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The Review of English Studies Advance Access published online on July 3, 2009
The Review of English Studies, doi:10.1093/res/hgp049
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press 2009; all rights reserved

Chaucer's Man of Law and the Argument for Providence

Gerald Morgan


  Abstract

The relation between Chaucer and his fictional narrators is not to be resolved (as so often in modern criticism) into a simple opposition of fallible pilgrim and omniscient poet. Chaucer is too clever for that and so is the brilliant lawyer to whom he assigns the tale of Custance's deliverance from perils on the sea. There are profound difficulties in the interpretation of The Man of Law's Tale, but they cannot be resolved by the assumption that the Man of Law is himself ignorant of them. At the heart of the tale is the belief in providence in the face of the extraordinary vicissitudes that can occur in the life of an individual. The doctrine of providence is not a philosophy of happy endings but has to supply an answer to the misfortunes and evils of life on earth. The Man of Law is one of Bracton's ideal judges who is wise and God-fearing and in whom is the truth of eloquence (De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, II.306–7). It is his intention to persuade us (in the teeth of the evidence, as it often seems) that the divine justice irradiates even the darkest moments of individual lives.


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