Write your abstract
here.
One of the most profound meditations on war and
peace in
English
literature.
Three men break into Melibee's house while he is
away
and wound his wife Prudence and
daughter Sophie
grievously.
Seeing their condition, Melibee takes counsel whether
he
should go to war. Consensus seems to favour it.
A team of lawyers after busy consultation delivers a
verdict that would have been as incomprehensible to
Chaucer's hearers as it is to us now; some things never
change.
An old man speaks. Many cry War, War! who little
know
what war amounteth. the way into war is broad and easy,
the
way out narrow and hard. If war is once begun, there
are
children yet unborn who will die or grow crooked
because of
this war. This is what no one wants to hear, he's
shouted
down.
Prudence, who is chiefly the injured party, in
herself
and in the injuries to her daughter, urges Melibee not
to
wage war. Should I listen to a
woman? he says. Solomon
said
he searched for and found one good man, but no good
woman.
(So why did he marry three hundred of them?) Prudence
replies that Solomon was one man. Others (as Melibee is
in
no position to be unaware) have discovered good women.
In
the end, swayed less by her arguments than by the
testament
of her suffering (which should perhaps have the
greatest
weight in this matter) Melibee agrees, and negotiates
reparations with this band of housebreakers rather than
involve their extended chain of kin and his own in a
war no
one can see a clear end to.