Making and Unmaking: Maternal Rhetoric in Fragment VI of the Canterbury Tales

ABSTRACT This article explores various kinds of maternal rhetoric featured by a series of female speakers in Fragment VI of the Canterbury Tales: from the Physician’s Tale, the Goddess Nature fostering new birth and the maiden Virginia imitating Christ’s mother; and from the Pardoner’s Tale, Mother Earth enabling both germination and burial in her womb of clay. Each figure represents a point in the life cycle and advances a rhetoric related to it: the repetitious garrulity that marks Nature’s maternity, the disciplined brevity that indicates Virginia’s youthful chastity and foreshortened life, and the silence that withholds Mother Earth’s knowledge of divine secrets regarding death. In Fragment VI, amplification and abbreviation, as well as methods for them taught by trivium masters such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf and John of Garland, are aligned with moments in the human lifespan, and examples of maternal rhetoric showcase word painting, Marian speech, and more.