Summary and Analysis of The Prioress Tale :: Canterbury Tales The Prioress Tale Essays

Summary and Analysis of The Prioress Tale (The Canterbury Tales)The Prioress TaleThe Prioress tells a tale set in an Asian town dominated by the Jewry in which usury and another(prenominal) things hateful to Christ occurred. The Christian minority in the town opened a indoctrinate for their children in this city. Among these children was a widows son, an angelic seven year old who was, even at his young age, deeply devoted to his faith. At school he learned a song in Latin, the Alma redemptoris, and asked the meaning of it. According to an older student, this song was meant to praise the Virgin Mary. As he was walking home from school one day singing this song, he provoked the anger of the Jews of the city, whose hearts were possessed by Satan. They hired a murderer who slit the boys throat and threw the organic structure into a cesspool. The widow searched for her missing child, begging the Jews to tell her where her child might be found, but they refuse to help. When she found h im, although his throat was slit, he began to sing the Alma redemptoris. The other Christians of the city rushed to the child and carried him to the abbey. The local provost cursed the Jews who knew of this murder and ordered their death by hanging. Before the child was buried, he began to speak. The Virgin Mary had fit(p) a pearl on his tongue that allowed him to speak, despite his fatal wound, but when the pearl was removed he would finally pass on to heaven. The story ends with a lament for the young child and a curse on the Jews who perpetrated this crime. AnalysisThe Prioress Tale is overtly a religious tale centered around Christian principles and a devotion to the Virgin Mary, but within the warm affection that the Prioress shows for her Christian faith is a disquieting anti-Semitism that will be immediately obvious to the modern reader. The tale is an overwrought melodrama, replete with scenes of such banal sentimentalism and simplistic moral instruction. The tale is an una bashed celebration of motherhood. The guiding icon of the tale is the Virgin Mary, who serves as the exemplar for Christian values and the intervening spirit who sustains the murdered child before he passes on to heaven. Her mortal tally is the mother of the murdered boy, who dearly loves her son and struggles to find the boy when he is lost.