In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, the genre of each tale is integral to its respective meaning. The task of interpreting the meaning of a tale from its genre, however, is complicated by Chaucer's frequent deviations from the conventions of a genre. In some cases, Chaucer even uses the conventions of more than one genre per story; this is the case of the tale of the Man of Law. In “The Narrative Style of the Lawman's Tale,” Paul M. Clogan defines the genre of the tale as a “hagiographic romance” (217). In other words, the genre of the tale straddles the line between a medieval romance and a saint legend (pseudo-biographical accounts of the lives of saints). The tale can be considered a romance, in the sense that it tells of adventures in "sondry" lands and has a protagonist on a quest. Nor is he particularly interested in working within the confines of realism, for his episodic events of melodrama are numerous: Custance, the protagonist, escapes rape, massacre, and false accusations. However, unlike conventional novels of the period, The Man of Law's narrative does not focus on courtly love, nor is it preoccupied with the chivalric traditions of other medieval romances. As a hagiography or legend of a saint, the tale is also insufficient. Although Custance is depicted as an ideal Christian who willingly endures the suffering of the mortal world and never questions her faith in God, she is ultimately neither martyred nor canonized. The tale is therefore not both a novel and a saint's legend, but rather a complicated mixture of the two genres. Because of this confusion, the story of the Man of Law is neither a novel nor a saint's legend. The lingering question of why Chaucer merges these two genres is therefore left to his audience. While Clogan claims that the genre of hagiographic romance was very popular in medieval times and believes that it "instilled in [Chaucer's] narrator a new type of truth closely related to lyrical modes" (231), I believe that the fusion of the two genres occurs ironically. The hagiographic novel, with its elevated style, underlines the lawyer's own pretensions. This reflects the attitudes of the Man of Law, but more importantly, it serves as a smokescreen; the genre uses religion and romance to mask what the tale is really about: the patriarchal need for women's subordination to men. The Man of Law uses the genre of hagiographic romance as one would use rhetoric; it convinces with style and genre. Her story justifies the oppression of women without doing so explicitly. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The question of whether the lawman's history matches his estate has received much critical attention. Compared to a sentient tale like the Tale of Mélibée, the tale of Custance does not seem as suited to the storyteller. You would expect a lawyer to tell a story about the objective truths of law, perhaps in prose, and not the hagiographic romance that the Man of Law tells. It could be argued, however, that because medieval British law was closely linked to Christianity, the religious connotations of a saint's legend would suit the storyteller. The story could therefore be seen as an admission of the lawyer's devotion to Christianity. With closer analysis, however, it becomes clear that the lawman's story and the narrator's description of him in the general prologue emphasize his avaricious attitude, rather than reflecting religious piety. At first glance, the descriptionof the Man of Law seems positive. When the audience first meets the lawyer in the general prologue, he is described as a lawyer who knows his stuff well. A photographic memory was a trait that every good 14th-century lawyer must possess; because a lawyer's training consisted of memorizing lectures without the aid of textbooks, his memory and note-taking skills would have had to be extremely competent for the lawyer to complete his training in legal science (Seaman ). The lawyer is therefore portrayed as one who is fully competent as a lawyer, because “there is no one who can criticize his writings; / and each statute is written by heart” (323-4). However, throughout his description, the word "justice" is only used to describe his position as a judge (314), and never to describe his morality or ethics. Instead, the lawman is illustrated as a person primarily concerned with the accumulation of wealth. He is described as “rich in excellence” (311), which is intended to complement his professional competence; However, the word "rich" is also a play on words that signals Chaucer's audience to notice the wealth the lawyer has accumulated since becoming a lawyer. His personal wealth is emphasized when the audience is told that “he had many fees and robes” (317). Because medieval lawyers were unwilling to help people in need of their services unless they were paid, there was some resentment among common people towards them. Litigants without lawyers were almost always guaranteed to lose their cases and were therefore forced to pay large sums of money to lawyers. It is no wonder, then, that medieval lawyers were often described as “somewhat inhumane and eager to sell their services to the highest bidder” (Cantor 310). Because of the considerable amount of time it took to become a lawyer, they were often eager to make as much money as possible in a short time (ibid.). Chaucer's characterization of the lawyer as a person concerned with personal gain is therefore consistent with medieval public opinion of lawyers. The General Prologue can be seen as a satirical attack on lawyers as a profession, as it shows that the lawyer is more concerned with profits and personal gain than with justice. his indignant views on the poor reveal him to be a man of little sympathy: If thou art poor, farewell thy reverence! Yet, from the wise man, take this sentence: “All the days of poor men have been wikke. » So be at war, uh, you come to this prikke! (116-9) The lawyer's deterministic views on possessions reveal his perverse sense of morality. The destitute are shown to be unworthy of “reverence” and are described as “wikke”. Although “wikke” can be translated as “miserable,” it more likely translates to “wicked.” In other words, for the lawyer, poverty represents vice and, as a corollary, wealth represents wisdom and virtue. The fact that the story of the lawyer is borrowed from a merchant therefore follows the general logic of the characterization of the lawyer. , because Chaucer clearly draws comparisons between the two areas. The lawyer turns out to be a merchant under the guise of respectability and scholarly self-satisfaction. Even the narrator of the General Prologue sees through the Man of Law's appearances and realizes that “he [the Man of Law] seemed more handsome than he was” (322; emphasis added). Likewise, the story of the Man of Law, like himself, is a story in disguise: it is a story that exploits women under the guise of religious and moral pretensions. In the story it is made explicitthat medieval women, even royalty, ---are slaves to men. We realize through Custance's first speech that she is not an idiot, as she recognizes her own precarious situation in society: "I destroy a woman, no fors even if I overthrow! / Women are born for slavery and penance, / And to be under the governance of men” (285-7). Custance recognizes the fact that women's lives are considered unimportant in his society. Even the death of the emperor's daughter is shown to have "no danger". Although it can be argued that Custance speaks of the death of the corporeal body as unimportant, implying that the lives of men are also insignificant, it is clear that his speech is gendered. It is “women” who must suffer, and it is “human governance” to which they are subject. Women are therefore “shipwrecks” because they are considered a simple object for which man (the subject) can use and exchange. Throughout the story, Custance moves from being possessed by one man to another. Although Custance recognizes the iniquity of such practices, she endures them because of her faith; she places herself entirely at the mercy of God. The Man of Law believes that suffering is part of God's plan, and therefore to reject it is a rejection of Providence. Thus, all individuals, regardless of gender, are incapable of controlling their own destiny. The rudderless ship on which Custance is embarked by the Syrians is therefore a metaphor for life: no one is capable of directing the outcomes of his life. The legal man believes, however, that women are even more powerless to control their lives than men. He constantly describes the female sex as vulnerable and fragile: “How can this wild woman have this strength / Hired to defend this renegade again? (932-3). The Man of Law constructs a fiction that women are inherently incapable of protecting themselves. This fiction justifies the passage of women from man to man, because in the tale, it is implied that men and their institutions, such as the Man of Law and the law, are protectors of women. When Custance is accused of Hermengyld's murder and appears before Alla, the king and judge of his case, the lawyer laments the fact that Custance "has no champion" (631). Christ (a symbol of religion) is the “champion” alluded to; however, the Man of Law also refers to himself (a symbol of the law) as a possible champion of Custance, since, as a lawyer, he could have aided him in his legal battle. Although it is Christ who comes to his rescue, the Man of Law suggests that the law could also have been his champion. It is clear that law and religion are inextricably linked concepts in the mind of the man of law. According to him, women must be defended by men, the law or religion. However, the logic of these implications is tautological, because it is men and the law from which Custance must be protected, since it is a man who wrongly accuses him, and it is the law which threatens to protect him. murder; What Custance really needs to be protected from, then, are her protectors – the institutions of a patriarchy. Women are therefore weak because they are oppressed by men, not because they are intrinsically so. The lawyer never admits it. He readily ignores that in the second part of the tale, it is the men who are weak and who must be protected (from the Sultana). Likewise, it is Alla who must be protected from the wiles of her mother Donegild. The Man of Law reconciles this contradiction in his logic by attacking the femininity of these women. For him, they are almost no longer women. In describing Donegild, the Lawman calls him "mannysh" (782), andhe explains the Sultana's behavior by calling her a “serpent under femynyntee” (360). In other words, these women are aggressive because they are not feminine; they are masculine under their feminine body. The Sultana is evil because she refuses to be submissive to her sons and instead exercises her own power. From the perspective of the Man of Law, passivity is a feminine virtue, and not necessarily a Christian one. He never deplores the violence of the male characters in the text. The massacre of the Syrians by the emperor of Rome is mentioned only in passing, and not in a reprimanding manner. So it is clear that only women are meant to be harmed, while men have the freedom to actively take revenge. Because the law and patriarchy are linked in symbiosis, the man of law is invested in protecting the contradictory ideals of his society. The retelling of the tale in the hagiographic novel therefore follows logically, because the genre of the legend of a saint idealizes the passive endurance of suffering, and the conventions of the novel often employ the literary device of the damsel in distress. Hagiographic novels therefore romanticize the passive female protagonist who leaves her life entirely dependent on men. The genre, like the domain of its storyteller, is an amalgam of the sacred and the profane; it is a rhetorical device that obscures the division between religious and secular ideals. The Man of Law uses the genre of the hagiographic novel to justify the exchange of women between men. In “Commodities between them”, Luce Irigaray asserts that “[t]he exchanges on which patriarchal societies are based take place exclusively between men. Women, signs, goods and money always pass from one man to another” (575). What Irigaray points out is that in a patriarchy, women are commodified, and necessarily so, since the very structure of patriarchy requires that they be exchanged. It is therefore the structure of patriarchy, of which Custance's world is a part, which oppresses women. Women are exchanged for the benefit of men. Although Custance must marry the Sultan of Syria in order to convert him and his subjects to Christianity, her marriage also ensures a political alliance between Rome (her father's state) and Syria. It is transmitted from one patriarch to another so that men bond politically. The source of the Man of Law's distaste for incestuous subjects then becomes obvious. In his prologue, the Man of Law declares that Chaucer would never tell the story of Canacee or Apollonius of Tyre, because such subjects are "unkynde abhomynacions" (88). The incest taboo that the lawyer calls "unkynde" or unnatural is in reality, as Gayle Rubin rightly points out, "a mechanism to ensure that such exchanges [the exchange of women between men ] take place between families and between groups” (542). . In other words, incestuous relationships would prevent women from being exchanged with outside groups. If Custance had had an incestuous relationship with her father, for example, she could not have been given to the Sultan of Syria and trade would have been made impossible between the two nations - which is the man's right. with his interest in profit, he would certainly have noticed. The Law Man's use of the word "abhomynaciouns" also indicates that he considers incest not only as an offense to family relations, but also as an offense to relations between nations, since the word "nacioun" can be translated by both meanings: family” and “nation”. As the prologue to The Man of the Law indicates, he is only interested in telling the stories of good women. The man of law's invocation of the natural way of things is therefore only a symptom of his investment in the status quo of patriarchy. He>