Models Of Ministry
...While critics continue to study Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales, they afford relatively little scholarship to the Friar's Tale .1 In the almost thirty years since the publication of Richard H. Passon's influential semiotic reading, "'Entente' in Chaucer's Friar's Tale," scholars have approached the tale in two primary manners: (1) from an analysis of the friar's story as a comic satire within the frame of his historical feud with the secular summoner-pilgrim; and (2) by utilizing Passon's theoretical apparatus to locate more moments of semiotic ambiguity and tension.2 V.A. Kolve's "'Man in the Middle': Art and Religion in Chaucer's Friar's Tale" altered notably the critical analysis of the friar's narrative by attempting to discuss it as a unified story with its own independent integrity.3 While the Friar's Tale clearly contains numerous instances of semiotic uncertainty, and is easily interpreted as one part of a sardonic dialogue between the Medieval seculars and mendicants, it is also a complete moment within The Canterbury Tales. The friar's brief narration of a corrupt summoner's encounter with a yeoman-fiend offers two distinct models of ministerial service. By presenting the summoner and the fiend as servants, the condensed poem displays the similarities between these two characters, while revealing the devil's superior role as a humble minister.
The Friar's Tale initially introduces the employer of the immoral summoner. Chaucer4 describes this archdeacon as "a man of heigh degree, / That boldely dide execucioun / In punysshynge" (1303-1305). As an administrator of the ecclesiastical court, he maintains control over individual's restitution for religious and socially unacceptable crimes. T.W. Craik indicates that the poet ultimately "approaches the summoner's moral character through that of his employer" (101). The...
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