Tales of Pathos

There is an essay in the Cambridge Companion to Chaucer (available at our library) that I have found really useful. It is written by Robert Worth Frank Jr, titled "The Canterbury Tales III: pathos". It focuses on the tales of the Man of Law, the Second Nun, the Clerk, the Physician, the Prioress, and the Monk. He lumps these tales together under the heading of "tales of pathos," meaning any tale that aims to create in the reader a strong emotional response.

While Frank does discuss the fourteenth-century reader's feelings towards these tales, he focuses also on how the modern reader interacts with them differently. He states that these tales "make greater demands on a modern reader's historical sense and imaginative sympathies," and also that they are crucial to understanding the minds and emotions of people in the fourteenth century/Chaucer's readers.

He also looks at literature and works present during the fourteenth century that followed the same patterns as these tales of pathos: Meditations on the Life of Christ, the Golden Legend, and also the various tales that Chaucer adapted to write some of the tales listed above.

If anyone is writing their paper on any of these tales or discussing the evolving reactions to the Canterbury Tales, this article could be really helpful.

"Pathos may seem alien because it works with extremes. It willingly tramples over probability if need be to portray these extremes -- of goodness, of evil, of suffering, of faith, of innocence. From this pushing to extremes arises its abstract character."