Pagans, Tartars, Moslems, and Jews in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" By Brenda Deen Schildgen (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. 183 pages.)

Abstract

Brenda Deen Schildgen's analysis of the Canterbury Tales explores the
contemporary worldviews of medieval Europeans. Chaucer, an English
court poet, wrote probably his greatest work- the Canterbury Tales - at the
end of the fourteenth century. It is a collection of 24 tales told by pilgrims
as they make their way to Canterbury cathedral. Chaucer frames the tales
with a prologue and dialogue between the tales.
Schildgen's book examines the eight tales set outside Christian Europe.
Much of the book discusses the medieval view of paganism and the continuing
influence of pagan philosophy on medieval intellectual thought.
She analyses the "Man of Law's Tale," whose story takes place in both
pagan and Muslim lands. (It is worth pointing out here that, although by the
fourteenth century the Mongols increasingly were becoming Muslims, the
Tartars in the "Squire's Tale" are associated with paganism.) In addition to
discussing the tales involving pagans and Muslims, Schildgen analyzes the
anti-Semitic "Prioress' Tale."
Drawing on Habermas's theory of practical discourse (in which discussants
engage in a discourse where each is aware of and open to the other's
perspectives and interpretations), Schildgen argues that the Canterbu,y
Tales is an excellent example of what Habermas has in mind. Traditional
analysis states that Chaucer does not favor one pilgrim over the others, and
Schildgen takes this a step further by arguing that the Canterbury Tales
incorporates "a range of intellectual and ethical attitudes that thrived in
Chaucer's pan-European contemporary cultural and social world." She ...