page_title: The Man of Law's Tale
section_title: Sources
hierarchical_section_title: The Man of Law's Tale / Sources
caption_attribution_description: English: John Gower portrait; from BL Add MS 42131; identified by Sylvia Wright. See "The Author Portraits in the Bedford Psalter-Hours: Gower, Chaucer and Hoccleve". Held and digitised by the British Library.
context_page_description: The Man of Law's Tale is the fifth of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written around 1387. John Gower's "Tale of Constance" in Confessio Amantis tells the same story and may have been a source for Chaucer. Nicholas Trivet's Les chronicles was a source for both authors.
  Wurtele provides a detailed compilation of the differences between Trivet's Chronicle and the poems of Gower and Chaucer. Gower strove for vividness and shortened the tale in places. Chaucer expanded the tale and emphasizes the holiness of Constance and how she was favoured by heaven.
  Hagiographic motifs are most abundant in Chaucer's version, e.g. “the miracles God works though Custance and the way she is miraculously fed while at sea”.[22] Wurtele observes that Chaucer makes frequent use of the adjective "hooly" but Gower never uses this word.
context_section_description: The tale is based on a story within the Chronicles of Nicholas Trivet but the major theme in the tale, of an exiled princess uncorrupted by her suffering, was common in the literature of the time. Her tale is also told in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and both are similar to the verse Romance Emaré, and the cycle is generally known as the "Constance" cycle. The oldest known variant of this particular type is Vitae duorum Offarum. More distantly related forms of the persecuted heroine include Le Bone Florence of Rome, and Griselda. An incident where Constance is framed for murder by a bloody dagger appears to be a direct borrowing from Crescentia.
caption: GowerexMS42131f46v
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