Some Sidelights on Chaucer's Alice of Bath

Chaucer does not make extensive use of personal names for his pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales.1 A mere handful of them are distinguished by a personal appellation, and this is not usually employed more than once. Of the women on the pilgrimage, only one is named in her introductory portrait in the General Prologue; the Prioress's name, madame Eglentyne 'Sweet Briar,' introduced near the beginning of Chaucer's description of her, epitomizes everything that lady like personage aspires to be. Here, one feels, is a woman aptly named. Its very fitness tacitly invites pleasurable specula tion as to how such a name was acquired: could it have been bestowed at baptism or on taking the veil, or was it a self-conferred soubriquet, chosen in emulation of those courtly heroines of French romances upon whom, no doubt, the French taught at the convent of Stratford aiie Bowe inspired this devoted student to model herself?2 The Prioress's chapeleyne, the Second Nun, a dim figure beside her charming superior, is neither characterized nor named in the General Prologue, although in her o'wn Prologue she reveals a pedantic interest in the significance of names, citing various conjectural etymologies of her heroine's and pointing out their appropriateness to the personality and life of Saint Cecilia. Her concern with meaningful naming inevitably redirects attention to both the aptness of Egleniyne for an aspirant to cheere of court and its dubious suitability for one supposedly dedicated to religion.

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