Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

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Title: The Prioress, from the Ellesmere Chaucer
Creator:
Description: This miniature of the Prioress appears in the margin next to the first initial of the Prioress’s Tale in the Ellesmere Chaucer, one of the earliest and most elaborately decorated manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The Prioress, named Madame Eglentyne in the General Prologue, sits sidesaddle upon a brown horse with a silver-spangled harness and a fashionably groomed tail. She wears a habit of the Benedictine order, which consists of a white tunic, coif and wimple, and a black veil and cloak. She raises her right hand in a gesture of speech. The illuminator of the manuscript also chose to include Eglentyne’s coral rosary looped around her left wrist. A description of the prioress’s rosary with its golden brooch inscribed “Amor vincit omnia”(Love conquers all) concludes Chaucer’s ambiguous literary portrait of Eglentyne in the General Prologue, which focuses on her physical appearance and courtly manners instead of her spiritual accomplishments. The representation of the Prioress in the Ellesmere Chaucer is similarly ambiguous. Chaucer describes her as modest, educated, clean, and good-looking, all traits of the upper class. Yet Eglentyne makes a show of these qualities, suggesting that she cares more about how her fellow pilgrims perceive her social status than she does about her religious obligations as a nun. Furthermore, her garments are finely made of good cloth, and she wears her wimple stylishly pulled up to show off her high forehead. The artist who painted the miniature left out the Prioress’s most controversial attributes, especially her gold brooch with its secular motto and her spoiled lapdogs. Her cloak, however, is ornamented with a white trim to suggest its expensive quality, and her horse’s fine array further draws her portrayal into the secular realm. Scholars have moralized the literary and visual representations of the Prioress in both positive and negative directions, yet she appears almost ordinary and non-descript in the Ellesmere manuscript. Laura F. Hodges has emphasized the Prioress’s “ordinariness” in her study of Chaucerian dress and suggested that none of her clothing nor her accessories were inappropriate for a woman who headed a nunnery. Instead, Hodges contends that Chaucer’s portrayal of the Prioress was intentionally ordinary as a rhetorical device that allowed the poet to showcase his ability to craft a character who met literary ideals of feminine beauty without making a judgment about her religious or secular vocation.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Rights: Public Domain
Subject (See Also): Beauty Canterbury Tales Chaucer, Geoffrey (Poet) Dress, Clerical Nuns Pilgrimage Prioress (Literary Figure) Travel Women in Religion
Geographic Area: British Isles
Century: 15
Date: ca. 1410
Related Work: Digital images of the entire manuscript: http://dpg.lib.berkeley.edu/webdb/dsheh/heh_brf?Description=&CallNumber=EL+26+C+9
Current Location: San Marino, California, The Huntington Library
Original Location: England, S.E., likely in London
Artistic Type (Category): Digital Images; Manuscript Illuminations
Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Vellum (Parchment); Paint
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm): 39.4/28.4/
Inscription:
Related Resources: Farrell, Thomas J. "The Prioress's Fair Forehead," Chaucer Review 42:2 (2007), pp. 211-21; Hardy Long Frank, Mary. "Seeing the Prioress Whole," Chaucer Review 25:3 (1991), pp. 229-37; Hodges, Laura F. Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. DS Brewer, 2005. pp. 29-42 and 85-101; Stevens, Martin. "The Ellesmere Miniatures as Illustrations of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," Studies in Iconography 7-8 (1981-82), pp. 113-34; Wood, Chauncey. "Chaucer's Use of Signs in his Portrait of the Prioress," in Signs and Symbols in Chaucers Poetry, ed. John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, Jr. University of Alamaba Press, 1981. pp. 81-101;