Chaucer and Ovid:: Intertextuality in the Manciple's Tale
The influence of every literary genre known to the English Middle Ages can be
found in The Canterbury Tales. While many of the narrative elements that
Chaucer adapted from medieval sources are of French, Italian or English
invention, others can be traced to earlier classical origins. In additition to
medieval adaptations, he also had extensive knowledge of the original classical
sources themselves, to which he alludes throughout the tales and in the
narrative frame. ‘In Chaucer’s poetry there are more direct references to Ovid
by name, and to his works, than to any other single author’ (Shannon 318). F.
N. Robinson, in his introduction to The Book of the Duchess calls Ovid ‘the
classical poet to whom throughout his life he was most deeply indebted’ (Chaucer
315). Although there are a great many allusions to the Metamorphoses throughout
The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer chose to adapt only one episode of the first
century Latin work, in entirety, to his poem. ‘The source of [The Manciple’s]
Tale [of the Crowe] is Ovid’s account of Apollo and Coronis’ (Chaucer 870).
However, Chaucer has altered the fable of how the raven and crow became black
(as he found it in Ovid’s work, as well as in medieval adaptations ) to fit the
thematic context of The Canterbury Tales.
Chaucer marks the passage from manuscript to printing press , the way that
Homer marks the passage from oral to written poetry. Just as all Englishmen in
the time of Chaucer, who read, must read classical literature, all Englishmen in
the fifteenth century, who read, must read Chaucer, including all writers and
playwrights. Consequently, all English literature subsequent to Chaucer has
Chaucer as a common influence; it must therefore have his sources in common,
both directly and as he interprets them. Chaucer’s intertextual space is
therefore included in our intertextual space, and his sources included in our
sources. What distinguishes Chaucer’s intertextuality from modern
intertextuality is that we have a fairly thorough knowledge of the literary
influences of the former, while the explosion of print and other media since
Chaucer’s day make such a survey for a modern writer impossible. We know which
elements of the Tales are adapted from which sources, so we know which are of
Chaucer’s invention. By examining Chaucer’s seminal contributions, we may make
inferences as to his particular thematic purposes.
The Manciple’s Tale is consonant with the tales of the earlier ‘marriage
group’ in that it addresses a problem of domestic relations in a didactic
manner, specifically Apollo’s slaying of Coronis. The didactic import of The
Manciple’s Tale is addressed directly to the company by the Manciple at the end
of the tale. The lengthy ultimate soliloquy (MT 311-362) is a poetic reworking
of Ovid’s moral, as pronounced by the crow to the raven, of the danger of an
imprudent tongue: ‘No good will come of your journey. Pay heed to my warning.
Look at what I was, and what I now am. If you inquire into the cause of this
change you will find it was my faithfulness that ruined me’ (Ovid 65). The
Manciple’s parallel proclamation that: ‘Daun Salomon, as wise clerkes seyn/Techeth
a man to kepen his tonge weel’ (MT 314-315) is preceded by an episode
describing Apollo’s regret of his rash slaying of Coronis, followed by this
injunction from the Manciple: ‘Smyt nat to soone, er that ye witen why/And beeth
avysed wel and sobrely/Er ye doon any execucion/Upon youre ire for suspecion’
(MT 285-288). Thus, both tales contain a double moral. However, Ovid’s
emphasis is on the metamorphoses, so his primary theme is the crime of
indiscretion, of which he presents both raven and crow as examples. Chaucer’s
emphasis is on sexual relationships, so his primary theme is mistrust and hasty
judgement, as the cause of the death of the beloved (Shannon 325).
In Books i and ii of the Metamorphoses, Apollo appears as a god who is a
renowned musician, and who once slew the giant Python with an arrow (Ovid 40).
Although a god in Ovid’s tale, his relationship with Coronis resembles a simple
earthly marriage. In Chaucer’s adaptation, the Manciple does not even refer to
Phoebus as a god. ‘In spite of being derived from classical mythology,
Chaucer’s Phoebus is after all a medieaeval knight’ (Shannon 324). This
domestic atmosphere may be the element that persuaded Chaucer to include the
tale almost intact. The couple fits nicely into Chaucer’s gallery of
dysfunctional families. Chaucer amplifies the domestic issues while devoting
little attention to the crow, who is, after all, the title character of the
tale, and he leaves the raven out of it altogether, combining the two
metamorphoses into one (Shannon 323).
While altering its emphasis and omitting elements irrelevant to his theme,
Chaucer has introduced material gleaned from other sources into Ovid’s tale,
some of it ‘familiar or proverbial, and in several cases of biblical origin’
(Chaucer 872). Early in the tale, the Manciple offers another piece of domestic
advice which is not found in Ovid, but rather in Jerome (Chaucer 871): ‘A good
wyf, that is clene of werk and thoght,/Sholde nat been kept in noon awat,
certayn;/and trewely, the labour is in vayn/To kepe a shrewe, for it wol nat bee
’ (MT 148-151).
He also takes the occassion of Coronis’ affair to comment on the medieval
attitude toward adultery across class lines (MT 205-234). Although Chaucer’s
explicit moral injunction against rash action toward the end of the tale is
extrapolated from Ovid’s description of Apollo’s grief and regret: ‘Too late,
the lover repented of the cruel punishment he had exacted and hated himself for
listening to the tale, for allowing his anger to blaze up in such a way’ (Ovid
66), only the raven’s observation that Coronis’ lover is a Thessalian (Ovid 66),
justifies the Manciple’s lengthy digression on loving out of one’s station and
attaching different values to things which are morally identical, though related
to different social classes (MT 205-234).
Chaucer also introduces a poetic twist that is nowhere implied in Ovid’s
tale, but is based on an illustration from the Roman de la Rose (Chaucer 871).
While Ovid’s raven is free to fly to Apollo to report the infidelity of Coronis,
Chaucer places his crow in a cage. He then uses the image of a bird in a gilded
cage as the first of a series of images with which he equates Coronis (MT
63-74).
Although it is a simple matter to trace the sources of The Manciple’s Tale,
the tale stands within a complex intertextual space. In the The Manciple’s Tale
Chaucer has not simply translated Ovid, nor is the Tale only an embellished
version of the folk tale crow story with original material and material from
other sources, but the finished product in the context in which Chaucer has
placed it derives its ultimate meaning from its participation in the ‘discursive
space of the culture’ (Culler 103). However, according to Julia Kristeva, who
is credited with having formulated the notion of intertextuality: ‘a situation
in which one can track down sources with such precision cannot serve as the
paradigm for a description of intertextuality’ (Culler 105).
For Kristeva, the one-to-one relationship between Ovid’s poem and Chaucer’s
adaptation would tend to obscure the meaning of the second work in terms of its
‘general discursive space.’ Harold Bloom on the other hand defines
intertextuality as the ‘struggle between a sublime poet and his dominant
predecessor’ (Culler 108). For Bloom, the meaning of The Manciple’s Tale lies
in the relationship of Chaucer, as poet, to Ovid as poet. However, if Chaucer’s
purpose is to illustrate variations on the theme of connubial bliss, then he may
simply have appropriated the raw structural material of the classical original,
and, by manipulating its elements, omitting some, such as the raven and the
unborn child of Coronis, and introducing others, have separated it altogether
from all but the most superficial connection to Ovid.
In the latter sense, The Manciple’s Tale falls into the category of the
pelican episode in Lautreamont’s Maldoror cited by Laurent Jenny (Culler 104) as
an exception to the principle of meaning as intertextuality. Lautremont retains
Musset’s imagery while throroughly transforming his symbolic meaning. The
adaptability of the source material to Lautremont’s theme is coincidental and
independent of Musset’s context. In this sense, The Manciple’s Tale is even
less definable in terms of Chaucer’s artistic struggle with his greatest
predecessor, in that the material is itself not original to Ovid, but of
classical folklore and mythology.
If I were to write an article about an item in a newspaper, my relationship
to the reporter who submitted it would not be of the type that Harold Bloom
describes, but rather coincidental, unless, perhaps, the style of reporting
rather than the events reported were what attracted my attention to it. Even
the morals that Chaucer adapts to The Manciple’s Tale are not original to Ovid,
but existed for centuries of oral tradition. On the other hand, although
Chaucer has shifted its emphasis to suit his theme, he has retained far more
than the superficial details of Ovid’s original, he has also retained a great
deal of his great predecessor’s romantic vision. The fact that Caxton selected
Chaucer’s work for his printing press contributed to he permanent establishment
of Ovid and his classical archetypes in the canon of English learning and
literature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs. Ithica: Cornell U P, 1981.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Baltimore: Penguin, 1955.
Robinson, F. N. ed. The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933.
Shannon, Edgar Finley. Chaucer and the Roman Poets. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1929.