George Orwell, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Anti-semitism

Copyright Jack Opie, Melbourne 2010

In 1999, when I wrote the first version of the essay below for publication in Gesher,
the journal of the Victorian Council of Christians and Jews, I was reasonably satisfied with it.
It argued that George Orwell was wrong in accusing Geoffrey Chaucer of anti-semitic
statements in The Prioress’ Tale. I believed the arguments I put forward were compelling.
It was therefore with some disappointment that, during a formal dinner not long after, certain
representatives of the Jewish ultra-orthodox community raised the matter to express their
polite but firm disagreement. Chaucer was anti-semitic, full stop. Following discussion of
the issues and my brief reiteration of the main points of the essay, I was met with the fish-eye
and an “if you say so” response. I could fully understand why these guys had strong opinions
on such things, of course; but I thought I’d rubbed healing balm on at least one small lump.
I’d better tell you where I’m coming from. I’m a not very committed Catholic who
will dutifully recite the Apostles’ Creed at baptisms and the like, justifying my position by
reminding myself that the creed is but a document thrashed out by a committee to help
reduce feuding between various Christian factions. Sympathetic to survivors of the
Holocaust, I’d joined the council to help out, mainly to do the books. But I found the
involvement so rewarding I stayed on for several years in various capacities. It was a
stimulating experience in so many respects - the repercussions of the Holocaust, the
responses of the various Christian denominations, other inter- and intra-faith issues and
tensions, the enthusiasm of the Jewish artistic community, and Zionism, Israel, the whole
political thing. I learnt a lot, and generally it was an enriching experience.
But not all I found congenial. One thing which particularly annoyed me was the
widespread tendency, coming most noticeably from non-Jewish quarters, to blame the origin
and rise of anti-semitism - and its culmination in the Holocaust - essentially on the
Christians, especially Catholics. Some even labelled Hitler a Christian, for god’s sake. And
never mind the persecution of the Jews long before the rise of Christianity, under the
Hellenised Egyptians for example, and then the Romans.
Please don’t get me wrong on this. I am no wide-eyed choirboy, nor do I crave a
bishop’s mitre. I’m most disturbed by a whole raft of Vatican policies, including its “out of
sight, out of mind” practices for handling the many cases of child abuse, both sexual and
disciplinary, perpetrated for so long by the clergy and allied laity. I’m right behind Hans
Kung in all these things. I’m very much aware too of the deplorable role the church played,
through both liturgy and theology, in the dubious matter of presenting Jews as needful of
salvation through baptism. It’s just that I don’t think the Roman Catholic Church should be
blamed unfairly for things it didn’t do, and in some cases even tried to prevent happening.
Such as the persecution and killing of witches, and the killing of Jews for the “blood libel”.
Enough. At the outset a few things need to be said about George Orwell, whose
allegation of Chaucer’s anti-semitism sparked my essay. Orwell’s genius is undoubted; in
addition to his two great anti-ideology novels, he was the author of a good many brilliant
essays. Such as Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool, in which he demolished an essay by Tolstoy
which belittled Shakespeare. Orwell’s words were withering, exposing Tolstoy in this
instance as being narrow-minded, rigid, ungenerous and a twister. And, to cap it off,
apparently lacking in self-knowledge. Orwell himself was none of these things. But he too
had his faults, forever jumping to conclusions, and holding onto them like a terrier with a
tennis ball. As in his essay Boy’s Weeklies, in which, in an otherwise discerning (and as
always, entertaining) piece, he incorrectly asserts that the style of the Billy Bunter stories was
constructed so that any number of writers could readily imitate it, and take over as required
to meet the ever-recurring deadlines. To his credit, Orwell unequivocally admitted his error
as soon as it was pointed out. Sensible terriers eventually let go of their tennis balls. But as
soon as the next ball comes bouncing along ...
As for Chaucer, most of what I have to say about him in embedded in the essay itself.
His assured place in the canon of English literature owes essentially to two things - his role,
followed through mightily by Shakespeare two centuries later, in elevating English to a
literary language, and in the humanity he captured so fully in his works. As Jonson said of
Shakespeare, Chaucer too was “not of an age but for all time”.
So to my essay, augmented to help address the concerns expressed by sceptics the first
time around. Just as Orwell hastened to the defence of his esteemed Shakespeare, so do I
gird up again to defend Chaucer. I know I am pitting myself against a giant; like some
barefoot peasant pushed into a rightful cause, I march off to battle, pitchfork in hand.

*****

ANTI-SEMITISM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE - THE CHAUCER CASE

In his 1945 essay Anti-Semitism in Britain, George Orwell said:

There was also literary Jew-baiting, which in the hands of Belloc,
Chesterton and their followers reached almost a Continental level
of scurrility. Non-Catholic writers were sometimes guilty of the
same thing in a milder form. There has been a perceptible anti-
Semitic strain in English literature from Chaucer onwards, and
without even getting up from this table to consult a book I can
think of passages which if written now would be stigmatised as
anti-Semitism, in the works of Shakespeare, Smollett, Thackeray,
Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and
various others. Offhand, the only English writers who, before the
days of Hitler, made a definite attempt to stick up for the Jews are
Dickens and Charles Reade.
Orwell provides enough here to inspire any number of essays. Much as one might
agree with his general thrust, his list presents problems. Why for example pick on
Shakespeare, an arguable case anyway, and not Marlowe, whose Jew of Malta has little of
the humanity of suffering, complex Shylock? And while Dickens is clearly supportive in his
portrayal of the noble old Jew Riah, what then of Fagin? My greatest concern, however, is
Orwell’s inclusion of one name in particular. In that one case, I believe, he dropped a
clanger; and a clanger dropped by a giant of Twentieth Century literature is a clanger
indeed.
At issue is the mention of Chaucer. Orwell is doubtless referring to The Prioress’ Tale
from the Canterbury Tales. After a prologue loaded with devotion and humility, The
Prioress starts her story as follows.
There was in Asie in a great citee
Among Christian folk, a Jewerye,
Sustained by a Lord of that contree
For foul usure and lucre of villainye
Each day a seven-year-old Christian, the son of a widow, would walk through the
Jewerye (ghetto) on his way to school. The little chap had recently learnt a hymn called O
Alma Redemptoris, which he sweetly sings as he goes. Affronted, the Jews hire an assassin
to silence him. The assassin cuts the boy’s throat and flings him into the ghetto cesspit.
Though surely dead, the boy once again sings O Alma Redemptoris. He sings so loudly that
his would-be tomb is discovered, he is removed to an abbey, and the Jews responsible are
tortured and hanged. The boy, though obviously dead and due for burial, continues to sing.
He explains that the Blessed Virgin had bidden him sing even in death, placing a pearl upon
his tongue to effect the miracle. The Abbot resolves the issue by removing the pearl. The
boy gives up the ghost, the Abbot falls to the ground, the monks prostrate themselves, and
the little martyr is buried. Towards the end of the tale, reference is made to Hugh of Lincoln
as another boy slain by the Jews.
To our eyes this is preposterous nonsense. If he were being sincere, Chaucer was
undoubtedly anti-semitic - and Orwell was right on the money.
 In recounting the extravagant tale to a young woman who had been educated in one of
the better Catholic ladies’ colleges, she smiled and told me, “that’s what we girls used to call
‘nunology’ ”. So we might ask - was one of the greatest figures in medieval literature more
naive than an 20th Century schoolgirl? Let’s look at his CV:
During his 57 years Chaucer was successively: prisoner of war in France, negotiator
for peace, married, father, diplomat in Spain, Esquire of the Royal Household of King
Edward III, campaigner with John of Gaunt in Picardy, negotiator on ports for commerce in
Genoa, Controller of Customs and Subsidy, on a secret mission in Flanders, negotiating a
royal marriage in France, securing Italian help in the war with France, involved in legal
action in an abduction case, Controller of the Petty Customs on Wines, Justice of the Peace in
Kent, Parliamentarian, widower, Clerk of the Kings Works (and robbed twice in that
capacity), Deputy Forester of the forest of North Petherton, and even in the last year of his
life engaged in “arduous and urgent matters” in the King’s service. And in his spare time
this man of affairs became “the father of English literature”. Clearly, Chaucer was anything
but naive - in the fullest sense he was a man of the world.
Before considering why Chaucer chose to put the pious story on the Prioress’ tongue
let’s consider its origins. The more credible elements are thought to derive from Hugh of
Lincoln, not the Bishop and Saint of that name but the so-called “Little St Hugh”, an eight or
nine year old whose body was found in a well at Lincoln in 1255. The Jews, numerous in
Lincoln, were blamed. Despite an appeal by the local Dominicans, ninety suspects were sent
to the Tower of London and eighteen were tortured and hanged.
Why did the worldly-wise Chaucer choose to make use of this story, and in such a
way? As the atrocities occurred only 90 years before Chaucer’s birth, it is likely that
Chaucer knew the facts of the matter, and perhaps even legal or ecclesiastical reports were
available to him. So why the extreme, “nunology” variation?
The first of several clues lies with certain of the other pilgrims in the group. Chaucer’s
world was essentially the world of medieval Christendom, and The Canterbury Tales
comments on both secular and religious elements of that world. As an example of his
commentary on the secular, Chaucer lampoons the high courtly style of The Knight’s Tale by
retelling much the same story as a bawdy ballad, in The Miller’s Tale - saying, in effect that
worldly position notwithstanding, under the skin we’re all the same. As to the religious,
about one third of the thirty pilgrims are clergy or religious, and in some cases descriptions
of their persons, or their prologues, or the stories they tell imply criticism of practices
surrounding the church. Thus we hear described a monk who loved hunting more than the
hard work of the holy, and the begging Friar (Limiter), an affable fellow who, it is suggested,
had seduced and impregnated many a young woman. Most evident of corruption is the
Pardoner, an unprincipled opportunist who in his prologue boasts of how he hawks fake
relics and sells pardons to sinners who fear damnation. More subtle is the criticism implied
in the Nun’s Priest tale - why was the fox’s “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” moral
given him to utter? Why him and not another of the pilgrims - the physician, or the man of
law? Another face of medieval Christianity is presented by the aforementioned begging Friar
who tells the story of a blackmailing Summoner to (incidentally?) invoke the fear of Hell, a
fear which empowered the church until the Twentieth Century - and of course paved the way
for scoundrels like the Pardoner.
The second clue lies with the character of the Prioress herself. In dramatic art the
speaker’s character is all-important, and what humbug Polonius or villainous Iago says must
be understood accordingly. In the General Prologue, Chaucer takes pains to depict the
Prioress as a person mindful of form and appearance - scrupulous in eating and drinking, and
concerned to appear proper and deserving of respect. Additionally:
She was so charitable and so piteous
She wolde weep if that she saw a mous
Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bledde.
Of smalle houndes had she that she fedde
With roasted flesh, or milk and wastel breed,
But sore wept she if one of heem were deed …
 We have here someone highly sentimental, expressly in respect of animals. I see a
contrast here with the unsentimental, committed Jesus of the Gospels, who firmly resisted the
restricting ties of family and home, and was not easily moved to tears, weeping only for the
death of Lazarus, a friend. It is of course no bad thing to love and care for animals. The law
rightly prohibits acts of needless cruelty to them, and pets can be exemplars of unconditional
love, at least to their owners. But some people show a selective, excessive devotion to
animals, and of these, some, it is to be hoped the smallest of minorities, have shown a
deplorably less concern for the welfare of humanity. Hitler and Goering spring to mind.
The view that Chaucer wrote anti-Semitic pieces has been widely expressed, even in
the journal Gesher, in which the earlier version of this essay was published. The contrary
and to my mind more correct view has emerged however from time to time, as for example
by Donald R. Howard, Professor of English at Stanford University. In his introduction to
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. A Selection. (Signet, New York, 1969) Howard
put it as follows:
The Prioress’ Tale, intended as one of doctrine, is unconsciously
immoral; she tells a story of a supposed “ritual murder” by Jews -
the ancient slander recently described in Malamud’s The Fixer.
Her unthinking, harsh anti-Semitism is an ironic contrast to the
genteel manners and delicate sensibility ascribed to her in the
General Prologue, and that contrast is profoundly sobering.
Professor Howard is too kind; is not her “delicate sensibility”, with its concern for dead
mice above living (if outsider) members of her own species, somewhat distorted?
So to the third and final clue to Chaucer’s choice of stories: the manner in which the
other pilgrims received the Prioress’ tale.
Whan said was all this miracle, every man
As sober as that wonder was to see.
As David Wright put it in a modern prose rendering, “everyone fell strangely silent, till
at last our host again began to crack his jokes”. One or two from piety perhaps, but most I
think from being dumbfounded. I have noticed the same reaction occasionally, once at a
rally of charismatics, once at a political policy conference, and once at a wedding breakfast -
in each case the speaker had said something so stupid that the rest of us had no option but to
stay silent. For how does one respond appropriately to stupidity?
What was Chaucer trying to achieve? A most penetrating observer of humankind, he
sought to portray a particularly insidious type of spreader of anti-Semitic slander - the
sanctimonious. Why should Chaucer have been so obscure in depicting a sanctimonious
bigot, leaving his message so cryptic as to deceive even Orwell? The answer is obvious, if
not heartening. In Chaucer’s time and place (and not only then and there, alas) it was not
always safe to confront anti-Semitism openly. Given the Church’s authority for some level
of disapproval through its mention of “perfidious Jews”, as the Catholic liturgy had it until
quite recent times, anti-Semitic views veiled in piety may have been well nigh unassailable.
What Chaucer wrote, therefore, had to be acceptable to those who might at the stroke of a
pen be accorded the power of life and death over accused heretics. A man as deeply
immersed in public life as Chaucer would have had many powerful enemies. To survive, a
social critic would need to be able to say one thing, chapter and verse, and mean, at least to
those with eyes to see, quite the opposite. Rather as the fox said in the aforementioned
Nun’s Priest’s Tale:
God yive him meschaunce
That is so undiscreet of governaunce
That jangleth when he sholde hold his pees.
- which is to say, if you hope to survive when bad things are happening all about you, keep
your trap shut. Subtle satire indeed. No wonder why, after so many centuries, and with so
much more blood soaked into the land, persecuted peoples don’t always recognise their
friends.
Chaucer’s work exemplifies what is great in literature. It endures through its
celebration of the common humanity of all peoples. I believe that this quality, as much as
any other, is a necessary condition for its enduring. The truly great artists - whatever their
field - painting, literature, politics, science, law - are universalists, simple in the
Shakespearian sense of possessing “simple truth miscalled simplicity” - uncomplicated souls
who see wondrously varied humanity as one - no male, no female; no black, no white; no
Jew, no Gentile; no bourgeoisie, no proletarian; no heterosexual, no homosexual - aware,
beyond intellectualising, that all groups of humans share in equal measure the virtues and
frailties that flesh is heir to.
May 2010

Jack Opie’s novel, The Minstrel’s Journey, is available as a Kindle book, ref. Amazon.com