Abstract
After what seems a never-ending regimen of trial and suffering, Chaucer reverses the trajectory of the tale and sends Custance back to Rome, where she reconciles with her erstwhile husband, the king, and her father, the Emperour of Rome. The analysis reveals the way Chaucer employs a series of gestural expressions to disclose Custance’s conflicting emotions toward her husband and her unwavering obedience to her father. It is argued that in these final scenes Chaucer depicts in the meeting of Custance with her father what may be considered the primal ontological dilemma of the political subject. He shows her willingly enacting her subjection to sovereign power, and this despite the traumatic and painful experience she has endured because of the sovereign’s earlier abandonment.
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Notes
- 1.
“Her Father’s Daughter: The Realignment of Father Daughter Kinship in Three Romance Tales,” The Chaucer Review 34 (2000): 416–427, 422. (Ashton 2000)
- 2.
“Womanliness,” 65–66. (Delany 1974)
- 3.
The word “sonde” metonymically connects to the sultan/Custance situation, where Chaucer also suggests that the sultan sends a “sonde” to his mother and everyone else about “his wyf.”
- 4.
James Blythe, Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 63 (Blythe 1992). My comments regarding this aspect of Giles treatise are indebted to Blythe’s excellent discussion.
- 5.
Ideal Government, 64–66 (Blythe 1992). The Governance of Kings and Princes: John Trevisa’s Middle English Translation of De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus, ed. David Fowler et al. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997) (Trevisa 1997) has it thus: “And that a man scholde not bylede his wif as a seruant we may preue by thre weyes: the first is itake by kynde ordre, the seconde by perfeccioun of hous, the thridde by that the housebonde and wif ben peres” (Book II, Part I, Chapter XV), 192. The third reason Giles gives is that husband and wife are peers. Later in the same chapter he says, “Wherfore for kynde ordeyneth the wif to conseyuyng and to beryng of children, it were unsemelich that sche were iordeyned to seruynge. Thanne it were not kynde ordre gif the housebond rewled the wife by the same manere rewlyng by the whiche a lord rewleth his seruantes,” 193. The natural order of things ordains that a wife give counsel, and therefore she should not be ruled as a lord rules his servants, that is despotically. Just a clarification on the term “political.” Giles uses it to mean both the specific mode of governance, that is, when the king has some constraints placed on his ability to make laws, and in a more general sense as defining a discipline or domain. I use the term “political” in its more general meaning.
- 6.
This reference to the Emperour’s majesty echoes an earlier allusion to the Roman Senatour’s high status. When the senator rides out to greet the king, he does so not only to pay a “reverence” to him, but also “to shewen his heighe magnificence” (2.1000). Chaucer is signifying that in the world of kings and princes, Rome and the Emperour, and the pope—under whose “ordinance” Alla has placed himself—reigns supreme.
- 7.
The primary meaning of “feste” according to the MED is “a religious celebration” or if a secular celebration, one that is held in groups. When he uses the word “feste” in this passage it is in reference to Alla who is preparing to attend the dinner, “Arrayed for this feste in every wise” (2.1098). He also uses the term “feste” in relation to the dinner Alla has with the Roman senator which leads to the meeting and reconciliation of Custance and Alla. But of the 11 times in the tale Chaucer uses “feste,” eight are in connection with the disastrous and murderous celebration of Custance’s wedding to the sultan. So not only does “feste” have a more public and communal sense, but one that is fraught with danger and pain.
- 8.
Chaucer only uses the word twice. The first is in this passage: “This Emperour hath graunted gentilly/To come to dyner” (2.1093–94); the second is when Custance, the king and emperor sit down to dinner (2.1118).
- 9.
For example, the narrator comments on the sultan’s inability to see, “That he for love sholde han his deeth, allas” (2.193), and the Emperour’s imprudence and lack of insight (2.309).
- 10.
The sovereign’s command was beyond question occupying the “zone of silence,” as Kantorowicz, “Mysteries of State,” 69 (Kantorowicz 1955), refers to in his discussion of the status of sovereign law.
- 11.
The shifts in Custance’s status and the consequent change in relation to her father follow a pattern that Lynda Boose points out. See “The Father’s House and the Daughter in it: The Structures of Western Culture’s Daughter-Father Relationship” in Daughters and Fathers, ed. Lynda Boose and Betty Flowers (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 19–74 (Boose 1989). The daughter can safely return to the father’s household once she has changed her status as married woman and mother.
- 12.
Homo Sacer, 83. (Agamben 1998)
- 13.
Homo Sacer, 48. (Agamben 1998)
- 14.
The three other passages are: “This constable was nothyng lord of this place/Of which I speke, ther he Custance fond” (2.575–76); “To kyng Alla was toold al this meschance,/And eek the tyme, and where, and in what wise/That in a ship was founden this Custance” (2.610–12); and “But in the same ship as he hire fond,/Hire, and hire yonge sone, and al hir geere,/He sholde putte, and croude hire fro the lond,/And charge hire that she never eft coome theere”(2.799–802). This last instance is in the counterfeit letter the Constable receives from the king. Chaucer uses the word two other times in reference to a thing or person associated with Custance. The first is in the description of the murder scene of Hermengyld, “And in the bed the blody knyf he fond/By Dame Custance. Allas, what myghte she seye” (2.607–08)?; the second is in the conversation between king and senator, who is Custance’s uncle: “‘A mooder he hath, but fader hath he noon/That I of woot’—and shortly, in a stounde,/He tolde Alla how that this child was founde” (2.1020–22).
- 15.
Although the names “Crist” and the possessive “Cristes” occur frequently in the tale (20 and 7 times, respectively) the full name “Jhesu Crist” only occurs four times. The longer appellation gives greater emphasis and significance.
- 16.
“Sende” and the past tense “sente” occur four and 15 times, and at least five of them are in reference to Custance reenforcing the idea of her passivity in relation to the events and persons in the tale.
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ashton, Gail. 2000. Her Father’s Daughter: The Realignment of Father Daughter Kinship in Three Romance Tales. The Chaucer Review 34: 416–427.
Blythe, James. 1992. Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Boose, Lynda. 1989. The Father’s House and the Daughter in it: The Structures of Western Culture’s Daughter-Father Relationship. In Daughters and Fathers, ed. Lynda Boose and Betty Flowers, 19–74. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Delany, Sheila. 1974. Womanliness in the Man of Law’s Tale. Chaucer Review 9: 63–71.
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1955. Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept in Its Late Medieval Origins. Harvard Theological Review 48: 65–91.
Trevisa, John. 1997. The Governance of Kings and Princes: John Trevisa’s Middle English Translation of the De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus, ed. David C. Fowler et al. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.
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McClellan, W. (2016). Third Movement: Return and Restitution. In: Reading Chaucer After Auschwitz. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54879-5_5
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