Anger with God and Man: The Social Contexts of Melibee's Anger
John L. Griffith Among modern readers, the Tale of Melibee has
more detractors than admirers, and some critics find it an
uninspired reproduction of a moral treatise or a satire on such
lengthy works.1 The multitude of contradictions does pose an
obstacle to uncovering in the tale a clear ethical or political
message about anger or any other topic. As Ruth Waterhouse and
Gwen Griffiths close reading of the competing claims made by
Prudence demonstrates, the text can seem at times to deconstruct
itself and leave the reader to conclude that "as a moral lesson,
the tales sentens/signification is finally indeterminable"
(339). But as Judith Ferster argues, such contradictions follow
rather than satirize the tradition of the Secretum Secretorum
and the Furstenspeigel (or mirror for princes) genre (93). To
Fersters argument that the contradictions are themselves the
topic of Chaucers political commentary, I would add that the
contradictionsthe convolute