The Narrative Tactics of Chaucer's Monk

Recent criticism on Chaucer's Monk often reads the Monk through discourses of subjectivity. Working from Michel de Certeau's theory of the tactic, this article argues that the Monk should best be understood not as a subject but as a rhetorical representation of the monastic estate, and that his tale should be read as an affective (and effective) rhetorical weapon against that estate's enemies, the noble Knight and the civic-elite Host who is also the governor of the game. By deploying tragedies, which take the noble estate as their subject, the Monk shows how the monastic estate's forms of possession, especially collection, position it to be better able than the nobility to maintain its grasp on wealth in the face of chance. The monastic habit of patience becomes an effective tactic for dealing with the pain of fortune.