Abstract
Using Agamben’s theory of sovereign abandonment, this chapter challenges the recent critical discourse on the Man of Law’s Tale and argues that Chaucer probes the sovereign’s desertion of the subject. Agamben contends that while the sovereign demands obedience from the subject, he does not reciprocate by protecting her but instead forsakes her. This exclusion from the law of the sovereign does not free the subject from the control of law but paradoxically makes her liable to be harmed or killed by others, exposing her to suffering and destitution. Agamben’s political theory provides a framework for the analysis of how Chaucer’s tale graphically depicts the destructive effects on the subject resulting from the sovereign’s abandonment.
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Notes
- 1.
Perhaps the most extreme position is that of Robert M. Jordan, Chaucer and the Shape of Creation: The Aesthetic Possibilities of Inorganic Structure (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) (Jordan 1967), who sees it as an eclectic collection of discourses which fail to cohere into a unified narrative. There has also been much disagreement about the genre of the tale. It has been variously read as a romance, a saint’s tale or as some combination of the two: a hagiographic romance. See Roger Ellis, Patterns of Religious Narrative in the Canterbury Tales (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1986), 119–168 (Ellis 1986). The tone of the tale has also been a matter for discussion and disagreement. Some see the narrator’s bombastic excess reflecting his limitations and impropriety. Others, such as Hope Phyllis Weissman, “Late Gothic Pathos in the Man of Law’s Tale,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (1979):133–153 (Weissman 1979), argue that the apostrophes and other flourishes project a parodic intention, whose aim is the critique of late medieval affective piety.
- 2.
Sheila Delany, “Womanliness in the Man of Law’s Tale.” Chaucer Review 9 (1974), 63–71, 64. (Delany 1974)
- 3.
Using Lacan and Levi-Strasss, Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Dinshaw 1989), argues that the tale presents a secular allegory of the subordinate position of women, whose exchange between men establishes the fundamental law of patriarchal culture and society.
- 4.
Patricia Eberle, “The Question of Authority and the Man of Law’s Tale,” in The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle, ed. Robert A. Taylor et al. (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 1993), 111–149. (Eberle 1993)
- 5.
For example, Kathy Lavezzo, “Beyond Rome: Mapping Gender and Justice in the Man of Law’s Tale,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 24 (2002):149–180 (Lavezzo 2002), sees the tale and its narrator as promoting the case of English exceptionalism with regard to legal authority in the larger scheme of redemption; Susan Schibanoff, “Worlds Apart: Orientalism, Antifeminism, and Heresy in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale,” Exemplaria 8 (1996): 62–78 (Schibanoff 1996), argues it is a political allegory which deconstructs the orientalist predisposition of late medieval Christian culture that denigrates pagan and especially Islamic cultures and societies.
- 6.
- 7.
“The Influence of Saint’s Legend Genre in the Man of Law’s Tale,” Chaucer Review 5 (1971): 179–194. (Paull 1971)
- 8.
“Crime and Justice in the Middle Ages: Cases from the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer,” in Rough Justice: Essays on Crime in Literature, ed. M.L. Friedland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 28. (Eberle 1991)
- 9.
Narrative, Authority, and Power, 34. (Scanlon 1994)
- 10.
Giorgio Agamben, The Signature of All Things: On Method, trans. Luca D’Isanto with Kevin Attell (New York: Zone Books, 2009), 18. (Agamben 2009)
- 11.
Ibid., 19. (Agamben 2009)
- 12.
Ibid., 18. (Agamben 2009)
- 13.
Arthur Norman, “Man of Law’s Tale,” in Studies in Language, Literature and Culture in the Middle Ages and Later, ed. E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), 312–323 (Norman 1969), argues that the “the Man of Law’s Tale presents a group of episodes (each one largely complete and self-contained) that traces the fortunes of its superlative heroine from Rome to Syria, from Syria to Northumberland, and ultimately back again to Rome,” 316.
- 14.
Homo Sacer, 28–29. (Agamben 1998)
- 15.
See Peter Nicholson, “The Man of Law’s Tale: What Chaucer Really Owed to Gower,” Chaucer Review 26 (1991): 153–174. (Nicholson 1991)
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2009. The Signature of All Things: On Method. Trans. Luca D’Isanto with Kevin Attell. New York: Zone Books.
Delany, Sheila. 1974. Womanliness in the Man of Law’s Tale. Chaucer Review 9: 63–71.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. 1989. Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Eberle, Patrica. 1991. Crime and Justice in the Middle Ages: Cases from the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. In Rough Justice: Essays on Crime in Literature, ed. M.L. Friedland, 19–51. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Eberle, Patrica. 1993. The Question of Authority and the Man of Law’s Tale. In The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle, ed. Robert A. Taylor et al. 111–149. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press.
Ellis, Roger. 1986. Patterns of Religious Narrative in the Canterbury Tales. Totowa: Barnes and Noble Books.
Jordan, Robert M. 1967. Chaucer and the Shape of Creation: The Aesthetic Possibilities of Inorganic Structure. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lavezzo, Kathy. 2002. Beyond Rome: Mapping Gender and Justice in the Man of Law’s Tale. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 24: 149–180.
Nicholson, Peter. 1991. The Man of Law’s Tale: What Chaucer Really Owed to Gower. Chaucer Review 26: 153–174.
Norman, Arthur. 1969. Man of Law’s Tale. In Studies in Language, Literature and Culture in the Middle Ages and Later, ed. E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill, 312–323. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Paull, Michael. 1971. The Influence of Saint’s Legend Genre in the Man of Law’s Tale. Chaucer Review 5: 179–194.
Scanlon, Larry. 1994. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schibanoff, Susan. 1996. Worlds Apart: Orientalism, Antifeminism, and Heresy in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale. Exemplaria 8: 62–78.
Wallace, David. 1997. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Weissman, Hope Phyllis. 1979. Late Gothic Pathos in the Man of Law’s Tale. The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9: 133–153.
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McClellan, W. (2016). The Man of Law’s Tale: Sovereign Abandonment of the Subject. In: Reading Chaucer After Auschwitz. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54879-5_2
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