The BBC “Man of Law’s Tale”: Faithful to the Tradition

he history of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” is complicated, as is the narrative itself. Part love story, part saint’s life, Chaucer’s tale of the extremely pious, self-effacing Custance exhibits a pathos that is little appreciated by modern readers. While literary audiences in the medieval period were “unusually receptive” to deeply emotional tales (Frank 179), since the late nineteenth century critics have generally responded with “little sympathy, sometimes even with hostility” to the passive and deeply religious Custance (Keiser 121). After a period of relative critical neglect, during which critics focused on the flaws of the storyteller as a way to excuse the perceived dullness of the story, the tale began to receive greater attention as feminist and new historicist critics concentrated on the questions it raises regarding race and difference. As Carolyn Dinshaw points out, by the 1970s CusThe BBC “Man of Law’s Tale”: Faithful to the Tradition