“Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in PreindustrialĮurope.” The Journal of Economic History. The Making of Chaucer’s English: A Study of Words. “’Whan He His Papir Soghte’ (Chaucer’s Cook’s Tale, A 4404).” Modern “At Sixes and Sevens: Occupational Status in theĬity of London from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century.” American “Class Distinction in Chaucer.” Speculum. “Introduction.” Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.Įveryday Theory. New York: Columbia U P, 1993.īourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. “’When He his ‘papir’ Soghte’ CT A-4404.” Modern Languageīoissonnade, P. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.īlenner-Hassett, R. “Explanatory Notes to The General Prologue.” The RiversideĬhaucer. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970.īenson, Larry D. “Women Traders in Medieval London.” The Economic Journal. Considered against the backdrop of what William Woods’ (1996) analysis of The Cook’s Tale describes as a “social structure defined by commerce” (190), and in relation to general work on Chaucer’s use of language (Cannon 1998) and terminology specific to The Cook’s Tale (Blenner-Hassett 1942 Call 1943), it becomes clear that Chaucer’s fragment indicts both the laterally mobile prodigal apprentice and the decadent hypocrisy of the Master through the linked subversion of license and guild authority.Ībram, A. Considered within the context of the General Prologue’s depiction of Roger the Cook who tells the tale, and the description of the Four Guildsmen who employ him, the narrative suggests the emergence of the binary pairing of prodigality and hypocrisy, both of which contribute to the breakdown of the social cohesion and concept of “ degree” so important to Chaucer’s Canterbury frame tale. Middle English, Chaucer, Marxist Theory, Spatial Theory, Medieval Guilds AbstractĬhaucer’s Cook’s Tale demonstrates the characterization of a riotous apprentice, the narrative depiction of conflict between that apprentice and his master, and that master’s issuing of a questionable “ papir” of “ acquitance” (4404 & 4411) to suggest provocatively linked definitions of class and depictions of order and transgression specific to the guild-oriented mercantile culture of Chaucer’s fourteenth-century London.

The cook's tale canterbury tales