Pitee runneth soone in gentil herte: Chaucer's Pity
Pitee renneth soone in gentil herte: Chaucer’s Pity
In his essay “Chaucer and Pite,” Douglas Gray records the relevant meanings of
pity taken from the NED current to Chaucer’s time as:
(1) The quality of being pitiful; the disposition to mercy or compassion, clemency, mercy, mildness or tenderness . . . (2) A feeling or emotion of tenderness aroused by the suffering, distress, or misfortune of another, and prompting a desire for its relief; compassion, sympathy . . . (3) a ground or cause for pity . . . and (4) a condition calling for pity (Gray, 179).
Pitee is used in various contextual manners in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, and The Franklins’ Tale, but each time the word is used, it indicates feeling. Even when the word means grief in The Knight’s Tale when the people mourn for Arcite’s death- “Allas, the pitee that was ther”- rather than compassion or sympathy as it usually refers to, the word still appeals to feelings since grief involves intense emotions (2833). Like gentilesse, trouthe, or franchise, pitee is an important word for Chaucer since he often employs the word and in a way tries to define its essence through its repetitions.
Pitee for Chaucer is a noble quality, and the relationship between pitee and
nobility is especially obvious in The Knight’s Tale. Used at least six times- in lines 920,
1751, 1761, 2833, 2878, 3083 - in The Knight’s Tale along with its variations such as
pitous and routhe, pitee is employed more frequently and more significantly to the tale
than any of the other tales. In the first scene in which the concept of pitee is a significant
factor, Theseus comes across a group of women weeping over the fact that the bodies of
their dead husbands killed in a battle in Thebes were denied proper burial by the lord
of Thebes, Creon. Begging Theseus for mercy and aid, one woman speaks:
Have mercy on oure wo and
In his essay “Chaucer and Pite,” Douglas Gray records the relevant meanings of
pity taken from the NED current to Chaucer’s time as:
(1) The quality of being pitiful; the disposition to mercy or compassion, clemency, mercy, mildness or tenderness . . . (2) A feeling or emotion of tenderness aroused by the suffering, distress, or misfortune of another, and prompting a desire for its relief; compassion, sympathy . . . (3) a ground or cause for pity . . . and (4) a condition calling for pity (Gray, 179).
Pitee is used in various contextual manners in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, and The Franklins’ Tale, but each time the word is used, it indicates feeling. Even when the word means grief in The Knight’s Tale when the people mourn for Arcite’s death- “Allas, the pitee that was ther”- rather than compassion or sympathy as it usually refers to, the word still appeals to feelings since grief involves intense emotions (2833). Like gentilesse, trouthe, or franchise, pitee is an important word for Chaucer since he often employs the word and in a way tries to define its essence through its repetitions.
Pitee for Chaucer is a noble quality, and the relationship between pitee and
nobility is especially obvious in The Knight’s Tale. Used at least six times- in lines 920,
1751, 1761, 2833, 2878, 3083 - in The Knight’s Tale along with its variations such as
pitous and routhe, pitee is employed more frequently and more significantly to the tale
than any of the other tales. In the first scene in which the concept of pitee is a significant
factor, Theseus comes across a group of women weeping over the fact that the bodies of
their dead husbands killed in a battle in Thebes were denied proper burial by the lord
of Thebes, Creon. Begging Theseus for mercy and aid, one woman speaks:
Have mercy on oure wo and
Cited: Benson, Larry, Ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. Cooper, Helen. The Canterbury Tales: Oxford Guides to Chaucer. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. University Press, 1979. Hussey, Maurice and A.C. Spearing and James Winny, An Introduction to Chaucer. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Spearing, A. C. Introduction. The Knight’s Tale. By Geoffrey Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.