ABSTRACT
On the road to Canterbury, Chaucer's Prioress, Madame Eglantine, tells a shocking tale. This romantically named, exquisitely mannered nun relates the story of the torment and killing by Christians of a group of Jews in retaliation for the Jews' alleged complicity in the murder of a Christian child. Much has been written about what this narrative means, but few scholars have addressed the curious detail of geographical setting. The opening line of the tale sets the events “in Asye in a greet citee,” and it is this setting that I will interrogate to see what it can yield for interpretation of a particularly challenging late-medieval poem.
