{"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_mect42_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect42_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect42_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/mect42.htm","summary":"This is the Canon's Yeoman's Prologue from Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales* (late 14th century), a Middle English frame-narrative in verse. A Canon (a minor cleric) and his Yeoman ride hard to catch the Canterbury pilgrimage group, and the Yeoman immediately begins boasting of his master's wondrous, almost magical abilities. The Host's probing questions gradually unravel the boast: the Yeoman reveals they live skulking in back alleys like thieves, his face is fire-blackened from labor, and their great \"craft\" is in fact alchemy \u2014 a science that perpetually promises to multiply gold but always fails, leaving its practitioners beggars who deceive others to borrow money. When the Canon realizes his servant is exposing their fraudulent trade, he threatens the Yeoman into silence, then flees in shame when the Yeoman refuses to stop. Freed of his master, the Yeoman vows to reveal everything, framing alchemy as an addictive con that has ruined him even as he could never bring himself to abandon it. The prologue is notably distinctive for its insider's ambivalence: the Yeoman condemns the practice while confessing he still cannot let it go, giving Chaucer's anti-alchemical satire an unusually self-implicating psychological edge.","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":1378}