What happens in Chapter 9 of The Canterbury Tales?
The Summoner's Tale begins as a sharp response to the Friar's previous story, which only lightly mocked friars. In this tale, a greedy friar named Thomas visits a sick man, also named Thomas, to beg for alms. He delivers a long, hypocritical sermon criticizing anger and praising poverty while clearly displaying his own desire for fine food and money. The friar flatters Thomas's wife, discovers that their child has recently died, and falsely claims that the friars of his convent predicted the death in a vision — a blatant lie aimed at gaining sympathy and cash. Annoyed by the friar's constant begging, Thomas offers him a "gift" concealed under his buttock. When the friar reaches for it, Thomas lets out a loud fart right into his hand. Embarrassed, the friar rushes to complain to the local lord, Sire Osewold. The lord's squire, Jankyn, then suggests a humorous "solution": dividing a fart equally among twelve friars using a cartwheel — each spoke carrying an equal share of wind to each friar's nose, while the friar who annoyed Thomas would get the hub. The tale concludes with hearty laughter, as the lord declares that Jankyn's cleverness deserves a new gown.
Analysis
Chaucer's Summoner crafts his tale like a meticulously designed revenge machine, with each component aimed at humiliating friars. The irony is evident right away: a friar preaches extensively against the very sins—avarice, gluttony, wrath—that he himself exemplifies. Chaucer wickedly employs the technique of occupatio; the friar's sermon on anger is an act of manipulative aggression, and its length reflects the self-indulgence it criticizes.
The fart, rather than being simply low humor, serves as a sharp satirical tool. It is the body’s honest reply to the friar's deceitful rhetoric—a wordless, undeniable truth that deflates pretension. This scatological element is part of a long-standing tradition of carnival inversion, but Chaucer refines it: the fart is promised, withheld, and delivered like a punchline crafted with almost contractual precision, mirroring the friar's own transactional piety.
Jankyn's cartwheel solution raises the tale's humor to the level of intellectual parody. The pseudo-scholastic dilemma—how to divide flatulence equally—satirizes the friars' cherished Aristotelian debates and the university culture they purported to represent. The wheel itself carries symbolic significance: it echoes Fortune's wheel, implying that the friars' pride will inevitably decline.
Tonal shifts are skillfully handled. The tale transitions from domestic sorrow (the dead child) through escalating comic frustration to outright farcical victory, ensuring that sentiment never hinders the satirical pace. The Summoner's delight is palpable, and Chaucer allows that delight to implicate both the storyteller and the target.
Key quotes from Chapter 9
“And fro the bench he droof awey the cat, / And leyde adoun his potente and his hat, / And eek his scrippe, and sette hym softe adoun.”
The friar makes himself ostentatiously at home in Thomas's house before his sermon, a small pantomime of presumptuous comfort that signals his true priorities.
“Thomas, I warne thee, it is no shame / To been ywedded unto swich a dame.”
The friar flatters Thomas's wife with oily familiarity, revealing the sexual undertone of his pastoral 'care' and his skill at working every angle of a household.
“And whan this sike man felte this frere / Aboute his tuwel grope there and heere, / Amydde his hand he leet the frere a fart.”
The tale's climactic moment, in which Thomas delivers his promised 'gift' — the body's blunt, inarguable verdict on the friar's hypocrisy.