16 minute read

terances” by Ryan Carroll

Performing Understandings: The Prioress’ Tale, Orientalism,

and Austinian Performative Utterances

Ryan Carroll, The George Washington University

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Prioress’ Tale, one of the most intriguing and ambivalent entries in The Canter-

bury Tales, is a rich work that offers insight into the simultaneous power and conflict inherent to speech. In this

paper, I will endeavor to study this speech conflict through the lens of J.L. Austin’s “Performative Utterances”

and Edward Said’s Orientalism, studying the way in which language manifests as a potent force in the poem,

with utterances themselves altering both material and psychic conditions. Using Austin’s Speech Act Theory

and Said’s theory of Orientalism in a pragmatic linguistic analysis of the text, the entirety of The Prioress’ Tale1

can be viewed as a series of speech acts, all of which produce powerful forces of utterance that, through rheto-

ric, enact ideologies into reality.

Considered this way, we may find that both the text and metatext of The Prioress’ Tale are comprised of

a number of speech acts, which, beyond making simple descriptive proclamations, perform rhetorical positions

into concrete realities—even, at times, doing so unintentionally. Within the story, the character of Christian boy,

in performing a song, unintentionally asserts an ideological affront against the city’s Jewish community, while

Satan’s manipulative description of the boy’s song functions to assert another ideology that turns the Jewish

crowd against the boy. Metatextually, Chaucer’s narrator utters the story in such a way as to rhetorically sep-

arate the Prioress from himself, implying a kind of irony to the tale and its problematic Orientalist rhetoric—

while simultaneously, the very utterance of The Prioress’ Tale also edifies a problematic conception of the East,

regardless of any ironic intent. Thus, The Prioress’ Tale, Orientalism, and “Performative Utterances” all work

to shed light on one another. With Austin’s framework in mind, The Prioress’ Tale can serve to expand the idea

of performative utterances, emphasizing that speech acts contain a rhetorical power of utterance (a concept that

Austin indirectly posited) that can often occur inadvertently, but that nonetheless performs certain understand-

ings of the world into existence, consequently producing tangible consequences—often, in such a way that may

be divorced from any real intention.

Before going further, it is critical to establish the precise nature of Austin’s and Said’s rhetoric. Said’s

Orientalism investigates the phenomenon in which Western authors conceive of the East (“Orient”) as a sort of

alien Other, thereby defining the West as a superior “civilized” power. The pattern of Orientalism, Said explains,

largely manifests on the surface of a text, building its most basic ideas around the assumption of the East as an

exotic and uncivilized domain separate from the West. Indeed, he specifies that Western authors, when engaging

in Orientalist rhetoric, strategically locate themselves in relation to the East, creating narratives that alienate,

exoticize, and deprive agency from the East in order to ultimately reinforce a hierarchical dynamic of control

over it. In assessing the power of Orientalist rhetoric, furthermore, Said argues that Orientalism’s power extends

beyond simple theory or propaganda, and that “the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought,

imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West…[the West and East] sup-

port and to an extent reflect each other” (Said 1869). Thus, Orientalist rhetoric does not simply describe the

Western imaginings of the East, but rather brings into being a certain version of the East, resulting in real conse-

quences.

Austin’s “Performative Utterances,” in a similar fashion, examines the way in which speech extends

beyond simply describing reality and instead works to perform certain understandings of reality. Many of these

utterances, called speech acts, work to enact specific social functions; the utterances of “I now pronounce you

husband and husband” or “I sentence you to twenty years in prison,” for example, performatively reify a mar-

riage or a judicial sentence. Other speech acts, however, are subtler in their effect, appearing as descriptive state-

ments but actually serving to perform a rhetorical position that perceives the world in a certain manner; indeed,

Austin says, “when we state something or describe something or report something, we do perform an act which

is every bit as much an act as an act of ordering or warning.” (Austin 1299). Even when purporting to state

the fact of an event or description, an utterance works to implicitly influence the thoughts and actions of those

who receive it, conveying a description of “truth” that is itself grounded in a certain understanding of that truth;

Austin labels this power as the “force of utterance.” Ultimately, however, Austin does not fully articulate the

nature of a force of utterance, simply suggesting that utterances are frequently rhetorical and often fall outside a

simple true-false dichotomy. Subsequently, he offers that it is necessary to explore performative utterances fur-

ther. In the same way, Austin does not delve deeply into the intentionality behind speech acts, mentioning that

17 question of whether these utterances necessarily require intentionality. It is in this space of ambiguity that The

Prioress’ Tale and Orientalism may offer valuable insight into Austin’s theory, providing powerful examples of

the way in which utterances act not simply to describe fact but to assert, intentionally or unintentionally certain

understandings of the world.

Within The Prioress’ Tale, the power of performative speech is rather explicit. The central figure of the

tale is a young Christian boy in a city cohabited by Jews and Christians, who becomes captivated by and con-

stantly sings a song in praise of the Virgin Mary—leading to his murder in the city’s Jewish ghetto. Immediately

clear in the story is that an utterance as simple and straightforward as a song carries a performative force of

utterance, and that this force is carried regardless of intention. Indeed, the boy is referred to three separate times

as being “innocent,” and the narrator notes that “The swetnesse his herte perced so / Of Cristes mooder that, to

hire to preye, / He kan nat stynte of syngyng by the weye” (Chaucer 555-557)—he sings not out of malintent,

but rather because he is enraptured with the song and believes in the Christian understanding of the world that

it reflects. Regardless of his intention, however, the boy’s utterance of the song still produces tangible conse-

quences: its assertion of Christian truth is taken as a religious affront against the Jewish community, and the boy

is subsequently murdered for it. In this way, one can see that the song is more than a simple song, more than a

descriptive utterance of Christian faith. Rather, it is an utterance that performs a Christian understanding of the

world—an understanding that poses an existential attack against the city’s Jews.

The Tale further explores the power of utterance through the figure of Satan, who is able to use a seem-

ingly descriptive utterance to propound a particular understanding of the world, which in turn produces real

consequences. Soon after the boy begins singing the song on the way home from school, Satan appears to the

inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto:

[Satan] Up swal, and seide, “O Hebrayk peple, allas!

Is this to yow a thyng that is honest,

That swich a boy shal walken as hym lest

In youre despit, and synge of swich sentence,

Which is agayn youre lawes reverence?”

Fro thennes forth the Jues han conspired

This innocent out of this world to chace. (Chaucer 560-566)

to kill the boy. Rather, through the “simple” act of description—loaded with language implying a certain un-

derstanding of the world—he is able to rhetorically assert his conception of morality and shape the thoughts of

the Jewish listeners, leading them to murder the boy. Consequently, we may find that Satan’s utterance carries

power in its very performance; profoundly, the seemingly basic act of description has propounded a particular

conception of the world and thus instigated real action. Here, we may recall Austin’s assertion that few, if any,

utterances actually describe real truth or falsehood, instead propounding (and reifying) a particular conception

of the world in the act of speech. In this case, Satan’s descriptive utterance has instead proposed and created a

version of the world, which, in turn, produces material consequences—namely, the death of the young boy.

Further, in the events following the boy’s death, the Tale affirms the power of utterance to perform

certain conceptions of the world. After the murder, the boy’s mother frantically searches for him in the Jewish

quarter, and, after discovering his body, begins to weep—whereupon God intercedes and allows the boy to sing:

O grete God, that parfournest thy laude

By mouth of innocentz, lo, heere thy myght! […]

Ther he with throte ykorven lay upright,

He Alma redemptoris gan to synge

So loude that al the place gan to rynge.

[Subsequently, the city’s Christian assemble to witness the miracle, prompting the magistrate to arrest

and execute the Jews aware of the murder] (Chaucer 607-608, 611-613)

In the poem’s own words, God Himself uses the boy as a conduit to “parfournest [His] laude”, perform the ideo-

logical power of Christianity; the very utterance of the song explicitly reifies the Christian understanding of the

world, which consequently produces tangible effects. As with Satan’s manipulation of the Jewish citizens, the

boy’s miraculous utterance does not explicitly demand any justice, nor does it make any proclamation. Rather,

in performing its Christian ideology through speech, the utterance takes on a rhetorical power that prompts its

auditors to (in the internal logic of the story) avenge the boy’s death. Thus, the events of the entire Tale work to

offer a distinct way in which Austin’s power of utterance can be conceived. As Satan’s deception and the boy’s

miraculous song indicate, even simple songs and descriptions each carry within them a certain performative

power that enacts their respective understandings of the world and works to persuade others of these under-

standings. Furthermore, in examining the disparity between the innocuous intentions of the boy’s singing and its

ance—that utterances perform understandings of truth regardless of what the utterer means by them.

Beyond the events within The Prioress’ Tale itself, the story’s metatextual framing further speaks to the

nuanced power of performative utterance—and to its ramifications for Said’s Orientalism. Crucially, the events

of The Canterbury Tales are not narrated by an omniscient voice but are rather reported by a human Narrator

(who this paper will refer to as the Chaucer-Narrator), who describes other characters sharing their own stories.

Thus, the very fabric of The Prioress’ Prologue and Tale can be seen as two overlapping utterances: that of the

Chaucer-Narrator narrating the frame story, and that of the Prioress voicing her own tale. This tension is sharply

clear when viewed through the lens of the text’s proto-Orientalist depiction of the East. In particular, the Prior-

ess’ utterance of her story, and the othering rhetoric that she employs in describing the East, functions to fulfill

Said’s vision of Orientalist texts performing the false Orient into existence. On the other hand, the intrusion of

the Chaucer-Narrator’s narratorial voice into the Tale also works as a powerful descriptive utterance, one that

performs an understanding of the Prioress that undermines her problematic rhetoric.

Though not central to the plot of the Tale, the descriptive utterances that the Prioress employs in estab-

lishing the story subtly work to perform a kind of early Orientalist ideology through the text. In the opening

lines of the text, the Prioress’ narration immediately works to set the Tale not in the familiar West but in the

alien, vaguely hostile East:

Ther was in Asye, in a greet citee,

Amonges Cristene folk a Jewerye,

Sustened by a lord of that contree

For foule usure and lucre of vileynye,

Hateful to Crist and to his compaignye; (Chaucer 488-494)

Here, the Prioress strategically locates herself as an entity separate from the nonspecific-but-malignant East—

while simultaneously implying, through the very fact of her utterance, that she has the authority to rhetorically

identify the East itself. In this way, her rhetoric can be seen as distinctly Orientalist in its nature, beginning to

build “images, themes, and motifs [of the East] that circulate in [her] text—all of which add up to…ways of ad-

dressing the reader, containing the Orient, and…representing it or speaking in its behalf” (Said 1881). Further,

the Prioress’ othering description of the East functions, as Said argues, to constitute a false version of the Orient

for Western consumption—performing the Orient into existence through her utterance. Her utterance of her

treatment of the “Orient” by the West. Consequently, it is clear that, much as the utterances of the Christian boy

and Satan performed certain understandings and wrought certain consequences within the Tale, the oration that

forms the tale also carries significant power of utterance, enacting the dynamic of Orientalism itself into exis-

tence. This occurrence can work to expand the understanding of Austin’s power of utterance to include perfor-

mances not just of tangible realities, but also of purely conceptual ones—as both of these realities are deeply

influential on tangible events.

Simultaneously, the orating voice of the Chaucer-Narrator supplies a performative utterance of its own,

one which can be read as delegitimizing the narrative authority (and, one would imagine, the power of utter-

ance) of the Prioress. In his reported utterance of The Prioress’ Tale, the Chaucer-Narrator strives to separate his

narratorial utterances from those of the Prioress herself, doing so more strongly than in any of the other stories

in The Canterbury Tales. In the opening of The Prioress’ Prologue, Chaucer explicitly distinguishes the Prior-

ess’ narration from that of his own narrator:

O Lord, oure Lord, thy name how merveillous

Is in this large worlde y-sprad—quod she—

Forn night only thy laude precious

Parfourned is by me of dignitee, (Chaucer 453-456)

Here, unique to all of The Canterbury Tales, the Chaucer-Narrator uses the phrase “quod she” to indicate that

the utterance of the story originated from the Prioress—an insert that should be unnecessary, given that The

Prioress’ Prologue, as with the other prologues, are uttered by only one speaker. Yet, the Chaucer-Narrator’s

insertion persists, introducing a doubt into the Prioress’ narration and separating his narrative from himself.

Indeed, he even positions “quod she” as the first part of a rhyme, not only emphasizing the phrase’s importance

but also solidifying the phrase as an irreplaceable component of the poem’s rhythm. As a result, this utterance

by the Chaucer-Narrator is able to perform an understanding of the Prioress that acts counter to the Prioress’

own narrative, offering the chance, if his power of utterance is strong enough, to reconsider the entire poem. In

this way, the Chaucer-Narrator’s utterance may function to metatextually characterize the poem, casting it not

as an Orientalist text but as a purposefully, ironically problematic one. Moreover, Chaucer makes an additional

effort to separate his voice from the Prioress’ in the body of the Tale:

O martir sounded to virginitee,

The whyte Lamb celestial—quod she— (Chaucer 579-581)

Again, despite the fact that the Prioress would be the only character speaking in this tale, the Chaucer-Narrator

intrudes midway through the tale to call attention to the reported nature of the Prioress’ utterance, separating it

from his own narrative authority. Thus, the utterance, beyond simply describing the events of the frame story,

may be seen as actively performing some subtext of The Prioress’ Tale, manifesting (if the reader considers

the power of utterance strong enough) an understanding of the Prioress’ unreliability. This interplay between

utterances reflects another crucial lens through which Austin’s power of utterance might be understood: Speech

acts manifest understandings of each other, with even basic descriptions, such as Chaucer’s description of the

Prioress’ utterance, being able to undermine or reinforce an utterance’s power to convey a certain understanding

of truth as the Truth.

Of course, the ability of one performative utterance to undermine another depends on whether it has

considerable power of utterance. Viewed through the lens of Said’s Orientalism, it is clear that, despite the

Chaucer-Narrator’s apparent delegitimization of the Prioress’ utterance, the Orientalist ideology and effect of

her utterance still remain. Although the Chaucer-Narrator’s intrusion into the Prioress’ oration can be interpret-

ed as a strike against her credibility, the fact remains that this intrusion is subtle, available only through a deep

stylistic analysis of the Chaucer-Narrator’s utterance. The Prioress’ utterance, on the other hand, lingers on the

surface of the text, performing the Orient into existence regardless of any irony; this Orientalism exists plainly

on the surface, and, as Said himself says, “[Orientalist analysis] does not entail analysis of what lies hidden in

the Orientalist text, but analysis rather of the text’s surface, its exteriority to what it describes…Orientalism is

premised on exteriority” (Said 1882). Thus, even despite the Chaucer-Narrator performing the unreliability of

the Prioress’, the fact remains that the Prioress’ very utterance is a strong Orientalist statement that endures in

the text. Poignantly, much as the Christian boy performed, through song, an understanding of the world that led

to his death despite his pure intentions, the Prioress’ utterance performs an Orientalist conception of the world

that lingers, regardless of any ironic intention of Chaucer or the Chaucer-Narrator. Clearly, then, the intention

behind an utterance is inconsequential if it is not able to alter the power of the utterance’s performance.

Ultimately, The Prioress’ Tale offers the opportunity to examine and expand the phenomenon that Austin

describes in “Performative Utterances,” and to reckon this phenomenon with that of Said’s Orientalism. Clearly,

both the textual and metatextual utterances within the Tale serve to indicate that, as Austin began to theorize,

existence certain understandings of the world. Indeed, analyzing the Tale can work to develop from certain

gaps in Austin’s theory, advancing his understanding of the power of utterance and emphasizing performative

utterances may emerge in the absence of intention, thereby leading to complex felicitous and infelicitous conse-

quences. Further, viewed in light of the Tale and Orientalism specifically, several elements of powers of utter-

ance become clear. First, even descriptive statements contain rhetorically loaded language, and may perform

understandings of the world that produce real consequences (as evidenced by the utterances within the text of

the boy, Satan, and God-through-the-boy). Second, speech acts may subtly perform conceptual paradigms, such

as Orientalism (as evidenced by the Prioress’ oration of Orientalist rhetoric). Third, speech acts may work to

perform certain conceptions of and exercise certain influence over one another (evidenced by the Chaucer-Nar-

rator’s narrative intrusion into the Tale). Finally, intentionality does not, by any means, determine the power of

utterance (as evidenced by the lingering effect of the Prioress’ Orientalism). In considering Austin’s “Performa-

tive Utterance” further, it is critical to examine the many valences that speech acts may take on, with the ulti-

mate consideration that practically all statements, no matter how “descriptive” they may appear, still function to

perform a certain understanding of the world and still strive to make listeners subscribe to this understanding.

Works Cited

Austin, John L. “Performative Utterances.” From Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism Second Edition, ed.

Vincent B. Leitch, W.W. Norton, 2010, pp. 1289-301

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue: Authoritative Text, Sources

and Backgrounds, Criticism. Eds. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson, W.W. Norton, 2005.

Said, Edward. Excerpt from Orientalism. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism Second Edition. ed. Vin-

cent B. Leitch, W.W. Norton, 2010, pp. 1866-88.

“Untitled,” Madison Golden, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is from: