Identity In Chaucer's The Summoner

Is He or Isn’t He?: Queer Theory and Sexual Identity in Chaucer’s The Summoner’s Tale Sauntering through The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Summoner, a blatantly immoral and perverted pilgrim, is a complex character who invokes the reader’s ire and astonishment in equal measure. The avaricious Summoner is described by Pilgrim Chaucer in less than flattering terms, accentuating the criminal activity he commits in the Church’s name, such as blackmail, bribery, and theft. Despite the mention of the Summoner’s immoral sexual relations with married women, there remains an air of mystery surrounding his sexuality. From his ambiguous association with a man who appears to be gay, to his preoccupation with all things anal, the enigma of his sexuality

Indeed, Poet Chaucer has exposed the Summoner as a man who cannot be defined simply in terms of “gay” or “straight,” but acts in a manner that is uniquely his own from the moment he is introduced.

In the General Prologue, the first mention of the Summoner is of his “saucefleem” face, marked by pustules and swollen with infection (625-7). Not even “quyk-silver… ne brymstoon,” or mercury and sulphur, could cure the painful mess (629). Leprosy is the probable culprit, but his appearance could also be from a late-stage syphilitic infection, a common sexually transmitted disease. Chaucer’s Tales are fully representative of the unbridled promiscuity of the day, and considering the lack of reliable barrier protection and any adequate form of antibiotic, the latter diagnosis is fully possible. Were the Summoner indeed afflicted with the French Gout, it would shout loudly his masculinity, albeit also his penchant for unclean prostitutes. Yet it is his masculinity that becomes questionable with the introduction of his traveling