{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect08_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect08_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect08_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/eng/mect/mect08.htm","summary":"This is an excerpt from Geoffrey Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales* (late 14th century), specifically the Introduction and Prologue to the Man of Law's Tale \u2014 a framing passage in Middle English verse that sets up one of the pilgrims' storytelling turns. The Host observes the time by calculating the sun's angle (roughly 10 a.m. on April 18th), then urges the company not to waste the day, invoking Seneca's maxim that lost time, unlike lost money, can never be recovered. He calls on the Man of Law to deliver his promised tale. The Man of Law agrees but complains that Chaucer has already told so many love stories \u2014 cataloguing figures from Ovid and classical tradition (Dido, Medea, Leander, Penelope, etc.) \u2014 that good material is scarce; notably, he praises Chaucer for avoiding morally repugnant tales like those of Canacee or Apollonius of Tyre. The Prologue then shifts into a rhyme-royal meditation on poverty: a bitter, vivid address to the poor about shame, hunger, social abandonment, and the temptation to steal or beg, contrasted with praise of wealthy merchants as men of worldly knowledge. The distinctive move here is the Man of Law's self-referential literary criticism of Chaucer himself \u2014 a rare moment of meta-fictional commentary within the Tales \u2014 followed by a tonal lurch into class-conscious social observation before the tale proper begins.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":1033}