Notes to Chapter 12

1. Janet Smarr, "Chaucer and the Decameron: Some New Connections?" (Paper delivered at the Sixteenth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 8, 1981).

2. See Noonan 1957:34-35; Olson 1961:259-63.

3. My argument is cast in so oblique and careful a way because of the recent, valuable study by Cahn (1980:81-119), an example of the kind of study Chaucer's poetry urgently needs. In this study evidence is adduced and care fully weighed to show that words and phrases hitherto assumed to prove that the Merchant practices usury in fact prove only that he was in debt; it is the study's great merit to have clarified so much terminology so thoroughly. When, however, Cahn goes on to claim that "it is certain that /the Merchant/ was neither a usurer nor a speculator" (p. 91), he seems, in my judgment, to err seriously in letting external evidence overrule the evidence of the poetry itself. The poetic evidence of Narrator identification with narrative matter in The Merchant's Tale should come first, and it suggests that the Merchant has in the past come by some familiarity with the practice of usury. Expressed negatively: Cahn's argument that various words and phrases do not prove usury does not mean that other evidence cannot suggest, if not prove, usury. Finally, although I rest no great weight on this notion, it is, I think, hard to imagine a businessman, medieval or modern, not practicing usury, at least occasionally, when circumstances permit.

4. See Noonan 1957:38-41; and for an exhaustive summary and analysis of the arguments against usury by an exact contemporary of Chaucer, see Oresme's translation of Aristotle's Politics 1.12 (ed. Menut 1970:66-68).

5. ST, 2a. 2ae. 78, 1, resp. Aristotle's teaching will be found principally in Politics 1.3.1256a-58b and is represented in Oresme's translation in chaps. 10-13 of Book 1 (ed. Menut 1970:62-68).

6. The "etymology" is found in Paucapalea, in his paraphrase of the Digest's (Roman law) definition of a loan in his commentary on Gratian's discussion (canon law) of usury; Noonan 1957:39; Baldwin 1970:1, 286-88.

7. See Oresme Politiques 1.12 (ed. Menut 1970:67); Noonan 1957:56-57; de Roover 1967:29.

8. See Baldwin 1970:1, 263-64; Spicciani 1977:211.

9. Petri Ioannis Olivi Tractatus de emptione et venditione (ed. Spicciani 1977:255, lines 50-70); see also de Roover 1967:18-20, on San Bernardino's dependence on Olivi. {270/271}

10. Cf. Dragonetti 1978:103-11; Robertson 1962:99-103.

11. Macrobius Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 1.6.63-64 (ed. Eyssenhardt 1868:498): ". . .once the seed has been deposited in the mint where man is coined, nature immediately begins to work her skill upon it so that on the seventh day she causes a sack to form around the embryo" (trans. Stahl 1952:112).

12. See Power 1975:16-19; Sheehan 1975.

13. See Politics 1.3.1256b, 8-20; Oresme Politiques 1.9-10 (ed. Menut 1970:62-64), where the distinction continues, though the terminology is variable.

14. See Burrow 1957:199-208; Economou 1965:251-57.

15. For a graphic portrayal of Nature at her forge, see Tuve 1966:324, fig. 107, 108; see, further, chap. 8 above.

16. See Alain de Lille De planctu naturae (PL 210:453, 431, 438, 447); also his Anticlaudianus 7.34, 2.410 (ed. Bossuat 1955:158, 84).

17. See The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris 1.2 (trans. Wetherbee 1973:71-72, 146-47 nn. 29, 35); consult, further, Häring 1955:508-12; Häring 1956:46-49.

18. The most extraordinary evidence for this understanding of Nature is actually Chaucer's own version of his Platonic inheritance, in The Physician's Tale (C 11-22; emphasis added):

"Lo! I, Nature,
Thus kan I forme and peynte a creature,
Whan that me list; who kan me countrefete?
Pigmalion noght, thogh he ay forge and bete,
Or grave, or peynte; for I dar wel seyn,
Apelles, Zanzis, sholde werche in veyn
Outher to grave, or peynte, or forge, or bete,
If they presumed me to countrefete.
For He that is the formere principal
Hath maked me his vicaire general,
To forme and peynten erthely creaturis
Right as me list...."

Although "countrefete" here means primarily "imitate" (see Robinson's note /1957:711/ to The Clerk's Tale, line 743), the other meaning of "falsify" is distantly audible; and we could answer Nature's question, "The Merchant can, or thinks he can." Be that as it may, Nature's mandate is obviously generation.

19. For a helpful discussion of the name of the one character who is not a personification, or Damyan, see Brown 1968:273-77. {271/272}

20. So John Balbus Catholicon (1460; reprint, 1971) s.v.; consider also the fourteenth century Book of Vices and Virtues (ed. Francis 1942:22; emphasis added):

§e enuyous may not see good bi o§ere, ne see who- so helpe§ hym, no more §an a bake may suffre to see §e schynyng of §e sonne.

21. To my knowledge, nowhere else in The Canterbury Tales does Harry suggest that he has told or will tell a tale. I have checked myself against the Tatlock and Kennedy Concordance. Moreover, it seems fairly clear from Harry's remarks at the beginning of the pilgrimage that he does not intend to enter the contest as a participant (see especially GP A 805-806). Hence, when he does tell a tale, the occasion is unusual; and I suspect that the text depends on this fact to underscore the mesmeric and temporarily frightening powers of the Merchant's style: Harry would not be telling a tale if the Merchant had not almost hypnotized him.

22. On the amplificatio of circumlocutio, see Geoffrey of Vinsauf Poetria nova (ed. Faral 1971:204; trans. Nims 1967:24-25).

25. "/T/he dominant view of the Church was that usury resided only in a loan--`solum in mutuo cadit usura'--and the exchange was not a loan--`cambio non est mutuum'"; Cahn 1980:96.

26. Allegory, which includes irony among its tropes, is defined as "alieniloquium" by Isidore Etymologiae 1.37.22; see also the discussion by Allen 1971:7 nn. 6, 7.

27. My use of the word "fruit" looks to the famous distinction between "fruyt" and "chaf" (NPT B2 3443) and to the whole hermeneutical tradition which it represents; see, further, Brinkmann 1980:169-98.

28. Conf. 4.2 (PL 32:693); Burke 1970:49.

29. My example is also one of Saint Thomas's favorite examples for illustrating metaphor; see ST 1.13.6, resp.; la. 2ae. 88, resp.

30. That this was the medieval position Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio amply illustrate: in the former, lust is the first sin punished, in the latter, the last sin purged -- in each case because it is the least culpable. Dante depends in this matter, as do most medieval thinkers, on the tradition which originates with Saint Gregory: "Carnal sins are of less guilt and greater infamy than spiritual sins"; quoted in Reade 1909:207.

31. MED L:932-35, s.v., br. la, 2c; Davis 1979:87-88.

32. On exegesis of the Canticum Canticorum, a good starting point is Leclercq (trans. Misrahi) 1961:106-109; for more detailed study, see Ohly 1958. {272}