Abstract

The role of music in Geoffrey Chaucer's (c. 1343 – 1400) writings is a well-trod territory academically. Tales such as the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, the Prioress’ Tale, and the Miller’s Tale famously centre song in their narratives and are frequently explored from a musical framework. Yet, the music of the Manciple's Tale has not received this scholarly treatment—presumably due to the disfavour with which readers and critics have traditionally regarded the tale, owing to its shocking violence, tonal inconsistency, and moral ambiguity. Though scholars have revisited and reevaluated the tale in recent decades, its musical elements have remained largely unexamined. 
This essay seeks to rectify this oversight. With sensitivity to the tale’s scholarly context and an analysis incorporating late antique and medieval anxieties around the capacity of music to manipulate emotion and debase rationality, this essay argues that it is music's appeal to instinct and unreason that motivates both the uxoricidal rage of the Manciple’s Phebus as well as his ensuing self-delusion. This analysis also situates the Manciple’s Tale’s treatment of music within the larger context of the Canterbury Tales, revealing an important connection between music and female agency in Chaucer’s catalogue.