Miracles in The Man of Law's Tale

Chaucer's artistic purpose in adapting Nicholas Trivet's Life of Constance remains an open critical question. Critics have agreed unanimously that Chaucer's version of the story is superior in aesdietic terms, but the question of what constitutes these apparent qualitative improvements has been answered only in a very general, unsatisfactory way.1 At the risk of losing the broader perspective of a "reading" of The Man of Law's Tale as a whole, I will focus here on one aspect of Chaucer's unique redaction. Chaucer's use of Trivet's miracles reveals anodier instance of his originality and poignant tentativeness in transforming an "olde boke" into new Chaucerian art. The keynote of Chaucer's originality is his empirical oudook and his corresponding interest in human psychology and, specifically, in die problem of human knowledge. In Chaucer's hands, die didactic certainty of saint's legend is transformed into aesdietic ineffability. To evaluate a poetic adaptation is to face a singular problem. One must account for not only apparent differences of taste and insight, but also for die complex aesdietic attitude—what Lounsbury called the "personal equation"2—supporting and informing them. I have chosen die miracles for extended comment because, first of all, diey reveal crucial moments of diematic intention in both Trivet and Chaucer, if in very different ways. Furthermore, since Chaucer consistendy carries over the general framework of character and incident in Trivet's story, an evaluative comparison gives us a sharper view of what is distinct in Chaucer's version beyond die literal repetition of names and incidents.3 We can glimpse something of the "deep structure" of Chaucer's poetry.