Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Pervasiveness of Courtly Love
The phrase “courtly love” refers to a set of ideas about
love that was enormously influential on the literature and culture
of the Middle Ages. Beginning with the Troubadour poets of southern
France in the eleventh century, poets throughout Europe promoted
the notions that true love only exists outside of marriage; that
true love may be idealized and spiritual, and may exist without
ever being physically consummated; and that a man becomes the servant
of the lady he loves. Together with these basic premises, courtly
love encompassed a number of minor motifs. One of these is the idea
that love is a torment or a disease, and that when a man is in love
he cannot sleep or eat, and therefore he undergoes physical changes,
sometimes to the point of becoming unrecognizable. Although very
few people’s lives resembled the courtly love ideal in
any way, these themes and motifs were extremely popular and widespread
in medieval and Renaissance literature and culture. They were particularly
popular in the literature and culture that were part of royal and
noble courts.
Courtly love motifs first appear in The Canterbury
Tales with the description of the Squire in the General
Prologue. The Squire’s role in society is exactly that of his father
the Knight, except for his lower status, but the Squire is very
different from his father in that he incorporates the ideals of
courtly love into his interpretation of his own role. Indeed, the
Squire is practically a parody of the traditional courtly lover.
The description of the Squire establishes a pattern that runs throughout
the General Prologue, and The Canterbury Tales: characters
whose roles are defined by their religious or economic functions
integrate the cultural ideals of courtly love into their dress, their
behavior, and the tales they tell, in order to give a slightly different
twist to their roles. Another such character is the Prioress, a nun
who sports a “Love Conquers All” brooch.
The Importance of Company
Many of Chaucer’s characters end their stories by wishing
the rest of the “compaignye,” or company, well. The Knight ends
with “God save al this faire compaignye” (3108),
and the Reeve with “God, that sitteth heighe in magestee, / Save
al this compaignye, grete and smale!” (4322–4323).
Company literally signifies the entire group of people, but Chaucer’s
deliberate choice of this word over other words for describing masses
of people, like the Middle English words for party, mixture, or
group, points us to another major theme that runs throughout The
Canterbury Tales. Company derives from two Latin words, com, or
“with,” and pane, or “bread.” Quite literally,
a company is a group of people with whom one eats, or breaks
bread. The word for good friend, or “companion,” also comes from
these words. But, in a more abstract sense, company had an economic
connotation. It was the term designated to connote a group of people
engaged in a particular business, as it is used today.
The functioning and well-being of medieval communities,
not to mention their overall happiness, depended upon groups of
socially bonded workers in towns and guilds, known informally as
companies. If workers in a guild or on a feudal manor were not getting along
well, they would not produce good work, and the economy would suffer.
They would be unable to bargain, as a modern union does, for better
working conditions and life benefits. Eating together was a way
for guild members to cement friendships, creating a support structure
for their working community. Guilds had their own special dining
halls, where social groups got together to bond, be merry, and form
supportive alliances. When the peasants revolted against their feudal
lords in 1381, they were able to organize
themselves well precisely because they had formed these strong
social ties through their companies.
Company was a leveling concept—an idea created by the
working classes that gave them more power and took away some of
the nobility’s power and tyranny. The company of pilgrims on the
way to Canterbury is not a typical example of a tightly networked
company, although the five Guildsmen do represent this kind of fraternal
union. The pilgrims come from different parts of society—the court,
the Church, villages, the feudal manor system. To prevent discord,
the pilgrims create an informal company, united by their jobs as
storytellers, and by the food and drink the host provides. As far
as class distinctions are concerned, they do form a company in the sense
that none of them belongs to the nobility, and most have working
professions, whether that work be sewing and marriage (the Wife
of Bath), entertaining visitors with gourmet food (the Franklin),
or tilling the earth (the Plowman).
The Corruption of the Church
By the late fourteenth century, the Catholic Church, which
governed England, Ireland, and the entire continent of Europe, had become
extremely wealthy. The cathedrals that grew up around shrines to
saints’ relics were incredibly expensive to build, and the amount
of gold that went into decorating them and equipping them with candlesticks
and reliquaries (boxes to hold relics that were more jewel-encrusted
than kings’ crowns) surpassed the riches in the nobles’ coffers.
In a century of disease, plague, famine, and scarce labor, the sight
of a church ornamented with unused gold seemed unfair to some people,
and the Church’s preaching against greed suddenly seemed hypocritical,
considering its great displays of material wealth. Distaste for
the excesses of the Church triggered stories and anecdotes about
greedy, irreligious churchmen who accepted bribes, bribed others,
and indulged themselves sensually and gastronomically, while ignoring
the poor famished peasants begging at their doors.
