Performing the Prioress: "Conscience" and Responsibility in Studies of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale

Abstract

The Prioress's Tale poses a very confusing and uncomfortable set of problems for critics and for readers. The tale depicts Christian violence against the Jews in fictive, literary images that are tied to an actual history of oppression that is well documented and not in doubt. This history of religious violence has thus been the focus of much study of the tale, for critics have tried for years to determine the exact relationship between the tale and the history of Christian-Jewish relations that presage the Holocaust. Central to this issue is the question of agency. Someone, that is, must be to blame for the hatred depicted in the tale--Chaucer, the Prioress, the Christian culture that produced them both--diverse critics say diverse things as they attempt to determine the causes of that violence and to unravel the complex web of religious and racial ideology woven (so uncomfortably) into Chaucer's art. 1 There is no more politically charged issue in Chaucer studies.

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