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The Parson’s Predilection for Pleasure Nicole D. Smith University of North Texas Fashionable dress tended to outrage clerics in the fourteenth century.1 While aristocrats and the upwardly mobile donned luxurious garments to signal wealth and beauty, churchmen railed against these stylish wares as marks of vainglory and invitations to lust. It is thus not surprising that Chaucer’s Parson condemns the excesses of fashion under the rubric of pride in his vernacular penitential, a guide that outlines the seven deadly sins and further instructs clerics and laity in the arts of contrition, confession, and satisfaction of sin.2 Ostentatious notching of sleeves and hemlines, undulating stripes, and folded decorative borders are understood as unnecessary sartorial additions that waste precious cloth and convey the proud individual’s tendency toward excess. Such ‘‘wast of clooth in vanitee’’ (X.417) is furthermore evident, according to the Parson, in gowns of superfluous length, which become ‘‘consumed, thredbare, and rotten with donge’’ when trailed through mire (X.419), and in ornamental cut-outs of dagged designs, which are not only exI am grateful to Susan Crane, Stacy Klein, Frank Grady, and the anonymous readers of SAC for their valuable comments at various stages in the development of this essay. 1 For a general overview of clerical opinions of dress in the fourteenth century, see G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961), pp. 390–414. 2 Lee Patterson’s ‘‘The ‘Parson’s Tale’ and the Quitting of the ‘Canterbury Tales,’’’ Traditio 34 (1978): 331–80, establishes the genre of the Tale as a penitential manual with a ‘‘tripartite structure to match the three parts of penance’’: contrition in the heart, confession by mouth, and satisfaction through penitential deeds (p. 339). For the critical debate over the Tale’s genre prior to Patterson, see Coolidge O. Chapman, ‘‘The Parson’s Tale: A Medieval Sermon,’’ MLN 43 (1928): 229–34; H. G. Pfander, ‘‘Some Medieval Manuals of Religious Instruction in England and Observations on Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale,’’ JEGP 35 (1936): 243–58; and Siegfried Wenzel, ‘‘Notes on the Parson’s Tale,’’ ChauR 16:3 (1982): 237–56, esp. pp. 248–49. For a more recent critical inquiry into the influence of meditative literature on The Parson’s Tale, see Thomas H. Bestul, ‘‘Chaucer ’s Parson’s Tale and the Late-Medieval Tradition of Religious Meditation,’’ Speculum 64:3 (1989): 600–619. PAGE 117 117 ................. 16094$ $CH4 11-01-10 14:03:50 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER travagant but also impractical: punching holes in garments and slitting them with shears results in apparel that fails to provide adequate protection from inclement weather. In a sharp turn from ‘‘to muche superfluite’’ (X.415) in dress, the Parson looks to the demerits of scant of attire in such a way that invites further consideration: Upon that oother side, to speken of the horrible disordinat scantnesse of clothyng , as been thise kutted sloppes, or haynselyns, that thurgh hire shortnesse ne covere nat the shameful membres of man, to wikked entente. / Allas, somme of hem shewen the boce of hir shap, and the horrible swollen membres, that semeth lik the maladie of hirnia, in the wrappynge of hir hoses; / and eek the buttokes of hem faren as it were the hyndre part of a she-ape in the fulle of the moone. / And mooreover, the wrecched swollen membres that they shewe thurgh disgisynge, in departynge of hire hoses in whit and reed, semeth that half hir shameful privee membres weren flayne. / And if so be that they departen hire hoses in othere colours, as is whit and blak, or whit and blew, or blak and reed, and so forth, / thanne semeth it, as by variaunce of colour, that half the partie of hire privee membres were corrupt by the fir of Seint Antony, or by cancre, or by oother swich meschaunce. / Of the hyndre part of hir buttokes, it is ful horrible for to see. For certes, in that partie of hir body ther as they purgen hir stynkynge ordure, / that foule partie shewe they to the peple prowdly in despit of honestitee, which honestitee that Jhesu Crist...
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