Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T14:31:01.583Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Reeve's Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2017

Peter G. Beidler
Affiliation:
Lehigh University
Helen Cooper
Affiliation:
Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English
Richard G. Newhauser
Affiliation:
Professor of English and Medieval Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Get access

Summary

One of the most popular fabliaux in medieval Europe was the story of two young men who trick their host, one by seducing his daughter and the other by making love to his wife after the shifting of a cradle containing his baby. Chaucer clearly did not invent the broad outlines of what is sometimes called the “cradle-trick story” that he adapted for his own literary purposes in the Reeve's Tale. Though none of the analogues – at least not in the forms that survive – can be said to represent “the source” of Chaucer's tale, the story itself was apparently so widely known that it is almost certain that Chaucer had read at least one, and quite possibly more than one, of the versions presented here. In addition to the cradle-trick story in the Reeve's Tale, there are three surviving versions of it in French, one in Flemish, one in Italian, and two in German, all of them almost surely predating Chaucer. There are also several later analogues. A central scholarly problem in dealing with so many analogues is determining which among them are closest to the Reeve's Tale.

Frederick Furnival attempted to solve the problem by publishing two French analogues, Text A of Le meunier et les. II. clers and Jean Bodel's De Gombert et des deus clers. In an influential study, Germaine Dempster later stated that only the two French texts of Le meunier et les. II. clers (A and B) should b seriously considered by Chaucerians interested in working with “the source” of the Reeve's Tale, and she concluded that some near relative of Text B was most likely Chaucer's source. Dempster's arguments persuaded W. M. Hart to disregard all other known analogues and present only texts A and B of Le meunier in his chapter on the Reeve's Tale in Bryan and Dempster. More recently, however, scholars have taken a broader view of the relationship of Chaucer's tale to the other versions of the story. Rather than focus their attention on discovering “the source” of the tale, they study its relationship to several possible sources.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×