The Prioress's Tale

The Prioress's Tale Summary

"The Prioress's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" is a tragic story of innocence, martyrdom, and anti-Semitism. The Prioress, a very pious and delicate woman who is overly sentimental about animals and objects of religious significance, tells this tale.

Here's a summary in modern English:

The story takes place in a Christian city with a large Jewish ghetto. The tale follows a devout little Christian boy who lives there. His favourite activity is singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary, which he learns at his school. The song goes "Alma Redemptoris Mater" or "Nurturing Mother of the Redeemer."

One day, as he walks through the Jewish quarter singing the song, Satan incites the Jewish residents, who kill the boy and throw his body into a pit.

The boy's mother, distraught over her missing son, starts searching for him. Guided by the sound of his voice, miraculously still singing the hymn, she finds his murdered body in the pit. She brings the Christians of the city to the location, and they recover the boy's body, which continues to sing.

Upon discovering the perpetrators, the Christian citizens brutally punish the Jews by dragging them bound through the streets and hanging them. The local provost orders the boy's body to be given an honourable funeral in a local abbey.

The singing miraculously continues until a grain that was placed on the boy's tongue by the Virgin Mary herself is removed by a priest. After this, the boy dies officially and is finally silent. The tale ends with a prayer to the Virgin Mary.

"The Prioress's Tale" is one of the more problematic tales for modern readers due to its explicit anti-Semitism. Chaucer's historical context was a time when Jews were often falsely accused and persecuted, but the narrative's casual acceptance of this bigotry can be uncomfortable to contemporary audiences.