Chaucer’s French Accent: Gardens and Sex-Talk in the Shipman’s Tale

Abstract

It has sometimes been assumed that, because of its Parisian-area setting and its macaronic use of bits of the French language—“ Quy la?” (Who’s there?)—Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale must have had a French fabliau source, now lost to us.¹ John Webster Spargo in his introductory note to the tale in the original Sources and Analogues gave that theory the weight of authority with this opening comment: “In the absence of an authentic source, the likeliest thing that can be said is that, if we had one, it would probably be an Old French fabliau very similar to the Shipman’s Tale, of which the atmosphere is all French.”² That theory, if not discredited or abandoned altogether, has generally been set aside as unhelpful to scholars who seek to understand the more English emphases of the tale of the merchant of Saint-Denis, his clever wife, and his good friend the monk daun John. Writing in a time when the accepted view was that Chaucer had never read Boccaccio’s Decameron, Spargo confidently declared that Decameron VIII, 1, while the closest analogue, was not the source of the Shipman’s Tale. Many scholars, myself included, are now taking seriously the idea that Chaucer’s primary source was indeed the first tale of the eighth day of the Decameron. ³

Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale was probably not based on a lost Old French fabliau, but the genre’s penchant for animal euphemism more broadly influences the tale, particularly its garden scene.