ABSTRACT
There was a venerable distinction made clear in medieval French literature (as at the beginning of Le Conte de la Charrette (or Lancelot) by Chretien de Troyes) between matiere — the ‘matter’ or substance of the story — and sen — the manner o f its telling, its attitudes, points of view, etc.; in general, the interpretation or spirit or theme of the work.1 The distinction was made explicit by learned men but it is implicit in all traditional retelling of tales. Chaucer constantly alters the sen of his matiere. He has the term ‘matter’, which before The Miller’s Tale he claims he cannot ‘falsen’ (CT, I, 3175), and that word often stands for the substance of his story. Chaucer uses the word extraordinarily often in Troilus and Criseyde, usually of literary material. The nearest verbal equivalent for Chaucer to sen is ‘sen tence’ meaning ‘inner meaning’, as it occurs in the very relevant discussion in the Prologue to The Tale of Meliheus of the variants between the four Gospels which
‘Sentence’ is rather more restricted than sen to serious inner mean ing, and is often opposed to ‘solaas’, which is entertainment pure (and impure) and simple, but the difference between basic ‘matter’ and verbal formulation and its interpretation is still inherent here. It goes against the more modem dictum that meaning is indistinguish able from actual words and that therefore paraphrase is impossible;
though that has its own related truth — different words, different implications at least. Chaucer’s own works, almost all of them retell ings, illustrate both concepts.
