledge) on what is not on the page, such as background details, the political influences of the characters, and even the intertextuality between the narrators and the place of the narrator’s character within their own work (Alisoun, in Chaucer; Genius, in Gower). It is also important for the reader to understand my meanings of “public” and “personal”. Public refers to the way the tale displays a self-conscious need to recognize the importance of public affairs and the way that that need would impact the story. The personal, on the other hand, is an emotive approach that emphasizes the way the story creates lessons and ideas through characterization; the personal approach will also characterize the narrator of the tale in a way that the public approach cannot. The personal and public approaches provide different readings to each tale, and are therefore important to consider herein. With terms thus explained, we shall move on to my first point.

        (1) Narrative flow can be broken down into genre-form and explained formulaically. A genre, in terms of literature, is a simplistic category into which texts can be broken down and grouped together based on form, style, and subject matter. By breaking down The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Tale of Florent, I have been able to identify the main identifying features of each tale, and listed them into a sort of flow chart:

Knight commits a “crime” à Knight is held accountable à An authoritative female intervenes à Quest is assignedà Knight finds answer with help of old woman à Knight is pardoned because of his correct answer à Knight lays with his new wife, who gives him a choice à Knight gives sovereignty to wife àWife transforms àThey live happily ever after

This chart can be broken down into even simpler terms now:

ProblemàQuestàComplicationàComplication SolvedàQuest ContinuesàQuest Completed with Lesson Learned from ComplicationàHappily Ever After

Each tale’s discourse relies on the same narrative plot points. This discourse closely resembles the form of a fairy tale: the knight must go through a redemptive process by fulfilling a request, and when faced with a hardship, he makes a clever decision based on what he has learned on his quest in order to fix the problem, and live happily ever after. Now, as far as the importance of these similarities goes, that’s about as important as it is going to get: The similarities are important in so far as they reveal the way each writer is writing about the same material. I could expand on the way that these tales are similar, but the important bit is that they are structurally similar enough to exist inside the same genre. The plots are similar, the characters are similar, and the problems are similar, so it should be safe to assume that the messages are similar, right?

            Unfortunately, by simplifying these tales into a genre-form, we exclude the details of the delineations, and if we fail to recognize these differences, then we will also fail to realize that the messages are not, in fact, similar at all. To elaborate, think of a fairy tale that would fit this genre. Let’s use “Little Red Riding Hood” as an example: Red, (the ‘knight’) is on her way to her grandmother’s house (the ‘quest’), when she encounters a wolf (the ‘complication’). She manages to escape the wolf, and continue to her grandmother’s house, but when she gets there, she discovers that the wolf is pretending to be her grandmother (and thus the quest is solved with knowledge gained from the complication). The woodsman chops up the wolf and they live happily ever after. “Little Red” has many variant forms, but the framework is still there. By breaking the tale down into parts, however, we lose the main point: the moral theme.

This brings us to my second point: (2) delineating from the formula reveals the opposing binary themes. In “Little Red”, we learn not to talk to strangers, or we can learn to trust our instincts, or we could learn any number of things, depending on how the tale is told. In Gower’s tale, Genius reports on the “facts” of the story which reveal the effects of social standing and morality in the tale. In Chaucer’s tale, the narrator Alisoun uses narrative digressions from the plot line in her telling to reveal aspects of the plot that make it a tale that is more about the personality of the fairy tale. Because each tale is told using delineations and differences from the basic plot structure, different themes can be created.

            Let’s look, first, at Gower’s tale: The Tale of Florent has a complex structure that relies solely on ‘reporting’ the details of the story until the very end, where Genius speaks directly to Amant in order to deliver the moral of the story. In this report of Florent’s quest, we can pick up on the specifics of the story. Refer back to the narrative flow-chart. Florent (the knight in this tale) is guilty of accidentally killing Branchus, the son of the land’s ruler. Though Branchus’s parents want revenge, they cannot simply kill him, due to his social standing (as the emperor’s nephew). The “grantdame” therefore tasks him with finding out “What alle wommen most desire.” (pg.2). This bit of social commentary differs severely from Chaucer’s version in which the (unnamed) knight is guilty of raping a girl. Alisoun (The “wife of Bath”) tells a personal story, rather than simply reporting the details. In addition, by leaving the knight nameless, his personality can be applied to connect with anyone (whereas, assigning the name “Florent”, the connection is lost). When Alisoun’s knight is being given his task, Alisoun takes great stride to point out many of the answers that the knight receives on his quest. This view provides insight on the types of things that a woman (Like Alisoun herself) might desire. By placing a focus on these feminine details, rather than on the sociopolitical commentary, Chaucer’s tale becomes much more personal than Gower’s.

            Chaucer also uses an interesting narrative device to add more personality to his tale. The Wife digresses in her tale, which is to say that she breaks away from the main tale to report on details of another tale. The intertextuality that Chaucer uses, specifically in the wife’s digression about Ovid’s tale about Midas (ll. 952-82), provides a feel to the text, giving it properties of a story actually being told. In addition, if we look closely at Alisoun’s report on the tale of Midas, she seems to purposefully misreport details, taking the role of Midas’s confidant away from the barber (In Ovid’s tale), and giving it, instead, to Midas’s wife. It is the wife, in Alisoun’s report, that cannot keep the secret about Midas’s “two asses eres.” The wife’s focus on women was also metatextually represented earlier in lines 925-34, when she described the way in which some women answered the knight’s question:

Somme seyde women loven best richesse,

Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse,

Somme riche array, somme seyde lust abedde,

And oftetyme to be wydwe and wedde.

Somme seyde that oure hertes been moost esed

Whan that we been yflatered and yplesed.

He gooth ful ny the soothe, I wol nat lye.

A man shal wynne us best with flaterye,

And with attendance and with bisynesse

Been we ylymed, both moore and lesse.

Alisoun begins speaking in third person terms (“somme seyde”), but then, whether intentional or not, she slips into the first person (“oure hertes”, “that we been”). Genius, in Gower’s tale, never breaks into the first person in this manner, which keeps his personality out of the telling.

            Building off of that last point, I will now steer us toward my final point: that the binary themes of public vs. personal are achieved through (3) careful word choice and structure. We’ve already touched on this point when looking at the way the wife of Bath breaks into first-person terms. Let’s look even closer now, and examine the actual writing style of these two different tales. Both Gower and Chaucer’s tales use structured meter in a way that emphasizes the binary oppositions. Gower’s tale is written in Rime Royal (iambic tetrameter with an ABABBCC rhyme scheme). The effect of this form gives the tale a formalistic sound. Just as the “grantdame” is conscious of the political ‘audience’ she has, and the way Genius is sensitive to the duty of reporting on the story, without personal influence, Gower is intent on using the rigid form to progress the tale. Chaucer’s tale, however, uses couplets written in iambic pentameter to push his narrative along. This style gives the tale more “bounce”, if you will, and keeps the tale lively and personal. The iambic pentameter, which prevails through the tale, is used to allow emotive personality to exist, in place of self-conscious textual awareness.

        Looking even closer than the specific line structure, we can even pick up on the themes by examining the use of verb voices. Let’s compare the “grantdame” (Gower) to her Chaucerian equivalent, the Queen. When speaking to Florent, the grantdame uses passive constructions: “thou stoned in juggement”, “There schal non other thing availe,/ That thou ne schalt thi deth receive.” (pg.2) These constructions reflect Genius’s passive role in reporting the story. The Queen, however, uses active constructions: “I grante thee lyf, if thou canst tellen me…yet wol I yeve thee leve for to gon” (ll.904-908). These active constructions imply impulsiveness and a sort of on-the-fly storytelling, which characterizes Alisoun’s personal influence on the story. The techniques of voice control exhibited by the character speakers reflect, doubly, upon the writers of the stories, themselves.

Gower à Genius à Grantdame 

Chaucer à Alisoun à The Queen

Gower writes in a passive, reporting way, and so Genius narrates that the Grantdame speaks in a passive, reporting way. Likewise, Chaucer writes in an active way, and therefore tells the story of Alisoun who is actively telling a story about a Queen who speaks in an active manner. The differences between the passive and active, and therefore public versus personal are then linguistically called back directly to the author himself.

            To help demonstrate what this all means, let’s look at dialogue from each tale:

Gowerà Geniusà Grantdame (page 2)

Chaucerà Alisounà The Queen (lines 902-12)

“Florent, how so thou be to wyte Of Branchus deth, men schal respite As now to take vengement, Be so thou stoned in juggement Upon certein condicioun, That thou unto a questioun Which I schal axe schalt ek swere, That if thou of the soothe faile, There schal non other thing availe, That thou ne schalt thi deth receive. And for men schal thee noght deceive, That thou therof myht ben avised, Thou schalt have day and tyme assised And leve saufly for to wende, Be so that at thi daies ende Thou come agein with thin avys.” … And seith: “Florent, on love it hongeth Al that to myn axinge longeth: What alle wommen most desire This wole I axe, and in th’empire Wher as thou hast most knowlechinge Tak conseil upon this axinge.”

“Thou standest yet,” quod she, “in swich array That of thy lyf yet hastow no suretee. I grante thee lyf, if thou kanst tellen me What thing is it that wommen moost desiren. Be war, and keep thy nekke-boon from iren! And if thou kanst nat tellen it anon, Yet wol  yeve thee leve for to gon A twelf-month and a day, to seche and leere And answere suffisant in this mateere; And suretee wol I han, er that thou pace, Thy body for to yelden in this place.”

The two speakers are essentially saying the same thing. I have highlighted the sections that correspond between the passages in different colors. Now we can apply my numbered argument to the two dialogues: 

The Tale of Florent

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

1) Grantdame says:  Florent has committed crimeàI will ask a questionàYou’ll die if you don’t answeràYou have time to look for an answeràWhat do all women desire? 2) The way that the grantdame arranges her words makes it more formal. She states the crime, then punishment. She reveals the conditions that will allow him to repent, and the amount of time he has to do so. And then she concludes with his task. The grantdame’s dialogue reveals nothing of her character, but, instead, gives a ‘show’ for the court. 3) Gower writes in passive constructions, which comments on the way Genius narrates the way the grantdame speaks. Things happen to Florent in a very consequential manner, and those consequences are laid out in the grantdame’s speech.

1) The Queen says: Knight has committed crimeàI will ask a questionàWhat do all women desire? à You’ll die if you don’t answeràYou have time to look for an answer 2) The way that the Queen arranges her words makes it more personal. She states the crime, but then immediately tells what the knight can do to repent. Then she warns him to be careful, and closes by letting him know that he has some time to answer the question. The dialogue’s arrangement gives more character and emotion, and acts in a more informal tone. 3) Chaucer writes in active constructions, which comments on the way Alisoun narrates the way the Queen speaks. The knight has done things, and he must do things in order to save himself. He’s spoken about actively, and it is his activity that will save his life.

By comparing the two texts in this manner, one can graphically see the way that language, story, and discourse can affect the theme of a story. Though the tales are similar in base-structure, the differences in the structures create two entirely different stories. In addition, the minute word choices which differ create solid founding for the implication that they are, indeed, told in different manners. The Tale of Florent and The Wife of Bath’s Tale appear, in basic terms, but the only way they could truly be the same, is to remove the language from them. In truth and closing, the only way they could be the same, is if they were, in every aspect of language exactly the same.

Bibliography

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 105-22.

Gower, John. “The Tale of Florent.” Confessio Amantis vol.1. Ed. Russell A. Peck. Trans. Andrew Galloway. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000.