Flattery as a Concern in Three Selected Works of Geoggrey Chaucer
In the following study, I intend to examine Chaucer's use of the vice of flattery in three of The Canterbury Tales: The Nun's Priest's Tale, The Tale of Melibee, and The Parson's Tale. Hopefully, this study will show that flattery was one of Chaucer's concerns, both as an offshoot of the Deadly Sins of the tongue and of anger, and as an ever-present danger to the great political figures of his day. The Nun' s Priest's Tale is a "beast-fable" which contains many topics and concerns. Charles Muscatine says that "through tragedy, eloquence, heroics, science, court flattery, courtly love, domesticity, dreams, scholar­ship, authority, antifeminism, patient humility and rural hullabaloo, there is scarcely a Chaucerian topic that is excluded from its purview and its criticism." But along with the comic, mock—heroic style, the parodies, and the rich variation of topics, there is also a serious concern with the vice of flattery in The Nun's Priest's Tale. Chaucer is not only interested in celebrating "the normality of differences," as Muscatine says; he is also interested in showing how flattery can lead to delusion and spiritual, as well as physical, death. The Tale of Melibee is an allegory treating of the value of good counsel and of the deadly consequences of adhering to evil advice through flattery. Finally, The Parson's Tale is a homiletic treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies, showing flattery as a principal offspring of anger.
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