"Sentence and "solaas" are concurrent in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The tale-telling contest is an earnest game in which all is written for our doctrine and our curiosity; tales teach as well as entertain. We are told both "men shal nat maken ernest of game" (I.3186), and "A man may seye ful sooth in game and pley" (I.4355).1 "Game" and "ernest" are not exclusive in the Tales. The inseparable, and often indistinguishable, play between game and earnest in Chaucer's poetry draws the reader into participating in the pilgrimage, into a vicarious pilgrimage in which Chaucer plays an earnest game with us. In this way, sentence and solace are equivocally related in The Nun's Priest's Tale and the pilgrimage framing the whole Canterbury Tales.2 An actual medieval pilgrimage, like the allegorical or metaphorical pilgrimage framing the tales, offers sentence as well as solace, curiosity and carnival.3 This paper examines the allegorical meaning of the Canterbury pilgrimage without, of course, dismissing the literal pilgrimage.

As well as being a literal pilgrimage, the journey from Inn to Cathedral resembles Augustine's idea of the journey of humanity from bondage in the Earthly City to the promised land of the Heavenly City.4 In a similar way, Chaucer portrays the imprisonment of a soul in his translation of Boethius (Boece) and his own poem "Truth," or "Balade de Bon Conseyl," in which a pilgrim ox is urged forth from the confines of its stall. Also, pilgrimages within two Canterbury tales, The Nun's Priest's Tale and The Clerk's Tale, also begin at an "oxes stalle," and the framing Canterbury pilgrimage begins at an inn and stables. Heiner Gillmeister proposes an allegorical reading of The Canterbury Tales by applying the poem "Truth" and the exegesis of 1 Samuel 6, the Philistines' return of the Ark of the Covenant on an ox or cow-drawn cart.5 Surprisingly, Gillmeister never mentions the ox's stall in The Nun's Priest's Tale nor in The Clerk's Tale; I believe examination of its inclusion in these tales, and the role of the dream vision, supports his application of "Truth" to the allegorical pilgrimage frame. Trevor Whittock states: "The Nun's Priest's Tale acquires greater resonance if we recognise

The theme of spiritual imprisonment can be found in a number of Chaucer's works: the translation of Boethius, The Knight's Tale (appropriately at the outset of the journey), and the poem "Truth." In the third book of Boece, for example, the imprisoned philosopher is urged, with ox-like imagery, to "bygyn to withdrawe thy nekke fro the yok (of erthely affeccions)" (3.m1.12-16) and undertake a spiritual journey to "verray blisfulnesse" which he desires "withoute taryinge" (3.pr1.30-m1.16). After woeful Arcite is released from his physical prison in The Knight's Tale, he declares, "Allas that day that I was born! / Now is my prisoun worse than biforn" (I.1223-24). The poem "Truth" warns the ox not to rely on Fortune "In trust of hir that turneth as a bal" (9) which Boece attributes to beastly bondage "syn thou hast oonys put thy nekke undir the yok of hir" (2.pr1.94-95); the envoy of "Truth" then urges the beast: "Unto the world leve now to be thral" (23).

Spiritual bondage is a condition of fallen humanity in the world. The Knight's Tale refers to "this foule prisoun of this lyf" (I.3061). The Parson's Tale asserts that sin brings bondage; he quotes St. Peter (2 Pet. 2.18-19): " whoso that dooth synne is thral of synne'; and synne put a man in great thraldom" (X.142). Similarly, the Boece warns: "And yif thow wolt leden thi lif in delyces, every wyght schal despysen the and forleeten the, as thow that art thral to thyng that is right foul and brutyl (that is to seyn, servaunt to thi body)" (3.pr8.18-23). These circumstances easily apply to the Canterbury pilgrims, who are preoccupied with worldly concerns rather than remission of fleshly sins and the soul's liberation obtained through pious pilgrimage. For this reason, the Parson warns the pilgrims that a soul may be in bondage to the flesh; he mentions St. Paul's lament that the soul is ever a prisoner of the body: " Allas, I caytyf man! Who shal delivere me fro the prisoun of my caytyf body?' [Rom. 7.24]" (X.344). The Squire's Tale (V.610-20), The Manciple's Tale (IX.163-74) and Boece (3.m2.21-31) describe a bird desiring freedom from its cage and to return to its proper home. The Boece relates the beastly condition of humanity this way: "Certes also ye men, that ben erthliche beestes, dremen alwey your bygynnynge, althoughe it be with a thynne ymaginacioun; and by a maner thought, al be it nat clerly ne parfitely, ye loken from afer to thilke verray fyn of blisfulnesse" (3.pr3.1-6).

This spiritual bondage is often associated with beastliness. Penelope Doob, in Nebuchadnezzar's Children, explains how sin, ultimately Original Sin, brings a beast-like condition to fallen humanity.7 In The Knight's Tale, Palamon sees this suffering as unmerited and complains to the divine powers:

This place typologically suggests worldliness binding the soul and necessitating a journey to freedom. All humanity (and thus the Canterbury pilgrims) resembles the ox in "Truth" who strives "as doth the crokke with the wal" (12) while "wrastling for this world" (16). The world is typified by an imprisoning city in opposition to the liberating Heavenly City. For example, Augustine explains his concept of the Earthly City in the City of God. Fallen humanity is bound within the Earthly City, while the citizens of the City of God are pilgrims and strangers passing through on their way to the Heavenly City.8 This dichotomy of cities is seen in the opposition between Tabard and Canterbury; Frederick Jonassen states, "The structure of The Canterbury Tales, then, is that of a passage from the worldly state of the Inn to the spiritual state of the Cathedral. The pilgrimage acts as an ambivalent, transitional phase. Geographically, the road leads to the shrine at Canterbury, but in the spiritual landscape the stories progress to the celestial Jerusalem of The Parson's Tale."9 Likewise, the Prologue of William Langland's Piers Plowman describes a "feeld ful of folk" between the Dungeon of Care and the Tower of Truth.10

The Earthly City is a Babylon, an Egypt, of strife, idolatry and lechery, a place of spiritual bondage. Christian Zacher discusses how the verbal discord among the Canterbury pilgrims, reflecting the notion of Babylon, opposes the harmony of the visio pacis, Heavenly Jerusalem.11 The pilgrims may be tempted by the Earthly City and linger in a sinful locale, as some of the Israelites in the desert were tempted to return to Egypt.12 Similarly, Lot's curious wife looked back to Sodom even though they were told to flee from the city without looking back.13 The tendency of a medieval pilgrim to linger, preoccupied with watching the world rather than looking toward the destination, would be labeled curiositas by more sober theologians. Pilgrims must look up and behold the fair country, the celestial promised land. Thus Chaucer says in "Truth": "Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al; / Hold the heye wey and lat thy gost thee lede . . ." (19-20).

"Truth" urges a beast, an ox, to journey to freedom away from the confines of its prison. The ox lingers in worldliness and must be prompted to deliverance: "Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal!" (18); and "T herfore, thou Vache, leve thyn old wrecchednesse; / Unto the world leve now to be thral" (22-23). The pilgrim ox is in a state of spiritual and physical bondage. The stall is a prison and starting point of a journey to the "hevenlich mede" (27); James Ragan proposed this "mede" as both a heavenly reward and a meadow;14 if we are to accept this interpretation, The Parson's Tale also promises a land for beasts: "the pasture of lambes, that is the blisse of hevene" (X.792). Of course, there is controversy over the authority of the envoy containing the "thral" and "hevenlich mede," but that debate is inconclusive on either side; whether this final stanza is by Chaucer or not, we still have the imprisoned beast in the preceding stanzas.

Likewise, The Nun's Priest's Tale contains a pilgrimage beginning at an ox's stall. Chauntecleer tells Pertolete the story of two pilgrims (VII.2984-3062): one lodges at an inn, one in an ox's stall (VII.2994-97). The better lodged fellow dreams his companion was murdered and buried in a dung cart, and he finds the body to expose the guilty. The dreamer-pilgrim is urged to journey forth at morning and toward the west gate of the town (VII.3017, 3035): "Arys up erly in the morwe tyde" (VII.3016), and so, "For on the morwe, as soone as it was day, / To his felawes in he took the way" (VII.3025-26). At the stall, he finds his companion had departed at daybreak (VII.3027-31). He then departs from the stall without further tarrying: "And forth he gooth no lenger wolde he lette" (VII.3034).15 Chaucer clarifies the ox's stall three times, while in his sources there is only Cicero's mention of an ox-cart (bubulco) in which the body is found.16

The second part of The Clerk's Tale also contains a journey beginning at an ox's stall, Griselda's social journey from village to palace (IV.197-448). Curiously, the ox's stall is not found in Chaucer's sources.17 Critics have proposed a relation to the Nativity.18 Like Christ and the ox, Griselda begins in a low condition where human and beast lodge together:
Noght fer fro thilke paleys honurable,
Wher as this markys shoop his mariage,
There stood a throop, of site delitable,
In which that povre folk of that village
Hadden hir beestes and hir herbergage,
And of hire labour tooke hir sustenance,
After that the erthe yaf hem habundance.
Amonges thise povre folk ther dwelte a man
Which that was holden povrest of hem alle;
But hye God somtyme senden kan
His grace into a litel oxes stalle . . . (IV.197-207)
Near the end of the second part of the tale, we are again reminded of Griselda's beastly origin: "That she was born and fed in rudenesse, / As in a cote or in an

The Canterbury pilgrimage framing the tales also begins at a lowly locale, a tavern and stables in disreputable Southwark, a place of taverns and brothels.19 In this way, the Tabard Inn is the Earthly City. The tavern is a snare against pious pilgrimage: opportunity for sin undermines a penitential journey, which seeks freedom from sin. The Tabard, as the Earthly City, opposes Canterbury Cathedral, the Heavenly City. Medieval sermon portrays the tavern as a rival to the Church.20 In Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwit, a tavern is the chapel, school and castle of the Devil (56.16-57.12), in opposition to God's "cherche" (56.24): " e tauerne is a dich to ieues. and e dyeules castel uor to werri god / an his hal/3en" (57.4-5).21 One medieval sermon, and Piers Plowman as well (V.297-404), portrays the deadly sins as tavern clientele.22 The Pardoner uses this idea of the "develes temple" when his tale begins at such a tavern, after he preaches against the notorious tavern sins: gluttony, lechery and drunkenness (VI.481-84):
In Flaundres whilom was a compaignye
Of yonge folk that haunteden folye,
As riot, hasard, stywes, and tavernes,
Where as with harpes, lutes, and gyternes,
They daunce and pleyen at dees bothe day and nyght,
And eten also and drynken over hir myght,
Thurgh which they doon the devel sacrifise
Withinne that develes temple in cursed wise
By superfluytee abhomynable. (VI.463-71)
The Tabard Inn, as any tavern on the pilgrimage route, tempts the pilgrims to remain in spiritual bondage rather than undertake the liberating journey to the Cathedral. The narrator enjoys the Tabard for its wide chambers and stables enticing pilgrims to stay in worldly comfort: "The chambres and the stables

Even after the physical journey has begun, most of the pilgrims spiritually remain at the Tabard; their hearts linger at the Inn. Gregory's Moralia describes the body as earthly and the soul as heavenly; the soul wants to undertake a pilgrimage to the Celestial Jerusalem, while the body wants to dwell at the inn.24 The priority of the Canterbury fellowship is not the pious pilgrimage but the carnival, the curiositas of the journey. Their feet are on the road to Canterbury, but their souls are in the Tabard; as the ox in "Truth," they tarry at the point of origin. And the tavern walks among them, even leads them as their Host; although they have left Southwark, they have brought along the tavern. Julia Bolton Holloway explains Harry Bailly: "He thereby makes of the Canterbury pilgrimage a peripatetic Tabard Inn."25 Throughout the Tales, the pilgrims tarry in a spiritual locus initially corporeal in the General Prologue's physical locus of the Tabard. Whether or not most of the pilgrims spiritually leave the Inn and stables, they are called forth to the journey by an impulse, as the ox in "Truth" and the pilgrim in The Nun's Priest's Tale who were urged forth from the stall: "So priketh hem nature in hir corages" (I.11) and "Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages" (I.12).

The dream in The Nun's Priest's Tale is emblematic of the Canterbury pilgrimage and the "Balade de Bon Conseyl": we may conclude there is earnest sentence in tales. Yet in this same tale, tales are suspect, especially tales told by pilgrims in a game. Perhaps we do not find a conclusive answer in The Nun's Priest's Tale but, instead, find a question: is there "Truth" in dreams? Perhaps another dream vision provides a key to the sentence of The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's House of Fame. This Boethian House has a structure similar to the poem "Truth" and the Canterbury pilgrimage frame. The labyrinth of Rumor (HF 1916-2158) resembles the imprisoned ox of "Truth" and the spiritual bondage of the Canterbury pilgrims: "And hyt was shapen lyk a cage" (1985); the dreamer notes "al the dores opened wide" (1952), similar to the wide chambers and stables of the Tabard (I.28). As the ox tarries in the stall, and pilgrims lingering at the tavern, the dreamer at Rumor's House indulges curiosity:
"Y preye the
That thou a while abide me,
For Goddis love, and lete me seen
What wondres in this place been;
For yit, paraunter, y may lere
Som good theron, or sumwhat here
That leef me were, or that y wente." (1993-99)
There is a great congregation of pilgrims here causing a commotion with their tales (2034-42), "With scrippes bret-ful of lesinges" (2123); this crowd of competing "tydynges" resembles the Canterbury fellowship and the envious "prees" from which the ox must flee in "Truth" (1). Amid this discord in the House of Rumor, there is a "tydynge for to here . . . of some contre" (2134-35); likewise,

As the Canterbury pilgrims have mixed pious pilgrimage and curious carnival, Chaucer has playfully mixed earnest and game to leave us with more questions than answers regarding sentence and the Tales; to both Chaucer and the Nun's Priest, we can apply the Shipman's warning about the Parson: "He wolde sowen som difficulte, / Or springen cokkel in our clene corn" (II.1182-83). This is apparent in The Nun's Priest's Tale where truth is debatable, and dreams within tales are suspect. Truly there may be truth in tales, yet there are ever tales in truths. Canterbury tales contain a kernel of truth, yet we know not where pilgrims' "lesinges" have been sown along the road to the Cathedral. Immediately following the journey in The Nun's Priest's Tale, where truth in dreams urges the pilgrim forth, a second tale containing a dream urges a potential traveler to tarry in the city without undertaking a voyage, a type of anti-pilgrimage (VII.3063-3109). Although in both cases, dreams are the means of revelation, these pilgrims' destinations are oppositional. Likewise, in The Canterbury Tales as a whole, pilgrims may earnestly travel to the Cathedral following pious truths revealed in tales, or gamely linger at the Tavern through ribaldry. Perhaps then, in The Nun's Priest's Tale and the whole Canterbury Tales, Chaucer is playing an earnest game with the reader on a vicarious pilgrimage through the text, searching for allegorical signposts pointing to the Heavenly City, or lingering in the worldly tavern where the ribald tale contest began. Whichever the destination, the pilgrim ox of "Truth," Griselda, the pilgrim in The Nun's Priest's Tale, and the Canterbury pilgrims all began their journeys at an ox's stall or at an inn and stables, a beastly origin from which they are summoned forth.