ABSTRACT
The Monk’s choice of Old Testament stories, and reference to the purposes of the Christian God, earn him a place in this study. The Physician owes his to his more calculated use of stray religious elements: a Biblical emblem, a citation of the ‘doctour’, a moralising conclusion. The Physician had placed his innocent heroine in a world of youthful excess: of sloth, drunkenness and ‘folye’. The Pardoner’s tale begins similarly, with a compaignyeOf yonge folk that haunteden folyeAs riot, hasard, stywes and tavernes, Where as with harpes, lutes and gyternes. The Physician has a very literary way of describing the close links between wine and youthful passion. Vintners adulterate the better French wines with cheaper Spanish produce to immediate and dramatic effect. The solid ground on which the drunk thinks to stand ‘in Fyssh-strete or in Chepe’ has become the accident of his intoxication.
