SOURCE: “James Joyce and Chaucer's Prioress,” in English Language Notes, Vol. 2, No. 2, December, 1964, pp. 127–32.

In the following essay, Lyons considers the influence of Chaucer's Prioress' Tale on Joyce's “Araby.”

When Joyce's commentators mention the influence of Chaucer, the detail they cite most frequently is the character of Molly Bloom, which reminds them in its licentiousness and common sense of the Wife of Bath.¹ I think it can be shown, however, that Joyce's use of Chaucer is more than casual. There is no doubt of his knowledge of and respect for the writings of Chaucer. In 1912 he wrote, as part of an examination for a degree from the University of Padua, an essay on “The Good Parson of Chaucer.”² Six years earlier he had written to Grant Richards, who had requested that some allegedly obscene passages be deleted from Dubliners before he published it, “… I suspect that it [English...