The Tale of Melibee
The Tale of Melibee is part of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
Summary
Enemies enter Melibee's house, beat his wife Prudence and wound their daughter Sophie. Enraged, Melibee seeks advice and initially favours retaliation. Prudence challenges how he chooses advisers and weighs their counsel.
Through a long discussion, she leads him towards negotiation and reconciliation. When the attackers submit, Melibee finally grants them full pardon.
The work is a prose discussion of counsel, anger, judgement and mercy. Its central movement is from a desire to answer injury with injury towards a reconsideration of what should follow. The characters' arguments, rather than a sequence of physical adventures, carry that change.
Source
Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website: synopsis, context and link to the text.