Manciple's Tale

Merchant's Tale

Miller's Tale

Reeve's Tale

Cook's Tale

IN HIS FAERIE Queene (1590), Edmund Spenser lauds Chaucer as the “well of English undefyled.” Nearly three hundred years later, Matthew Arnold revives the accolade in his praise for “the lovely charm” of Chaucer's diction. For centuries, Chaucer's language was graced with terms that celebrated its eloquence, its light, its honeyed sweetness. More preoccupied with their own poetic ideals than with dispassionate critical scrutiny of Chaucer’s, admirers and followers censored him. Literary myth-making cleansed a well of English that was built on wishful thinking. More recent academic scholarship has made space for filth. Matter once considered out of place has been recognized as a crucial constituent of Chaucerian poetics. Still, however, Chaucer's writing is censored. Rude diction is rendered polite by how it is glossed; sometimes it is simply glossed over. Scholarly taste persists in producing a version of Chaucer that attends only cursorily to his poetic skill with vocabulary that might be labelled “vulgar.” This study of “swiven” will attempt to redress the balance. I want to show that Chaucer's use of this word is poetically nuanced. It is not simply a matter of “bawdy.” Rather, “swiving” in verse makes an important literary—and social—point. Chaucer's use of “swiven” asks the questions: What is poetry? Who is it for?

“Swiven” occurs seven times in Chaucer's oeuvre: in the tales of the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, the Merchant, and the Manciple. At first glance it might be thought to be a “fabliaux” word or simply a “cherles term.” Closer inspection of its appearance in the Manciple's Tale begins to show us why. First, it is important to consider the teller. The Manciple is one of the “professional” pilgrims on the road to Canterbury. He's a kind of business agent, purchasing provisions for an Inn of Court (school of law). According to the General Prologue, the Manciple is “a lewed” man (1.574), but he is not only able to keep pace with a “heep of lerned men” (1.575) who are expert in legal matters, he is cleverer than them all: “this Manciple sette hir aller cappe” (1.586).