Adultery’s Heirs

Abstract

The desire to produce in excess, and multiply profits exponentially, haunts the reproductive episodes of The Canterbury Tales. Instead, Chaucer argues, procreation and production should be grounded within sufficiency; men and women should only to seek to generate if they can do so from a place of contentment with their current state. Greed and the desire for multiplication become particularly prominent issues in tales of adultery, such as the Reeve’s Tale and Merchant’s Tale, and tales of human avarice, including the Summoner’s Tale and the Pardoner’s Tale. These are inappropriate modes of generation, Chaucer demonstrates, leading men to lose rather than to gain authority.