The Monk's Tale is not a narrative tale at all, but instead an

account of various historical and literary figures who experience a

fall from grace. These include Adam, Samson, Hercules, King
Pedro of Spain, Bernabo Visconti, Nero, Julius Caesar, and
Croesus. The Knight interrupts the Monk's Tale, finding his listing
of historical tragedies monotonous and depressing, and is backed
up by the Host.

Mood. misery
The Monk's Tale (or more accurately tales) has a recurring theme of tragedy. The Monk
defines tragedy as the fall of someone from high station to misery. He is warning people to not
blindly trust in prosperity because it can always change. Most of them are just fate being cruel to
powerful people.

Prologue to the Monk's Tale

When Chaucer's tale of Melibee has finished, the Host says (for the
second time) that he wishes his wife could hear the tale
of Prudence and her patience and wise counsel: his wife, he goes
on to extrapolate, is an ill-tempered shrew. Turning to address the
Monk, he bids him be 'myrie of cheere', and asks whether his
name is John, Thomas or Albon, asking which house he is of.
Admiring the Monk's skin and stature, the Host jokes that he
could be a good breeding fowl, if only he were allowed to breed!
Religion, the Host goes on, has taken up all the best breeding
people, and left just the puny creatures to populate the world.
The Monk takes all this joking well, and promises a tale (or two, or
three) of the life of Edward the Confessor, but first, announces he
will tell some tragedies, of which he has a hundred stored up.
Tragedy, as the Monk defines it, is a story from an old book of
someone who fell from high degree and great prosperity into
misery, and ended wretchedly; tragedies are also usually
presented in hexameters, he thinks.

THE MONK’S TALE

The Monk's tale is a collection of tragedies, designed to advise

men not to trust in blind prosperity but be aware that Fortune is
fickle and ever-changing.

Lucifer is the first tragedy told, who fell from an angelic heaven
down to Hell. Adam is next, the one man not born of original sin,
who was driven from Paradise.
Sampson's tale is told at greater length, explaining how he fell
from grace when he admitted his secret to his wife, who betrayed
it to his enemies and then took another lover. The story is that
Samson slew one thousand men with an ass's jawbone, then
prayed for God to quench his thirst. From the jawbone's tooth
sprung a well. He would have conquered the world if he had not
told Delilah that his strength came from his refusal to cut his hair.
Without this strength his enemies cut out Samson's eyes and
imprisoned him. In the temple where Samson was kept he
knocked down two of the pillars, killing himself and everyone else
in the temple.
Hercules' tragedy is next. Hercules' strength was unparalleled, but
he was finally defeated when Deianera sent Hercules a poisoned
shirt made by Nessus.
Nabugodonosor (also spelled Nebuchadnezzar), was the king of
Babylon who had twice defeated Israel. The proud king
constructed a large gold statue that he demanded his subjects
pray to or else be cast into a pit of flames. Yet when Daniel
disobeyed the king, Nebuchadnezzar lost all dignity, acting like a
great beast until God relieved him of his insanity.
The next tragedy is about Balthasar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar,
who also worshipped false idols. He had a feast for a thousand
lords in which they drank wine out of sacred vessels, but during
his feast he saw an armless hand writing on a wall. Daniel warned
Balthasar of his father's fate. Daniel warned him that his kingdom
would be divided by Medes and the Persians. Balthasar, according
to the Monk, exemplifies the way that Fortune makes friends with
people before making enemies with them.
Cenobia (or Zenobia), who was beautiful and victorious in war, is
the next tragic hero of the tale. The queen of Palmyra refused the
duties of women and refused to marry, until she was forced to
wed Odenathus. She permitted him to have sex with her only so
that she could get pregnant, but no more. Yet the proud woman,
once Odenathus was dead, was defeated by the Romans and
paraded through Rome bound in chains.
King Pedro of Spain, subject of the next story, was cast from his
kingdom by his brother. When attempting to regain his throne,
Pedro was murdered by this brother.

Peter, King of Cyprus, is the next subject; he brought ruin on his

kingdom and was thus murdered.

Other tragedies include Bernabo Visconti, who wrongly

imprisoned his nephew. Ugolino of Pisa, a count, was imprisoned
in a tower in Pisa with his three young children after Ruggieri, the
bishop of Pisa, had led a rebellion against him. His youngest son
died of starvation, and out of his misery Ugolini gnawed on his
own arms. The two children that remained thought that Ugolini
was chewing himself out of hunger, and offered themselves as
meals for him. They all eventually starved. Nero did nothing but
satisfy his own lusts and even cut open his own mother to see the
womb from which he came. He had Seneca murdered for stating
that an emperor should be virtuous. When it appeared that Nero
would be assassinated for his cruelty, he killed
himself. Holofernes ordered his subjects to renounce every law
and worship Nebuchadnezzar. For this sin Judith cut off
Holofernes' head as he was sleeping.
The Monk next tells of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was punished
by God for attacks on the Jews. God made Antiochus infested with
loathsome maggots. The Monk then admits that most have heard
of Alexander the Great, poisoned by his very own offspring. He
follows with the tale of Julius Caesar, who had Pompey murdered
but was himself assassinated by Brutus. The final story is of
Croesus, King of Lydia, the proud and wealthy king who was
hanged.
All of these tales are simply re-tellings of the popularly known
stories: all focus on the same theme of people of high degree
falling into misery or death. Finally the Monk's Tale is interrupted.

Analysis:

The Monk provides one of the first-known definitions of tragedy

in English literature, and, though his tale might have been
fascinating to Chaucer's medieval audience, many of whom would
not know the classical stories it largely details, it does not receive
a huge amount of attention or adoration from modern readers
and critics.

The Monk's tragedies are drawn from a variety of sources: Biblical,

classical, historical and even some that, in Chaucer's time, would
have been within reasonably recent folklore and memory. Yet the
model of tragedy that the Monk offers is not, in fact, a classical
model as such, but a Boethian one - a reminder of the mutability
of life itself, and the tendency of fickle, feminine Fortune to spin
her wheel and bring those at the top crashing down to the
ground. It is, on one level, simply a series of car-crash narratives -
an unrelenting dark, Boethian reminder that the high-status end
miserably.

Some more recent studies have tried to locate the Monk's tale,
with its emphasis on the stories told about the history, and its
focus on the writers from whom the Monk has drawn the stories,
as a response to Boccaccio's De casibus tragedies and a comment on
the involvement of writing, poets and poetry in the support of
tyrants and despots.
Yet neither of these readings of the Tale really explains what it is
doing within its context. Louise Fradenburg argues very
persuasively in her book that the Monk is a death's head at the
feast - a sudden explosion of misery and death into the festive fun
of the Canterbury project. The Monk's own solid physical reality,
good for breeding (so the Host jokes - and breeding is the
opposite of dying) is juxtaposed with his tales, precisely about the
end of the body and its death, rather than life and strength.

Moreover, the numbers that the Monk quotes - he has a hundred

tragedies in his cell, of which he manages to fit in seventeen
before he is interrupted - suggest a painfully dismal repetition of
the fall from fortune to misery, fortune to misery, fortune to
misery. It is rather as if the Monk himself becomes a sort of anti-
Canterbury Tales all of his own: each of his mini-tales
progressively darkening the horizon.
It is no wonder then that the Knight sees fit to interrupt the Monk
and halt his tale - particularly as the Monk tells tales largely about
the demise of high-status characters (and the Knight, of course, is
the pilgrimage's highest-ranking pilgrim). The Monk himself
presents a threat to the fun of the tale: he is all 'ernest' and no
'game', as the Host points out to him, and - beginning a trend
which arises more and more as these final tales progress - when
he is interrupted, he refuses to speak any further. One of the
tellers has his mouth firmly closed.

The Monk
When one thinks of a monk, he may imagine someone who studies,
prays, and performs manual labor. The Monk, one of the thirty
pilgrims travelling on a pilgrimage to Canterbury in The Canterbury
Tales, is nothing like the usual monk many people imagine. He is
rebellious, ignores rules, and lives and controls his own life. Chaucer,
the narrator and author of The Canterbury Tales, shows these
characteristics in the way the Monk looks, the things he says and
does, and in the things the host, a character in "The Monk's Prologue,"
and Chaucer say about him.

The Monk is nothing like the usual monk many people imagine. He
hunts hares and rides horses instead of studying, praying, and
working. He does not follow the rules of the monastery which say that
monks should not hunt, be reckless, nor leave the monastery.
Instead,they should study and perform manual labor. The Monk
ignores these rules. Chaucer shows that the Monk does not care about
the rules when he says, "He yaf nought of that text a pulled
hen"(Norton, p.85) and when he says, "Of priking and of hunting for
the hare was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare"(191-192). The
Monk will never follow the rules because they are against what he
loves to do. He may want to have the title of "monk" but does not want
to do what it takes to be a monk, which is to quit riding and hunting
and start studying, praying, and performing manual labor. He has
control over his life since he does not let the rules dictate what he
should or should not do.

The Monk's robe is different from that of other monks. Monks usually
wear plain habits with hoods. This Monk has gray fur on the sleeves of
his cope and a gold pin with a love knot at the end of the hood. This
indicates that he is not religious because instead of the gold pin, he
should have a rosary. He is in good shape unlike other monks who are
thin because they fast often. He is bald and has a shiny head and
face.

He probably did not want to become a monk but decided to be one

anyway because the monastery provides a cloistered environment,
away from the betrayal of people and of women. In "The Monk's Tale,"
he talks about different men who died because they were betrayed by
their loved ones. Hercules, for example, died after being poisoned by a
shirt his girlfriend gave him, and Samson killed himself because his
wife gave his secret away to his enemies, who, in turn, tortured him.
Since women betrayed these men, the Monk does not trust them.

The host, who appears in "The Monk's Prologue" as well as

other Canterbury Tales and in "The General Prologue," notices that
the Monk does not belong in the monastery and says, "God confound
him, I pray, whoever first led you to take up monastic life, you'd have
been a rare cock with the hens" (Wright, p.177). The host also reveals
a new characteristic of the Monk when he says, "If you had the
freedom, as you have the power, to copulate as much as you desire, a
fellow like you would have fathered dozens!" (Wright, p. 177). This
indicates that the Monk is lustful. Since monks are not supposed to
think about women, he is committing a sin.
Chaucer likes the Monk and seems to agree with his way of life. He
says, in "The General Prologue", that the monk is "fair for the
maistrye, an outridere...a manly man, to been an abbot worthy"
(Norton,p. 85). He probably says this because the Monk has
leadership skills since he dictates his life by ignoring the rules of the
monastery.

Chaucer shows the Monk's characteristics in the way he looks, the

things he says and does, and in the things the host and Chaucer say
about him. Chaucer says that the Monk's lust is for riding and
hunting while the host says it is for women. The Monk is honest with
himself. He is very modern since he ignores the rules of the monastery
and wears his robe with gray fur lining at the sleeves. He also seems
like he is more of a regular person than a monk.

The Canterbury Tales The Monk's Tale Summary

by Geoffrey Chaucer
At the end of the Tale of Melibee, the Host says (again) that he wishes his wife could
hear these stories about good, patient women; his wife, he explains, is a bad-tempered,
shrewish woman. He then asks the Monk to tell a story, but not without first making a
couple of jokes at the Monk’s expense. The Monk takes the joking well, then offers to
tell some of the hundred tragedies he knows by heart.

The Monk’s Tale itself is actually a collection of tragedies, all of which share the same
moral: people should not trust in prosperity, but remain on their guard, because Fortune
constantly changes.

The first tale is that of Lucifer, an angel who fell from heaven and descended into hell.
The second is that of Adam and Eve and how they were driven from Paradise after
eaten the forbidden fruit.

The Monk spends a bit more time on the story of Samson, who killed a thousand men
with the jawbone of an ass, then prayed to God to send him a drink of water. A well
sprang from the jawbone. Samson, we are told, could have conquered the entire world
were it not for his dalliance with Delilah; when he told Delilah that the source of his
strength lay in the fact that his hair had never been cut, she then lured him to sleep and
cut off his hair. Samson’s enemies were then able to seize him, put his eyes out, and
imprison him in a temple. Eventually, Samson’s hair grew back and with it, his strength;
he eventually pushed down the pillars of the temple, killing himself and everyone inside.

Next is the tragedy of Hercules, who was stronger than any other man, but who was
defeated when he put on a poisoned shirt given to him by Deianera.
The tales of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, and Balthasar, his son, are told
together. Nebuchadnezzar built a large gold statue and ordered his subjects to pray to it
or be burned alive. When Daniel refused, however, Nebuchadnezzar starting raving
until God restored him to sanity. Balthasar, meanwhile, held a feast for a thousand
lords, at which he served wine out of sacred vessels. While everyone was partying, they
saw an armless hand writing on the wall. Daniel warned Balthasar that his kingdom
would be destroyed by the Medes and the Persians. The moral of the story, according
to the Monk, is that Fortune makes friends with people before destroying them.

Next comes the tale of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, who refused to marry. She was
eventually forced to marry Odenathus, but refused to sleep with him except as often as
was absolutely necessary to get pregnant. When Odenathus died, Zenobia was
paraded through Rome bound in chains.

King Pedro of Spain was thrown off his throne by his brother and died trying to reclaim
it. Peter, King of Cyprus, ruined his kingdom and was murdered for it. Bernabo Visonti
was wrongly imprisoned; Ugliono of Pisa was imprisoned after losing in a rebellion
started by Ruggieri, the bishop of Pisa, and starved to death along with his son and
nephews. Nero killed himself after it became clear he would be assassinated for his
cruelty. Holofernes got his head cut off by Judith as he slept after he ordered his
subjects to worship Nebuchadnezzar. Antiochus Epiphanes committed crimes against
the Jews, for which God punished him with an infestation of maggots. Alexander the
Great was poisoned by his own children; Julius Caesar had Pompey murdered and was
in turn murdered by Brutus and Cassius. Croesus, king of Lydia, was hanged for his
pride.

The Monk is eventually interrupted by the Knight, who says he has had enough of tales
about people falling from high places and would rather hear a tale about someone
climbing from the bottom to the top.

The Canterbury Tales The Monk's Tale Analysis

by Geoffrey Chaucer
All of the Monk’s stories have two things in common: they are stories of people of high
degree falling into misery or death, and they are all stories with which the Monk’s
audience would have been familiar. The Monk is also notable for giving perhaps the first
definition of “tragedy” in English literature. However, the Monk’s definition of tragedy is
not the classical one, but the Boethian one: tragedy is a reminder that nothing lasts
forever and that Fortune is fickle. One day you’re on top; the next, you’re dead (or
worse).

It is interesting to compare the jokes the Host makes at the Monk’s behalf in the
Prologue with the theme of the Monk’s stories. The jokes are all based on the idea that
the Monk, being young and healthy, would be good at “breeding,” or having children
(although, being a Monk, he was not supposed to have either a wife or children). Birth
is, of course, the opposite of death, which presents an ever-darkening common theme
in the Monk’s stories.