estates satire

   The term estates satire applies to a satirical tradition in medieval literature that might occur in any number of genres (from sermon to moral tract to DREAM VISION) and in most languages of western Europe, in particular Latin, French, and English. The form seems to have originated in the 12th century, but it became particularly popular in the 13th and 14th centuries, culminating in CHAUCER’s use of the form in the GENERAL PROLOGUE to his CANTERBURY TALES.

   In medieval political and social theory, society was divided into three “estates” or classes. One of the earliest expressions of this ideal is in the work of the English Benedictine monk AELFRIC at the beginning of the 11th century: Society was made up of three estates, according to Aelfric and other conventional theorists—that is, the clergy (those who pray), the aristocracy (those who fight), and the peasants (those who work). The clergy were expected to care for the souls of all members of the Christian society. The laborers were supposed to care for the physical needs of all members of the society, making sure all were fed and clothed. The nobles were needed to defend the society from dangers from without and disruption from within. Each estate relied upon the others in a mutually dependent relationship. Thus if all the estates performed their tasks properly, society would thrive in peace and justice, and its individual members would be content and happy.

   Of course in practice, society did not function so smoothly. For one thing, the estates were not static, and after Aelfric’s time, the estate of the clergy became more complex, as new orders of friars were formed and recognized in the 13th century— friars who by the 14th century would become notorious for corrupt practices. A growing number of new occupations and an economy that was shifting gradually from land to money were making the laboring estate more complex by creating a growing middle class in the cities. Power struggles between the nobility and high-ranking clergy also manifested the discrepancy between reality and the ideal of the good society.

   Like most satire, estates satire starts with a notion of the ideal and demonstrates how far it is from reality as expressed in the text. Estates satire usually involves more than the three basic estates, but examines a number of more specific occupations, including popes, bishops, priests, kings, knights, monks, friars, burghers,merchants, farmers, and so on. Sometimes women were seen as a separate category within society, or might be divided into wives, widows, and maidens. The satire would delineate the duties of the particular “estate,” and discuss the characteristics of, for example, friars in general. Most important, the satire would then focus on the failings of the members of that occupation. Specifically, the vices and abuses most commonly associated with each occupation were dealt with. Often those failings would be presented as the cause of the generally decayed state of human society.When the estates fail to fulfill their functions, they fail to support society as they should.

   Estates satire flourished in the difficult times of the later 14th century. In England, the opening vision of LANGLAND’s PIERS PLOWMAN, describing a “fair field full of folk,” is a survey of the various estates of English society and of their various failures. John GOWER’s Latin DREAM VISION poem called VOX CLAMANTIS (“The Voice of One Crying”) begins with a scathing diatribe against the peasants who revolted against what Gower saw as the natural order of society in 1381; it is an earnest estates satire that does not spare the other estates for their failure to perform their proper functions to preserve the unity and peace of the Christian society of England.

   Chaucer’s General Prologue is a text that relies heavily on the estates satire tradition. But Chaucer expands the tradition by creating portraits that are not simply representatives of different estates (a Nun, a Friar, a Miller), but are also individuals (Madame Eglantine, Huberd, Robin), and Chaucer—emulating JEAN DEMEUN’s treatment of personified abstractions in the ROMAN DE LA ROSE—has them speak for themselves, so that the reader gets an ambiguous picture of the character’s actions since they are seen from the character’s own point of view. Fraud, greed, and hypocrisy are common, but the irony of the situation is how unaware of their own faults the pilgrims are when they speak for themselves.

   Bibliography

   ■ Cooper,Helen.“Langland’s and Chaucer’s Prologue,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987): 71–81.

   ■ Leicester, H.Marshall. “Structure as Deconstruction: ‘Chaucer and Estates Satire’ in the ‘General Prologue,’ ” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 241–261.

   ■ Mann, Jill. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

   ■ Strohm, Paul. Social Chaucer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.