Fractal Prioress
PRIORESS’S TALE in 40 minutes: focusing on cursed folk of Herod “al new”: theme – youth, time, and repetition.
— Karl Steel (@KarlSteel) April 20, 2015
by KARL STEEL
I seye, that in a wardrobe they him threwe,
Wheras thise Jewes purgen hir entraille.
O cursed folk of Herodes al newe,
What youre ivel entente yow availle?
Mordre wol out, certein, it wol nat faille,
And namely ther th’onour of God shal sprede;
The blood out cryeth on youre cursed dede. (Prioress’s Tale VII.571-78, Mann ed.)
O yonge Hugh of Lincoln, slain also
With cursed Jewes, as it is notable,
For it is but a litel while ago (VII.684-86).
- Boy sings or refers to the Alma Redemptoris, 641 and 655
- Boy is killed, again, when the grain is taken out of his mouth
- Abbot and community falls on the ground “and still he lay, as he had been ybounde” (676), which we all know recalls the earlier binding of the Jews (“and after that the Jewes leet he binde” (620) [edit: see Adrienne W. Boyarin here for more!]
- And then there’s a procession (“and after that they rise, and forth been went, / And toke awey this martyr from his beere” (679-80), which might recall the earlier procession on the hunt for the singing corpseboy (“The Cristen folk that thurgh the strete wente / In coomen for to wondre upon this thing” (614-15).
1. Boy can’t grow up; 2. Jews can’t change; 3. Ending – boy sings, boy’s killed, people bound, civic procession: whole narrative in nutshell
— Karl Steel (@KarlSteel) April 20, 2015
Now, in a Christian exegetical context, these echoes might just be understood as anagogic repetition: the supersession of the cursed Jews by the blessed Christians. But in the context of a circle of violence, suffering, and ongoing newness, we can understand VII.641-680 as a miniaturized version of the tale as a whole, a miniature that’s repeated again in shorter former in the final stanza on Hugh of Lincoln. This fractal repetition recalls the Mass itself, which repeats everywhere and always the incarnation and crucifixion; and it also anticipates the structure of Thopas, whose structure of diminishing returns (18 stanzas, 9 stanzas, 4 ½ stanzas) might itself be understood as a kind of fractal repetition.
In the Prioress’s Tale, ever young, but also ever old, stuck in the same loop, we have a picture of the liturgy and the liturgical year (maybe?), and also, especially, a picture of a cycle of violence that can’t end until the Prioress and her community give up on the memory of sacrifice, suffering, and redemption.
How’s that? Who else has done this?
I.e., nothing new can happen. I haven’t seen TRUE DETECTIVE and I won’t so DON’T say what you are THINKING
— Karl Steel (@KarlSteel) April 20, 2015
(for earlier Chaucer blog posts by me: here (Prioress), here (Physician), here (Nun’s Priest), here (Friar), here (Man of Law), here (Wife of Bath’s Tale), here (manuscripts), and here (Prioress))