Chaucer’s “Friar’s Tale” condemns summoners for their links to Satan and their avaricious attachment to ephemeral goods. These two threads converge in the scene where the tale summoner urges his companion (a fiend) to seize a cart of hay and horses that were insincerely offered to the fiend by a frustrated carter. This essay examines the significance of Chaucer’s decision to specify hay as the contents of the cart. The Bible and other texts had long used hay as a symbol of ephemerality, materiality, and the sin of avarice, a late efflorescence of which is found in another medium, Bosch’s painting “The Haywain”. The summoner’s willful insistence on taking the cart of hay draws him closer to the very substance that symbolizes his own sinful propensities and secures the certainty of his damnation well before the actual event.

中文翻译：

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“一辆载着嘿的推车”：乔叟《修士的故事》中干草的象征意义

乔叟的“修士的故事”谴责召唤者与撒旦的联系以及他们对短暂商品的贪婪依恋。这两条线索在故事召唤者敦促他的同伴（恶魔）抓住一车干草和马匹的场景中汇合，这些干草和马是沮丧的卡特尔不真诚地提供给恶魔的。本文考察了乔叟决定将干草指定为购物车内容物的重要性。圣经和其他文本长期以来一直使用干草作为短暂性、物质性和贪婪之罪的象征，在另一种媒介，博世的画作“Haywain”中发现了一种晚期风化。召唤者对干草车的任性坚持使他更接近象征他自己的罪恶倾向的物质，并在实际事件发生之前确保他被诅咒的确定性。