Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T00:07:41.836Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Toward Premodern Globalism: Oceanic Exemplarity in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Abstract

This essay reads Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale—a retelling of the popular Constance exemplum—as a case study for thinking about a global Middle Ages. The tale's globalism emerges most pointedly in its depiction of the ocean and, more surprisingly, in Constance's pale face during her trial for a murder she did not commit. By reading these unlikely images together, this essay argues that both operate as oceanic sites of exemplary justice and that the Man of Law frames the Constance story as a call for global justice outside the reach of territorial law. Chaucer imagines a legality that works like exemplarity, conceptualizing witness testimony in particular as a fluid narrative form that can accommodate the needs and expectations of various audiences, cultures, and temporalities. (JKT)

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Jamie K. Taylor

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.)

References

Works Cited

“About the Journal.” Interfaces, riviste.unimi.it/interfaces/about. Accessed 24 Oct. 2019.Google Scholar
Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony: The World System, AD 1250–1350. Oxford UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. “Modeling Medieval World Literature.” Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2017, pp. 217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, and Mallette, Karla, editors. A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History. U of Toronto P, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alford, John. “Literature and Law in Medieval England.” PMLA, Vol. 92, No. 5, Oct. 1977, pp. 941–51.Google Scholar
Allen, Elizabeth. False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amer, Sahar. “Reading Medieval French Literature from a Global Perspective.” PMLA, Vol. 130, No. 2, Mar. 2015, pp. 367–74.Google Scholar
The Ancient Sea-Laws of Oleron, Wisby, and the Hanse-Towns, Still in Force. edited by Miege, Guy, London, 1686.Google Scholar
Astell, Ann W., and Jackson, J. A.Before the Face of the Book: A Levinasian Pre-Face.” Levinas and Medieval Literature, edited by Astell, and Jackson, , Duquesne UP, 2009, pp. 113.Google Scholar
Baker, J. H. Introduction to English Legal History. 4th ed., Oxford UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Barrington, Candace, and Hsy, Jonathan. “Global Chaucers.” Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture, edited by Ashton, Gail, Bloomsbury, 2015, pp. 147–56.Google Scholar
Barrington, Candace, and Hsy, JonathanGlobal Chaucers: Reflections on Collaboration and Digital Futures.” Accessus, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2015, scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=accessus.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter. Duke UP, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Larry. “The Order of the Canterbury Tales.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Vol. 3, 1981, pp. 77120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Larry, et al., editors. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1987.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1985, pp. 144–65.Google Scholar
Blum, Hester. “Introduction: Oceanic Studies.” Atlantic Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2013, pp. 151–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brand, Paul. “The Languages of the Law in Later Medieval England.” Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, edited by Trotter, D. A., D. S. Brewer, 2000, pp. 6376.Google Scholar
Butterfield, Ardis. The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years' War. Oxford UP, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The House of Fame. Benson et al., pp. 347–73.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Man of Law's Tale. Benson et al., pp. 87104.Google Scholar
Chism, Christine. “Arabic in the Medieval World.” PMLA, Vol. 124, No. 2, Mar. 2009, pp. 600–08.Google Scholar
Choi, Yejung. “Body and Text in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale.” Feminist Studies in English Literature, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2002, pp. 223–42.Google Scholar
Classen, Albrecht. Water in Medieval Literature: An Ecocritical Reading. Lexington Books, 2018.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Medieval Identity Machines. U of Minnesota P, 2003.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, editor. The Postcolonial Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Helen. The Structure of the Canterbury Tales. U of Georgia P, 1984.Google Scholar
Cunliffe, Barry. Europe between the Oceans: 9000 BC-AD 1000. Yale UP, 2008.Google Scholar
David, Alfred. “The Man of Law vs. Chaucer: A Case in Poetics.” PMLA, Vol. 82, No. 2, May 1967, pp. 217–25.Google Scholar
Delasanta, Rodney. “And of Great Reverence: Chaucer's Man of Law.” Chaucer Review, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1971, pp. 288310.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Massumi, Brian, U of Minnesota P, 1987.Google Scholar
Dinshaw, Carolyn. Chaucer's Sexual Poetics. U of Wisconsin P, 1989.Google Scholar
Dinshaw, Carolyn “Pale Faces: Race, Religion, and Affect in Chaucer's Texts and Their Readers.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, no. 22, 2000, pp. 1941.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryden, John. Fables, Ancient and Modern, Translated into Verse from Homer, Ovid, Boccace, and Chaucer. London, 1700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dugas, Don-John. “The Legitimization of Royal Power in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale.” Modern Philology, Vol. 95, No. 1, 1997, pp. 2743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberle, Patricia. “The Question of Authority and The Man of Law's Tale.” The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle, edited by Taylor, Robert A. and Leyerle, John, TEAMS, 1993, pp. 111–49.Google Scholar
Edwards, A. S. G. “‘I Speke in Prose’: Man of Law's Tale Ninety-Six.” Neuphilologishe Mitteilungen, no. 92, 1991, pp. 469–70.Google Scholar
Eimeric, Nicolau. Le manuel des inquisiteurs. Translated by Francisco Peña, edited by Louis Sala-Molins, A. Michel, 2001.Google Scholar
Evans, Ruth. “The Book of Margery Kempe.” A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1350–1500, edited by Brown, Peter, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 507–21.Google Scholar
Evans, RuthHistoricizing Postcolonial Criticism: Cultural Difference and the Vernacular.” The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520, Penn State UP, 1999, pp. 366–70.Google Scholar
Finke, Laurie A., et al. “‘The World Is My Home When I'm Mobile’: Medieval Mobilities.” Postmedieval, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2013, pp. 125–35.Google Scholar
Frankot, Edda. “Medieval Maritime Law from Olerón to Wisby: Jurisdictions in the Law of the Sea.” Communities in European History: Jurisdictions, Conflicts, edited by Pan-Montojo, Juan and Pedersen, Frederik, Pisa UP, 2007, pp. 151–72.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin, Cambridge UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Poetria nova. Les arts poétiques du XII et du siècle, edited by Faral, Edmond, É. Champion, 1924, pp. 195262.Google Scholar
Geoffrey of Vinsauf Poetria nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Translated by Margaret F. Nims, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1967.Google Scholar
Glanville, Ranulf de. Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill. Translated by G. D. G. Hall, Clarendon Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Godlove, Shannon. “‘Engelond’ and ‘Armorik Briteyne’: Reading Brittany in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale.” Chaucer Review, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2016, pp. 269–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorski, Richard. “Roles of the Sea: Views from the Shore.” Roles of the Sea in Medieval England, edited by Gorski, , Boydell, 2012, pp. 1023.Google Scholar
Green, Richard Firth. A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England. U of Pennsylvania P, 2002.Google Scholar
Green, Richard FirthMedieval Law and Literature.” Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, edited by Wallace, David, Cambridge UP, 1999, pp. 407–31.Google Scholar
Grehan, Helena. Performance, Ethics, and Spectatorship in a Global Age. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism. Cambridge UP, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heffernan, Carol. The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance. Brewer, 2003.Google Scholar
Heng, Geraldine. “An African Saint in Medieval Europe: The Black Saint Maurice and the Enigma of Racial Sanctity.” Sainthood and Race: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh, edited by Bassett, Molly H. and Lloyd, Vincent W., Routledge, 2015, pp. 1844.Google Scholar
Heng, GeraldineEarly Globalities, and Its Questions, Objectives, and Methods: An Inquiry into the State of Theory and Critique.” Exemplaria, Vol. 26, nos. 2–3, 2014, pp. 234–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heng, Geraldine Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy. Columbia UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Holsinger, Bruce. “Medieval Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and the Genealogies of Critique.” Speculum, Vol. 77, No. 4, 2002, pp. 1195–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horden, Peregrine, and Purcell, Nicholas. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Blackwell Publishing, 2000.Google Scholar
Hsy, Jonathan H.‘Oure Occian’: Littoral Language and the Constance Narratives of Chaucer and Boccaccio.” Europe and Its Others: Essays on Interperception and Identity, edited by Gifford, Paul and Hauswedell, Tessa, Peter Lang, 2010, pp. 205–44.Google Scholar
Hsy, Jonathan H.Watery Metaphor.” Oceanic New York, edited by Mentz, Steve, Punctum, 2015, pp. 177–85.Google Scholar
Ingham, Patricia Clare. Sovereign Fantasies: Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain. U of Pennsylvania P, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingham, Patricia Clare, and Michelle R. Warren, editors. Postcolonial Moves: Medieval through Modern. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.Google Scholar
Johnson, Eleanor. “English Law and the Man of Law's ‘Prose’ Tale.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 114, No. 4, Oct. 2015, pp. 504–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khanmohamadi, Shirin A. In Light of Another's Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages. U of Pennsylvania P, 2013.Google Scholar
Kinoshita, Sharon. “Worlding Medieval French Literature.” French Global: A New Approach to Literary History, edited by Suleiman, Susan and McDonald, Christie, Columbia UP, 2010, pp. 320.Google Scholar
Knapp, Ethan. “Faces in the Crowd: Faciality and Ekphrasis in Late Medieval England.” The Art of Vision: Ekphrasis in Medieval Literature and Culture, edited by Johnston, Andrew James et al., Ohio State UP, 2015, pp. 209–23.Google Scholar
Kolve, V. A. Chaucer and the Image of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. Stanford UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Langland, William. The Vision of Piers Plowman: An Edition of the B-Text. edited by Schmidt, A. V. C., Everyman, 1978.Google Scholar
Lavezzo, Kathy. Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000–1534. Cornell UP, 2006.Google Scholar
The Laws of the Salian Franks. Translated by Drew, Katherine Fischer, U of Pennsylvania P, 1991.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Lingis, Alphonso, Duquesne UP, 1969.Google Scholar
Lex Salica: The Text with the Glosses and the Lex Emendata. edited by Hessells, J. H., John Murray, 1880.Google Scholar
Libelle of Englyshe Polycye. Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, edited by Thomas Wright, Vol. 2, Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861, pp. 157209.Google Scholar
Lipton, Emma. “Exemplary Cases: Marriage as Legal Principle in Gower's Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz.” Chaucer Review, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2014, pp. 480501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddern, Philippa. “Reading Faces: How Did Late Medieval Europeans Interpret Emotions in Faces?Postmedieval, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2017, pp. 1234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, J. Allan. Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower. D. S. Brewer, 2004.Google Scholar
Nakley, Susan. Living in the Future: Sovereignty and Internationalism in the Canterbury Tales. U of Michigan P, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Ingrid. “Premodern Media and Networks of Transmission in the Man of Law's Tale.” Exemplaria, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2013, pp. 211–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nerlich, Michael. Ideology of Adventure: Studies in Modern Consciousness, 1100–1750. Vol. 1, U of Minnesota P, 1987.Google Scholar
Nolan, Maura. “‘Acquiteth yow now’: Textual Contradiction and Legal Discourse in the Man of Law's Introduction.” The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, edited by Steiner, Emily and Barrington, Candace, Cornell UP, 2002, pp. 136–53.Google Scholar
Orlemanski, Julie. “Physiognomy and Otiose Practicality.” Exemplaria, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2011, pp. 194218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ormrod, W. H. “The Use of English: Language, Law, and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century England.” Speculum, no. 78, 2003, pp. 750–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhard, J. R.Setting Adrift in Medieval Law and Literature.” PMLA, Vol. 56, No. 1, Mar. 1941, pp. 3368.Google Scholar
Rolls of Oleron. The Oak Book of Southampton, edited and translated by Paul Studer, Vol. 2, Cox and Sharland, 1911, pp. 54103.Google Scholar
Runyan, Timothy J. “The Rolls of Oleron and the Admiralty Court in Fourteenth-Century England.” American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1975, pp. 95111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salter, Elizabeth. “Chaucer and Internationalism.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, no. 2, 1980, pp. 7179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanok, Catherine. Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints' Lives in Late Medieval England. U of Pennsylvania P, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scala, Elizabeth. “Canacee and the Chaucer Canon: Incest and Other Unnarratables.” Chaucer Review, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1995, pp. 1539.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Larry. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge UP, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlauch, Margaret. Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens. Gordian, 1969.Google Scholar
Sherman, William. “The Beginning of ‘The End’: Terminal Paratext and the Birth of Print Culture.” Renaissance Paratexts, edited by Smith, Helen and Wilson, Louise, Cambridge UP, 2011, pp. 6588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoaf, R. Allen. Chaucer's Body: The Anxiety of Circulation in the Canterbury Tales. UP of Florida, 2011.Google Scholar
Smith, Sidonie, and Watson, Julia. “Witness or False Witness? Metrics of Authenticity, Collective I-Formations, and the Ethic of Verification in First-Person Testimony.” Biography, Vol. 35, No. 4, Fall 2012, pp. 590626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sobecki, Sebastian I. The Sea and Medieval English Literature. D. S. Brewer, 2008.Google Scholar
Speer, Brownlow M. “Facing the Accuser: Ancient and Medieval Precursors of the Confrontation Clause.” Virginia Journal of International Law, no. 34, 1994, pp. 481552.Google Scholar
Spiegel, Gabrielle. Romancing the Past: The Rise of Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France. U of California P, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staley, Lynn. “Fictions of the Island: Girdling the Sea.” Postmedieval, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2016, pp. 539–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinberg, Philip E. The Social Construction of the Ocean. Cambridge UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Submission Information for The Medieval Globe.” Arc Humanities Press, 2019, arc–humanities.org/our-series/arc/tmg/submission-guidelines/.Google Scholar
Taylor, Jamie K. Fictions of Evidence: Witnessing, Literature, and Community in the Late Middle Ages. Ohio State UP, 2013.Google Scholar
Trigg, Stephanie. “Chaucer's Silent Discourse.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Vol. 39, 2017, pp. 3356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turville-Petre, Thorlac. England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340. Clarendon Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uhlig, Marion. “Quand ‘postcolonial’ et ‘global’ riment avec ‘médiéval’: Sur quelques approches théoriques anglo-saxonnes.” Perspectives Médiévales, Vol. 35, 2014, peme.revues.org/4400.Google Scholar
The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation. edited by Edgar, Swift, Harvard UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Wallace, David. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Wallace, DavidNew Chaucerian Topographies.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Vol. 29, 2007, pp. 319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, David Preface and acknowledgments. Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, edited by Wallace, Vol. 1, Oxford UP, 2016, pp. v-vi.Google Scholar
Wallace, David Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitaker, Cord J. “Race and Racism: The Man of Law's Tale.” The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales, Aug. 2016, opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/mlt1/.Google Scholar
Yeager, Patricia. “Sea Trash, Dark Pools, and the Tragedy of the Commons.” PMLA, Vol. 125, No. 3, May 2010, pp. 523–45.Google Scholar