A Cart that Charged was with Hay: The Symbolism of Hay in Chaucer's "Friar's Tale."

Author / Editor
Costomiris, Robert.

Title
A Cart that Charged was with Hay: The Symbolism of Hay in Chaucer's "Friar's Tale."

Published
Neophilologus 104 (2020): 567-83.

Description
Describes hay as a symbol of ephemerality, materiality, and avarice in FrT and argues that "the summoner's urging his companion (a fiend) to seize a cart of hay . . . draws him closer to the very substance that symbolizes his own sinful propensities and secures the certainty of his damnation well before the actual event."

Chaucer Subjects
Friar and His Tale