Lords, Churls, and Friars: The Return to Social Order in The Summoner's Tale

Author / Editor
Georgianna, Linda.

Title
Lords, Churls, and Friars: The Return to Social Order in The Summoner's Tale

Published
Susanna Greer Fein, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds. Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in The Canterbury Tales. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 29 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 149-72.

Description
In SumT, exchanges between the friar and the lord of the manor illuminate the friar's bourgeois relationship with Thomas. When Thomas "pays" the friar with a fart, and the friar appeals to the social hierarchy represented by the feudal lord of the manor, the friar's social aspirations are "sharply but comically checked."

Alternative Title
Rebels and Rivals: The Contestive Spirit in the Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer Subjects
Summoner and His Tale.