The Prioress's Tale, Sonorous and Silent

Alma redemptoris mater, quae pervia caeliPorta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,Natura mirante, tuum sanctum genitorem,Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab oreSumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.Loving mother of the Redeemer, ever the open door of heaven and star of the sea, help a fallen people who strives to rise again. You who, while Nature marveled, gave birth to your own sacred creator, a virgin both before and after, receiving that “Hail” from Gabriel's mouth: have mercy on us sinners. The Prioress's Tale is a song about a song. That is, in the Prioress's own words, it is a “song” to the Virgin “that I shal of yow seye” (VII 487), and it takes as its subject the arresting, obsessive, and ultimately lethal performance of another song to the Virgin, the Marian antiphon Alma redemptoris mater.1 This nesting of song inside song echoes repeatedly as the tale unfolds. Formal parallels are plentiful: Mary's accessible openness as the portal to heaven in the antiphon's lyric recalls the “strete … / … free and open at eyther ende” (VII 493–94) along which the tale's protagonist so blithely ambles; the translation of the clergeon's body from an excremental privy along that street to an elevated abbey dais mirrors the ascent of the antiphon's fallen people out of the slough of sin to reach salvation alongside the star of the sea. Just as Gabriel delivers the Word of God from his mouth into Mary's womb, so the Virgin delivers the mysterious greyn into the clergeon's mouth, both encounters enacting a miraculous transaction of salvific life and voice. We might even notice parallels in the intertextual operation of citational incipits: in the same way that Gabriel's “Ave” invokes one of the most familiar of Catholic devotions, the Ave Maria, by setting its first word into motion, so the Prioress's Tale only ever gives the opening words of the Alma redemptoris mater, a prayer so familiar that “most even nominal Christians of the fourteenth century would have known the words and at least one of the several melodies to the song.”2I would like to suggest that this nested, songful quality does not merely stand as one of the Prioress's Tale's aesthetic hallmarks, but can be taken more subtly and more revealingly as a cue for interpretation. At the heart of the Prioress's Tale is an antiphon, that is to say, music whose expression depends on and demands a magnificent exercise of the human voice in full-throated song. The tale is a poem in which song matters a great deal. How, then, might our understanding of the poem shift if we were to take its self-designation as a “song” seriously? I do not mean by this to recast Chaucer's tale as music somehow, in the conventional sense of the word—though the way the poem anticipates and shapes its actual, sonorous performance by the (speaking) voice is certainly relevant to the kind of interpretation I am interested in exploring. Rather, I would offer that we come to understand how the Prioress's Tale stands significantly in relationship to sound, to voice, and to audition by asking what song is, how song works, and how song comes to make meanings inside the poem's narrative, and then turning the answers to these questions back onto the poem itself.In fact, when we devote focused attention to the Prioress's Tale's sounded dimension, we discover a keen sensitivity to sonorous performance and to the embodied experience of audition that, inside the narrative, imbues the Alma with profound power. What is more, the structures for meaning-making that arise from the exercise of that power within the narrative travel uncannily from the heart of the poem outwards; the formal architecture that nests song within song propagates the meanings of song further and further afield, with deeply equivocal consequences. As I will illustrate, the Prioress's Tale can be schematized into a sequence of “scenes of hearing” organized around iterative performances of the Alma redemptoris mater. The tale repeatedly reminds us that the antiphon at its heart cannot be divorced from performance in sounding space, performance that visits remarkable effects upon the bodies, identities, and communities of the song's multiple auditors. These effects arise equally from the sonorous qualities of the antiphon's performances as they evolve over the course of the tale as from the social and cultural scripting of the antiphon's audition within determinate locations and contexts, what I term “auralities.” Understanding the Prioress's Tale's “scenes of hearing” as performances in which sound meaningfully impacts its auditors reveals the deeply transformative force that sound bears not merely as a vehicle for verbal or musical communication but also as material sound in its own right, as physical vibrations in acoustic space. Thus, in addition to sharpening debates over its antisemitism, its self-conscious textuality, and its teller's narrative stakes, approaching the Prioress's Tale with open ears amplifies the poem's strikingly sonorous construction of community, spatiality, and even human being itself.Chaucer's selection of the Alma for the song at the heart of his miracle of the Virgin is in its own right a noteworthy choice, one of many important innovations Chaucer brings to his sources. Most versions of this popular miracle have its young protagonist sing the responsorium Gaude Maria with its more overtly galling final clause, “erubescat Judaeus infelix, qui dicit Christum Joseph semine esse natum” (may the unhappy Jew blush in shame, who says that Christ was born of Joseph's seed).3 In addition to the numerous textual echoes it sponsors, Chaucer's choice of the Alma renders a more blameless and innocent clergeon with whom the Prioress in all her affectation might more blamelessly and innocently strive to identify herself, through her self-infantilizing prologue, for example. Yet the tale's refusal to supply more than the Alma's first three words suggests that we be wary of granting its text too much explanatory power, especially in a tale where few if any of its characters are capable of construing the song's Latin to begin with: the little clergeon who neglects his Latin primer to listen to the antiphon “Noght wiste … what this Latyn was to seye” (VII 523); the boy who teaches him the antiphon's melody “kan namoore expounde in this mateere” because he has “but smal grammeere” (VII 535–36); even the Jews enraged by the song do not bristle at it until Satan explains to them that its “sentence/ … is agayn youre lawes reverence” (VII 563–64). With the exception of the abbot, hardly anyone in the Prioress's narrative has the Latin to parse the Alma's text, and for this reason its semantic impact must hang in significant doubt.Instead, the tale repeatedly emphasizes that it is the aural quality of the song, not its semantic content, that entrances and overpowers, and here, too, Chaucer's choice of the Alma is apt. Audrey Davidson's reconstruction of the Sarum Use melody that Chaucer and his readers would likely have known furnishes a gracefully balanced vocal line with regularly repeated turns of phrase (Fig. 1); it opens with a virtuoso tour of the octave both in ascent and descent, a melismatic outpouring “almost unequalled in chant.”4 It is thus “a piece of some difficulty”5 that the clergeon needs his to him to he it by word to with the Sarum Use Alma redemptoris mater, on the melody into repeated of which by a with a at by the first then the a at or a and and on most This of the clergeon's both the Alma's sonorous and its textual the clergeon's another him in the of the antiphon's sound, its or melody and the of Latin so they to that melody to through a and that little for the words before the clergeon to sing the the Prioress's Tale the antiphon's as a performance in acoustic whose sound its The antiphon first out in the tale while the the Latin at his on the of the the of the the antiphon, and vocal a physical power over This his he in the at his Alma redemptoris as he he and the and the he the by The clergeon by the Alma's and only does the song his attention from his Latin where he might have to the Virgin he so it also his body from the of the in which he the of the he he and the musical sound a that the to in a or aesthetic readers of the Prioress's Tale who music as of might have an for the antiphon's on the clergeon's body in the music of the which explains that illud to a song with ears and he is also it in a way that his body with to the song certainly has in when he of the … but the same can be at in the clergeon's to the Alma's as in him and with repeated further on his audition in physical we might further into and his of the music that the of reason with the body through et et as it a of and as one As of to body et in physical but in for the of and In this and are all we might thus understand the clergeon to a musical his to the sonorous melody it and a in his sound embodied into of of hearing” that around the Alma's performance in the can be further in of that is, in of the social and cultural through which the sound to its as In the clergeon's physical to the we to that the young in the where he his and the where the Alma is being The text this through the clergeon's and to little by little from the of his a that an of is, The boy must to his or listen to the he cannot both in cultural of this is into a of cultural the of of of the of Marian the of the clergeon's and the of cultural and to a of these on the clergeon's his through a aural that ultimately him from his and the Alma because the Alma's its sound but also the its sound demands and the meanings more and As he and the antiphon's physical sound so he might and its melody the clergeon his from one aural community, that of in to musical clergeon's for his aural is his with the Alma the first of he to a sounding to acoustic and supply it with sonorous in a way that his and experience of the of the for his and his community, the clergeon the Alma and its of more that I for shal be shal be in an it for to (VII the antiphon the boy so it to a life of its own and take of and a it his and he (VII … so deeply that of by the (VII We might the of the here, the Virgin her to song from his the clergeon's to in this his to this sounding first his also the of the and that into experience of his embodied at the of the tale he in and Ave as he (VII the Alma he is to the that his mother (VII as he is to his in of a prayer and a of sonorous is not to say, that the clergeon's is as by a power than or the the tale of the clergeon's with of the antiphon's song it and (VII as the through his and than he and Alma redemptoris (VII when the him to of a in to his to the antiphon and we most the clergeon over his sounding when he his of the Alma to his and the to and from his his even to one of the few sounding might the and of the where his might more the of the Alma along this street also the Alma in the of the the street This choice of performance also the clergeon's the this of the its a kind of which the sounding might by and for his As of before its some of these same as a within a … a and within which by regularly the notice of and at to the for was a sense of its were only by or at the of the the a inside the in the cultural As the of the and fourteenth these more and more on the Jews and material and around the to an whose cultural and was even while communities to the operation of and to of and and way that the of to the of was by on would have most in and would have regularly this were all in the that an in the of The of sonorous of the of that Christians by might the of the and and from the same to aural by Jews from at a than a and only then with and thus the which not from the own cultural but also from the and in the is inside a sound that the little clergeon the Alma The and the in Chaucer's poem is in the heart of the the and to the the tale an open for the its street and open at eyther ende” (VII any of or the most likely of of the and fourteenth the sense of the as a space, a (VII and (VII is the the Jews who inside the of that they of the to as a an and within a that the clergeon's as a is to say, they the as a sound where music does not The the Jews reach Satan them of the to lawes reverence” (VII reveals own of the innocent out of this to (VII to the from which the will if we take the as of the the Jews the to the clergeon's voice from sound space, to him to the of the a where clergeon and Alma do not the with from a the tale the sense in which the even and especially for the Jews is as a aural that great along its that the Alma's performance only The thus as a that can the of its as as as as aural communities for the clergeon's the first of this of hearing” in the tale's also a aural communities over the to onto acoustic space, with the body at the of that the Alma in the the clergeon the Alma from the sound of its its into the of a whose auditors the Alma's audition a of the of the the clergeon a by the acoustic of his … and (VII voice that an aural from within and from as repeatedly a of hearing” that and auditors within its and and that with that have impact on and In the same way that the clergeon “kan of the Jews who him sing cannot of as the Alma's to them into aural community, by will and to that only the of the encounters that can and do out in and through the to do with how his sound his auditors to the Alma it from the of the The and the of the of the of the human the miraculous and transformative where the Virgin visits upon the clergeon's his of and the of his song. we attention to its qualities and the Alma from the privy as than it was before the a of hearing” that the first to the sound at the heart of the Prioress's life and the clergeon's his a he is to (VII like a in its his body is and of this of the (VII its to like one of the Yet as the Prioress reminds us in the if the body is a that has deeply its (VII with a The has the clergeon's vocal through and and of the the clergeon's (VII and the his voice from the Yet in of his the clergeon does not his sound, his body voice before he the one the his and his body in the the to even while a out on youre (VII the her to that in (VII As his body to in the Prioress a in the clergeon's to suggests that only his body has and his voice does the clergeon begin to as if he at a the kind of the boy on the of the and the miraculous sounding his is capable of his song his (VII his vocal and as the of a voice. his his the music the boy is and his voice in with the virgin the of his into the salvific this of God (VII voice even his voice more its when he the Alma with The where the antiphon opens by attention to the mouth: the Prioress that mouth of (VII the of the clergeon's on the of the the clergeon's mouth, the poem to it as the of vocal and a in its he with Alma to that the to vocal the to from his and This the of the clergeon's comes to for his and the through which Alma redemptoris can The of the voice and the of his attention to the of and where the Alma's sound and the motion, here, too, it make sense of the the antiphon and the At a when the body and they and the the that them In the clergeon's in his we thus cannot have a melody on the human voice. Rather, we human music in its own so to in of human in its the Alma's acoustic quality also from that of its melody from the body so that the to like a the acoustic the privy a for his The remarkable the of and the body that them in sound space, as a to them from the street as the boy the clergeon from his that the for to upon this (VII to the of this sound a physical to into the sonorous of the a that as and and that its as the of the Alma can be the Christians around the privy where the clergeon … for the and to be (VII a of aural community, even in the of sound space, by an of the the Prioress's Tale out of its way to this by and through its audition of The poem how the boy taken his song with of the the of the the out as another on his sources. the Alma a and aural around the clergeon's a that within the until the more of the abbey can take its the more of the abbey with and sacred the Alma its auditors with at the same further remarkable as the tale its These are to one of Chaucer's most upon his the the mysterious in her The greyn has the that the in the tale be to in a miraculous way the of the that is, that the greyn the miraculous of body and the of and within the I from some of his sense of the of to the clergeon's song his is is that has to do with the relationship the clergeon's and attention to the text that this relationship is more than it might at first in the of the Alma and the of the clergeon's life to come into when the clergeon explains that and for to in and that I a greyn upon to the clergeon's he first this as he is in the of only he this performance of the Alma does the Virgin the greyn in his That is to say, the to the Virgin is so her so the song in her so that he a the Alma his has open but before the Virgin gives him the The greyn thus cannot have a or in to the It more like a for the clergeon's a of his of and a of the to take his to heaven for this the greyn might be as a kind of to certainly one with than of the as a to the Alma's and The greyn does more than back to and the deeply of miraculous sonorous In some to the Prioress's an in the mouth in for his which the Jew has in one the is a with the words redemptoris in in it is a and in the it is a all three the Prioress's of in her the Christ as … is a (VII and as the clergeon to the and of and his (VII more the first of the greyn with the first of a in the Prioress's both words three in the same to one over until the is and the greyn (VII The do to be in Chaucer's The greyn might thus be to have a not in the clergeon's an of the vocal that the to to sing than the and it with a as in the tale's Chaucer over the a one to the clergeon's the of the greyn does not the from his body because the greyn is in some material the of in any one would its with the it has profound material music in performance is an and on the of the greyn like the of a the of and of the life The clergeon the his in the of a and her through his the the greyn from the mouth, the that have so his life and and the the (VII The boy with his the and echoes of the of to the greyn has this in the tale's narrative when all has the abbot, the only in the tale capable of understanding the Alma's text, is with a greyn in his That is to say, he is with an in his a from the him to to the heart of sound, to from the miracle of music in and of the and as the Alma's of and in space, sound, and into the to the clergeon's to the to The to this to as (VII with a and of and then, all of a the body upon the he as he (VII is he his to the and like the boy before body and the of and the of embodied being in the the of and to and to the clergeon's does not It to the of the the in the of the Prioress's narrative and over its to into the of her on the to The first of the a of was this was that was to (VII of sound, this remarkable of hearing” much like that Just as that the for to upon the clergeon's and as the upon the when he of the clergeon's the of that within her tale effects the to the the musical that the Prioress's narrative uncannily the of hearing” that around her The narrative and and text and reveals an one that back to the formal relationship Chaucer's Prioress's Tale and the Alma redemptoris mater. the Prioress's narrative sound and through its thus a on the sonorous and aural experience that her narrative her an of aesthetic impact that can be back on the Prioress's Tale to how it would have aural meanings its own these how are we to the that over Chaucer's What to make of experience of in the that the Prioress's I have one way to that the Prioress's is into the same that has its in the clergeon's own as he gives his and his this the that in the abbey when the clergeon in its own in the of hearing” its This interpretation of the at with the the Prioress has in the her tale and her As has strives to her to her tale's through the of her to “a of or (VII then the clergeon in more to a than to a boy whose in (VII a of In this in the Prioress's Tale the at herself, her voice, and her audition with that of the at the heart of her tale and sound and as a through which to her own the in to the Prioress's is also deeply As to … of to the in the the to the Prioress's Tale stands out for its echoes this when that the The Prioress's Tale … the about how to to the tale's In this the not but a for in the Prioress's narrative that be out by the clergeon's but that are as and even more The most of these more out from a the of the clergeon's body to the abbey and its in where the Prioress the out for the with a too much With and with for to of this and that The is and not but also shal have that (VII he and we are how does this As in the Prioress's Tale with from the who his and in a to an to in the the Prioress that in a they as (VII with Satan in the of all with Jew that in when the them if (VII it is not to Jew the a upon the of the that its by and from the (VII of a the with thus also the own to even to at his because of when one the as an upon the I (VII in to the that the Prioress's Tale its auditors Chaucer must the the must into his own narrative and the experience of if his poem is not to In this the of narrative that in the Prioress's Tale reveals the poem's sensitivity to the of meanings that arise from sonorous performance and embodied the for both aural and to narrative and a of its power to meanings and social in a poem by an antiphon's iterative by the that and by the inside and its narrative, that it in