chaucer final

the currency of shame

-Arveragus only expressing dominance, under pain of death, don't tell anyone about this: worried about his reputation -won't sacrifice her trouthe for her chastity -who was the most free? who is most generous? -who acted beyond what they were expected to do?

animals and free will

-"Chauntecleer so free", sings like a mermaid -looking around by chance, sees a fox -cries anon "cok cok!", odd thing to say -foregrounds confusion of dream, not knowing the word "fox" -he wishes to flee even though he had never seen it with his eyes, experience vs. innate knowledge -free action, if actions determined by instinct? is that free will? -animals can't make choices, says Aquinas: compares operation of animals to machines, an idea picked up by Rene Descartes -Derrida disputes this: animals are beings, they are an Other -animals in this tale have names, humanizing -in middle ages, animals can be put on trial for murder and such -emphasis on formation (as in friar's tale), act more important than intention, animals has no intention but the horse still kicked someone in the head

radix malorum est cupiditas

-"I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche", I promise to have a lofty Tale -i can tell it all by memory, he says, all by rote -my theme is alwey oon, the root of evil is avarice (radix malorum est cupiditas) -if we hadn't read the GP we might respect it, but we're primed to see irony

espying

-"I wol fonde t'espien" to find a wife -but you, my friends, help me find a gal -Walter echo, but with a twist: Walter said he'd pick himself -January at least makes pretense: asks for advice but doesn't take it -asks brother (?) Justinas, and Placebo -Placebo: pleasing sycophant -Justinas: more backbone, but still jaundiced views -Placebo says: Seneca says a man should take care, avyse, while giving away land and cattle; so you should avyse self even MORE to whom you give your body; uses "avyse" a lot -avyse, see, discern, clarify

narrator interjects

-"O Chauntecleer, accursed be that morwe...", moves into philosophy, whatever God ordains must be, according to certain clerks -in school great debates over those big issues, most importantly Boethius -if God knows/sees all, even in advance, does that mean we have no free will and all is predestined? -Boethius: God foresees all, but lady Philosophy offers a solution, humans have invited perspective, God sees globally, so we should not worry about how things fit into grand scheme of things -just because God knows something will happen doesn't mean he is determining it -narrator admits, I'm no theologian, and I must choose even if God already knows what I'll choose -high-level debate probably goes over the head of many pilgrims / audience, using technical language -moment of bathos: I'm not here to debate, "my tale is of a cok" -blending of discourses, move from conditional necessity to the barnyard

imitation

-"O Gaufred", Geoffrey of Vinsauf, but also King Richard who was slayn on a Friday, just like Chauntecleer (a kingly figure) almost was -reference Pirrus and Priam (Aeniad) -mock heroic: all the ladies in the yard when they see fox chasing off Chauntecleer -compare Fall of Troy to barnyard drama -Chaucer mocks rhetorical tradition of being over the top -named all the dogs, not sure who Malkin is (human? animal?) -deliberate sense of tumult, captures this moment as on par with fall of Troy -reference to Jakke Straw, the leader of peasant revolt of 1381, and his meynee (rabble) -even Jakke Straw never made so much noise (he was, reportedly, exceedingly noisy) -John Gower had described the peasants with allegory of brutish animals -this tale as response to that poem? how sympathetic was Chaucer to the peasants?

the moral of the friars tale

-"The Leoun sit in his await alway to slee the innocent" -but seems like the opposite, this summoner is not innocent -includes ridiculous moral to satire -dig at all summoners everywhere, they're all going to hell -maybe the summoner and the church are the lion and the old lady is the innocent? -chaucer takes conventional folk tale and adds current philosophical twist -relevant in times of paranoia

back to the pardoner's jolly old tale

-"Ye, Goddes armes", further cursing, more tearing God's body, "I make avow to Goddes digne bones!" -"we three been al ones", reference to the trinity -we will go slay death, obviously you can't all 3 go to death, you have to go alone (everyman) -rioters does not understand what death is -can kill death before night, clearly death doesn't care if it is night or day -to love and die for each other, in a way, they do end up doing that -wanting to slay death is also blasphemy: Corinthians, And the enemy death shall be destroyed last... O death, where is thy victory? -it is Christ's prerogative to kill Death, he is linked with Sin in medieval imagination

talking animals

-"at thilke tyme", at that time: what time? -doesn't seem like the tale is set in remote past at all -animals could speak and sing at this time -what is the ethical consequence of this?

pardoner

-"person licensed to sell papal pardons or indulgences" (OED) -widely criticized in anti-clerical satire -you buy salvation / repentance from a pardoner -pardoner is last pilgrim described in GP -associated with summoner: parasitic, corrupt clergy -summoner and pardoner both sing "Com hider, love, to me" -intimation of homosexual relationship in next line in GP -described: Pardoner has smooth yellow flax hair, but very thin -a proto-Trump -impression that he could have been beautiful, but he's waxy, disheveled and corrupt, not well put-together -are people in on his scam? can people see through him? in some ways he seems transparent, upfront about it -no beard, small goat voice, "I trowe he were a gelding or a mare", entirely bare face is abnormal, unmanly -he gets money from the poor, exploits them "with feyned flaterye and japes" -makes the poor "peple his apes" -who can see thru him? chaucer pilgrim can! we are set up for skepticism -but in church he was "a noble ecclesiastic", praising someone he just criticized (naiveté? sarcasm? or showing how good a performer he is?) -why does Chaucer pilgrim so admire Pardoner? rhetorical prowess, Chaucer pilgrim tells a terribly dull Tale -Pardoner is attractive yet corrupt -"affile his tongue", his tale will be obsessed with body parts, especially the mouth and tongue

Griselda

-"throp", a delightful poor neighbourhood, rhyming sustenance and habundance -true goodness/abundance comes from just having enough to get by -idealization of noble poverty, Chaucer admires this ethic (Protestant work ethic) -Griselda is not most beautiful physically, but virtuously she is the fairest -goes to the well, not the keg; she is not likerous, knew not idle ease, raised in poverty, very unlike Walter's life -Walter has been spying on her while he's out hunting, replacing animals he seeks with her, a very creepy form of predatory voyeurism -but he looks at her not wantonly, but seriously admires her virtue -free indirect discourse, Walter's voice on clerks voice, when he says "the people have no greet insight", being very classist and elitist -decides he "wolde wedde hire oenly, if evere he wedded sholde" -odd: he said he had never thought about getting married, but clearly this isn't true because he's been sizing Griselda up for some time -is this a continuity error is it intentionality? -Walter needs to find the strongest will he can find to dominate in order to demonstrate is own autonomy, one reading -however, she is rather servile to her father: Walter taking over the role of her father

francis petrarch

-1304-1374, contemporaries with Boccaccio -prolific, popularizes the sonnet; wrote treatises, lyric poetry and letters -first poet laureate since antiquity -"father of humanism / renaissance" -one of the last medieval thinkers, first of renaissance thinkers (transitional period) -italy is ahead of england on the renaissance -he translated Boccaccio's version of the Griselda story into Latin -Chaucer recognizes Petrarch as an auctor -Boccaccio wrote in Italian like Dante, but Petrarch wrote mainly in Latin, making him more of an auctor -Chaucer reads Petrarch's version of the Griselda story -Chaucer takes folk takes like clerk / friar tales, makes them timely by adding element of realism, connecting them to current religious debates -treating characters as if they were real people -Petrarch told his tale with high style, says clerk: gives proheme, describing landscape and nature -the clerk responds, "me thinketh it a thing impertinent", occupatio AND jab at Petrarch -occupatio: gives description, then calls it unnecessary

chaucer and popular culture

-Bab Brinkman does rap version of Canterbury Tale -Chaucerians dislike him because he spams them to buy his Chaucer rap album -Patience Agbabi slam remixes Chaucer, really good -Chaucer hath a blog / doth tweet

victorian chaucer

-Chaucer for children, in prose, designed chiefly for the use of young persons -nuns priest is popular, wife of bath obviously not -like moralistic and didactic tales -george meredith aligns chaucer with nationalist agenda -calls him a poet of the "true english blood", irony, Chaucer mainly influenced by french and italian lit -pre-raphaelite painters obsessed with medieval era

nun's priest's tale as parody

-Chaucer plays with conventions -parody of philosophical debate: Chaucer IS interested in philosophy, like in Friar's Tale, having your entente be different from what you say -parody if rhetorical tradition; poke fun at Vinsauf, use high style for chicken love -meta self-parody -many echoes of previous tales, probably one of the last ones he wrote

chaucer and modernism

-Ezra Pound, calls him the Grand Translator -says anyone who won't learn middle english to read chaucer should be shut out from reading books -pound would have loved to be born in 14th century with a fresh language -discusses him in ABC of Reading -beginning of The Wastlenad, TS Eliot, riffs on opening lines of general prologue -Eliot, like Chaucer, glosses himself for use of future readers

clerk's prologue

-Host compares him to a newlywed maid, very quiet -trusts he studies some sophysme, philosophy -he's apart, untimely, not participating in the merriment -Host asks him to be of bettre chere, tell us something merry, but don't preach as Friars do at Lent (the wife got accused of preaching) -don't make us weep over our sins, and don't put us to sleep -keep your high rhetorical figures for a later day, speketh pleyn that we may understonde -worried he will get to academic or too pious and it will go over their heads; the host is keen to avoid the discourse -does the clerk obey? -he responds: "Hooste, I will do what you say. As far as reson axeth, hardily"-- just like his character Griselda promises to obey Walter, but just as reason demands -of course, Walter was not reasonable at all -Friar's tale, you must follow through with a contract -speaks of Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete, who is now dead: death has slain them and will kill us all -not off to a great start (you can feel the host rolling his eyes)

end of prioress tale, and the tale of Sir Thopas

-Host japen, looked upon me: first person pronouns, haven't seen that in a while, not since the GP and a bit in the Miller's Prologue -accused of looking only for hares, being aloof, not paying attention -attention now all focused on this marginal character -Chaucer jokes about his own weight (also joked about in The House of Fame when an eagle swoops him up and is like "aw, man, seriously") -he's isolated from the world but has not yet given up worldly pleasures -he looks sort of elvish (??) -tell us a tale of mirth and immediately -rhyme royal, seven lines give it away: form from Prioress's tale spills over, even with the Host being jocular -there is no description of Chaucer pilgrim in GP but here we get a description of him as seen by the Host -pilgrim says, I do know one rhyme that I learned long ago -Host says, we shall hear some dainty thing, I think, by his chere -rhyme that I've learned: Prioress's theme of learning the words by rote -in manuscript: tall-rhyme romance, interesting visual device to represent the rhymes (however, rhyme broken several times as part of Chaucer's self-parody, a bad tale indeed) -then shorter lines also rhyme -why did scribe write it this way? -Tale comes out of oral tradition, bards and minstrels but the way its written only works on visual level

end of pardoner's prologue

-I'm drunk, don't blame me: like the Miller -theme in Tales of pilgrims trying to give up responsibility for their Tale (Chaucer pilgrim is summation of that) -I'm a vicious man but I'll tell a noble tale

jewish communities in medieval England

-Jewish people came over with William the Conqueror in 1066 -William sets up feudal system, Lord over peasant / serf -Jewish people excluded from this feudal system, they were instead direct subjects of the king -Excluded from canon law, remember the summoner who brings people before ecclesiastical court -jewish people not part of the system, could not be brought before ecclesiastical court because they were not Christian -Certain laws did not apply to them, like canon law against usury: lending money -jewish people not bound by that law, lend money to christians who use that money for start-up projects -foundation of capitalism due to this exclusionary structure -but Jewish people are directly subject to the king, so the king can at any time take and seize from them -they provide vital function of mediation that is exploited by the state -lets the state do bad stuff and not get in dirt for it -lots of religious tension and enmity, jewish people have to wear badges (as seen in medieval English manuscripts) -Spector: structural oppression doesn't mean people weren't on friendly day-to-day terms -antagonism and tension boils over into anti-semitic propaganda, during the black plague -didn't know what caused plague, so some spread rumours that it's jewish people poisoning wells -also widespread idea that jewish people responsible for torturing christ on the crucifix -lots of medieval drama depicts this, however if you read the scriptural account it is clearly roman soldiers

Pardoner vs. the Host

-Pardoner says he thinks the host is most sinful and should come buy first -Host says I won't kiss your relics, you'd make me kiss your underwear -by the Cross of St. Helen I'd rather touch your balls than your relics, let them be cut off and enshrined in a hogs turd -but if the Pardoner is a eunuch, what gives? -Pardoner is so pissed that he is speechless -Host says I will not play wit thee namore, I'm done with angry men -something finally actually affected the Pardoner -the knight sees everyone laughng at the Pardoner and says hey now, alright kids -Pardoner is laughed at, exposed and humiliated -Knight asks them to kiss and make up -calls the Host ye / yow (respectful pronoun) and Pardoner thee: insulting him still -anon thy feiste, and riden forth hir weye

Pardoner's preaching

-The Tale is a sermon against stuff, continuation of moralizing ending of Cook's Tale -Drunkenness and gluttony, gambling, swearing all condemned -cites auctores (e.g. Seneca) and Scripture -exempla of 3 rioters -very much the way a medieval preacher would make his case -good rhetorical practice -Pardoner is obsessed in his speech with body parts, especially mouth and throat (gluttony) -drink so much wine "that of his throte he maketh his privee" -listing of body parts connects it to religious thought on dying and death -also interested in dead body parts, many references to bones, fake relics are sheep bones, but also in Tale -rioter, gamble with benedice (rolling bones), metaphor of cracking the bone and sucking out the marrow

epilogue

-host likes this tale -shows how women deceive men, is that the moral? -blame it all on the girl, disavowal of January's agency and his fantasye -he made up a false idealized May in his head, inevitable that reality would knock him -merchant aware that fantasye emperils you

the prenup

-Walter and Griselda's father arrange the marriage without her, so how can she say no? -not much of a conquest if she is coerced -he makes her promise never to complain, disagree or disobey him -insistence on preserving his complete dominance; she agrees -he says she must get rid of all signs of her former life, she is TRANSLATED into such richness -the women who take off her old rags are right nat glad -Griselda as a text, being translated -Jerome said (pagan) texts like female bodies needed to be cleaned, clothed and Christianized -this tale itself is a translation of Petrarch, from a folktale -nobody even recognizes the cleaned up pretty Griselda -reveals obtuseness of common people -all trappings of former life shorn away, but not her virtue

avysement

-Walter struggled with this -he can discern Griselda's virtue when no one else can, so why test her? -January to Justinas: hastow said? you done bro? who cares about your Seneca and proverbs -think of Miller's Tale, cato proverb (marry someone your own age) -January cares not a basket of herbs for this school talk -monologuing each other out, no dialogue -listens to no one

alexander pope

-a chiller, funnier dude -calls him "a master of manners and of description" -enlivening, natural storyteller -he translates the Wife of Bath's Tale

everyman

-a morality play, character represents every human, surrounded by various personifications -play begins with Death showing up -Everyman says "deth is unkynd", both unkind and unnatural -"Man, stop they wynde", wind as complaining but also breath -play to provoke audience thought: are WE ready to die? -Everyman goes around trying to get people to join him, no one wants to go on a trip to Death -only when he meets his personified virtues do they consent to come with him

the clerk's envoy

-addressing wives especially the Wife of Bath -kind of veiled insult, says wife life is easy and husbands suffer -merchants prologue immediately picks up on "weeping and wayling" of a husband -many parallels to be seen

the thief called death

-after sermonizing we move into narrative exempla, someone died -they tell lackey / errand boy to find out who he is -graphic image of boyd parts, Death smoot old mans herte atwo -"he hath a thousand slayn this pestilence" -Death was a big deal in the middle ages, but hard to keep track during the plague -marginal lower classes figure has the scoop: be wary of death, my mother taught me this -significant that he has a sudden death, and while drunk -this person didn't get his confession before death obviously

may

-also a month, her named defined in relation to him -her identity made subordinate to his, May-December romance is an idiom that comes from Chaucer

beast fable

-anthropomorphized animals, Aesop's fables was known, moralized narratives -the fables were indirectly known in middle ages -marie de france wrote a collection of fables that included "double trick" cock and fox story

walter's response

-ay, true, he agrees but wants to pick his own wife -he says his wife need not be noble of birth, because goodness comes from God and not blood -Wife of Bath perks back down, she likes that part -trusts in Goddes bountee, like Theseus about Moevere (Chaucer critical on this notion) -God as ideological smokescreen

the prioress's prologue

-back to rhyme royal, affiliated with serious matters and pious tales -hard to say: is Chaucer being ironic? is he critiquing virulent anti-semitism or being anti-semitic? -reworking of psalm 8, O Lord our Lord: image of babies suckling at the breast, babies represent the most pure form of praise for God -so much of the tale revolves around praise, speech, understanding and relationship between the three -by the mouth of children, God's bounty is performed -how can children praise god when they cannot speak? -she continues, moves from praising God to praising Mary -of thee and of the whyte lily flour, I will labour to tell a story, not that I can increase her honour because she herself is honour -invocation of Mary, but not telling a story to increase her honour because she's already maxed out for that

the great pestilence

-black death, described by Boccaccio in beginning of Decameron -1/3 of population dies in a few years -enormous ramifications, and ironic that lower class has to tell them about it, plague elevated fortunes of the lower class -you can ask a better salary now

the romantics

-blake does engraving of the pilgrims -interested in types that recur throughout history, particulars vs. universals -Coleridge writes with Chaucerian medieval glosses -says Shakespeare interested in internal, Chaucer on external manners -recognizes limits of Chaucer but they love him for his "descriptions of nature" -Coleridge says his "manly cheerfulness" is "delicious" and "exquisitely tender" -feels that Chaucer is more knowable a guy than Shakespeare -william hazlitt, says Chaucer interested in the real and natural -all these writers frame him in their own values: Chaucer is naturalistic, Shakespeare is imaginative

genre of merchant's tale

-blends romance with fabliau -reflected on a stylistic level -these are not miller / reeve types, January is a knight, there is a sense of nobility, kinglike figure asks friends / subjects for advice -content is cuckolding, which is classic fabliau -realistic detail mixed with high style -fabliau is detailed, realistic low style -romance is high style, rhetorically complex

post chaucerians

-british 15th century lit strongly influenced -we don't really teach 15th century lit now -cultivate personas of dullness and inadequacy -Hoccleve, Lydgate, Henryson among others -over-the-top rhetoric that Chaucer had liked to parody, used to memorialize Chaucer -they go on and on in a way Chaucer would have mocked -called "the first finder of our fair language", within ten years of his death he is recognized as such -Hoccleve writes on him in "regiment of princes", includes portrait of Chaucer, one of first portraits of someone who was not a ruler -Hoccleve, "I have here made his likeness", so that you will think on and remember him

Plato

-but no! then its the wife who acts on base urges -reversal or reversal of expectations -uses word "lemman", then realizes he sounds knavish and gauche, apologizes -echoes Vinsauf / Chaucer pilgrim, word must be cousin to the deed -between signifier and signified, purest link is onomatopoeia -imitates crow "cokkow!" which also sounds like cuckold, onomatopoeia AND pun -then the bird starts talking in English, not a realistic setting: just as fantastic as Nun's Priest's -blurred is theyn ye, blindness -I've seen your wife swyving in your bed with a gnat-like man

typology

-certain old testament figures standing for new testament ones -widow stands for mary, clergeon stands for christ -widow asks every jewish person if her child went by, they said nay -parallels drawn, moment after crucifix where they know he's dead but can't find the body, and angel points up and shows he's there -here, angel points to widow where her son is, in privy -she finds his body, and he's lying there upright with a cut throat but still singing alma redemptoris so loud that all the place began to ring: obvious resurrection moment -with pitous lamentation, they take up his still singing body, have great procession, carry to next abbey: his mother swooning by his living dead body -widow is compared to a new Rachel: old testament allusion, a woman who cries for her children who are led out of Jerusalem which was destroyed by the Babylonians -will not be comforted for them -in new testament, Matthew picks up with Herod killing all the boy children in Bethlehem -idea that old testament rachel prefigures the slaughter of innocents in the new

end of sir Thopas

-chaucer agrees to tell us something in prose, if you don't like it you're too dangerous (critical) -all accounts lead to the truth (evangelists), you hear different versions but the point is the same -some say more, some less, but their sentence is all one (bold move!) -theological debate in middle ages: why don't Mark / Matthew / Luke and John agree? -I'll tell the tale, forgive me, with more proverbs than you're used to, but Don't BLAME ME

the "greyn"

-child tells clergy about what happened to him, by nature I should have died a long time ago -but jesus christ, as you read in books, willed that I not, and that his glory would be in me -suddenly in death he has all this access to knowledge, understanding of what's happening, he now knows scripture -when he sang, he felt that mary laid a "greyn" upon his tongue -Cardamom, which according to medieval health manuals helped a sore throat (he's a little beyond that), some think it is a pearl, or a prayer bead, or a Eucharist wafer -connects to idea of truth as a grain: Augustin, to eat the chaff is to be a beast of burden but to eat the grain is to be human -anti-semitic also, Judaism concerned with the chaff / the law, the letter killeth and the spirit freeth -to be a good Christian means to eat the grain of the spirit -lee patterson: the grain is pure truth, doesn't need a specific language to encode it, but the tale itself creates discussion on the nature of the grain, reflecting the semantic uncertainty that afflicts all human speech -if the grain represents pure unmediated truth, what do we make of that the abbot removes the grain and Clergeon dies? -some kind of violence: what motivates him to take the seed? why would he pull it out? condemnation of organized religion, grown-ups who think they know what they're doing? -chaucer makes symbol that is not clear allegory, doesn't mean something fixed -anti-historicism or phatasmatic presence of jewish people in medieval christian psyche? she can't decide how long ago this happened -they have been expelled but still seem very close -ends her miracle tale with amen

a weird tale from the summoner

-churlish and bawdy, also full of biblical and classical allusion -a very philosophical fabliau, very satirical and religious for that genre -very little narrative voice, much dialogue -much reference to demons, as well as in Miller and Friar's tale -playing off each other in this fragment -discernment: how to tell a bad from a good spirit -flatulence in Miller's Tale is just for laughs, but in Summoner's tale it is scholastic, intellectualized -friar's trying to divide a fart -remember in Friar's Tale, summoner swore to quite the friar -the word "courtesy" keeps changing meanings

reynard the fox

-close to beast fable, but actually a beast epic -less overtly moralizing tales, not like Aesop's fables and the clear ending -animal as descriptive force, fox as trickster figure, associated with reynard -nasty and mean, Disney wanted to make a movie of him but it was just too obscene and mean-spirited -kind of carried over the mischievousness into Robin Hood -epic begins invoking other epics like Paris and Helen, Tristan: the mock heroic, making fun of traditions -poses fox squabble as most epic exploit in history

pardoner's performance

-confesses his own trickery "by this gaude...", add simile "like a clerk", insinuating that he is NOT a clerk and is pretending -"streche forth the nekke / and est and west", parodic image of himself as Christ on the cross -businessman making a pitch, gives semblance of his holiness -takes pleasure in his own performance -tells congregation not to have sin of avarice, give up your money (to me) -reading scripture for his own material benefit, more pernicious wife of bath -exposes his own character completely -pardoner seems realistic in his contradictions, but also wildly over the top, morality tradition of allegorically embodying a certain kind of sin -doesn't care if their souls go a-blackberrying -maybe TOO fake nihilist? trying too hard to look bad? -pardoner says you can speak holy words out of evil entente

pardoner's relic

-cristal stones / y-crammed ful of cloutes and of bones / Reliks been they" -"wenen", meaning believe, they are relics if you believe they are -implication that they are NOT -relics are physical remains of holy place, object, person -reputed to have healing properties -in one lil chunk of bone is whole spirit of a person -veneration of relics is important part of late medieval Christian devotion -practice criticized by lollards as idolatry -Canterbury pilgrims on their way to worship bones of Thomas Beckett -this material thinking is getting hot and touchy in Chaucer's time, mystical thinking distracts from teachings of Christ -medieval relics: Chartres, France has Veil of Mary, trace back to Charlemagne -Catherine of Sienna's preserved head in Tuscany -people still go to see these relics as devotional practice -Shroud of Turin: STILL very controversial

anti-fraternalism

-criticize friars for creating spiritual economy -why are you seeing other friars? we have you covered -speaks in economic terms about money but also religion -there are no good friars in chaucer -he is called Friar John in summoners tale, he gets a name (unlike the summoner in the friars tale) -the spiritual becoming secular, the fart as pentecost, gift of the holy spirit -comes in bible as rushing wind upon disciples -is this rush of air parodied in Thomas's fart?

the bondage of habit

-how clerk makes sense of it all -habit in middle ages, bad habit can be destructive, says Augustin's confessions -bad habit chains you, can't resist anymore -Augustin says you always have a choice, but habit can constrain your choice -Griselda responds: she was not ameved, does not react -she does not seem aggrieved -omniscience of the clerk: he, like Walter, does not know what's happening inwardly, can only see what it seems -clerk CAN see Walter's inner state (Chaos Walking, men's thoughts can be heard but women's can't be) -Griselda says, you own me and our children, it is "youre owene thing", do what you want, disturbing even to medieval readers -allegorical: Walter as lord but also God -too disturbing for psychological realism

general prologue on the parson

-described alongside his brother the plowman, both idealized pilgrims -described with most sincerity of any pilgrims, with least sarcasm / cynicism -poor, but rich of holy thought and work (idealized holy poverty as in nun's priests and clerks tales) -learned man, clerk -chaucer was incredibly learned, and yet his representations of learned people are ambivalent (Nicholas in Miller's Tale, other clerks in a cult) -parson as combination of Nicholas and John's good qualities, education with Christian work ethic -balance, intellectual AND a worker -teaches by example, which is important (think of the pardoner) -he's consistent, "y-preved ofte sithes" -where is the irony? does chaucer criticize institution of religion, or a few bad apples within it? -parson as counterpoint to chaucer's critical eyes, parson preaches simply christs gospel -Chaucer as proto-Protestant -God not found thru summoning, selling relics or even going on a pilgrimage, but by working hard and following Christ

high style

-description of the feast, apostrophe, "O perilous fyr..." -talking about Damian, compares him to an adder or a snake -O January, you're too drunk to catch on -narrator brings this out of nowhere -apostrophe: Vinsauf says method of amplification (they often begin with an "O") -Merchants Tale all about not being able to hear ("O January, Damian will hurt you") but January can't hear and won't listen

merchant's prologue

-dim view of marriage after 2 months -my wife would overmatch the devil if she were married to him, she's a shrew, she's no Griselda -odd, given the tale to come, describing a less negative view of marriage -cognitive dissonance

boccaccio vs chaucer

-dorigen tells arveragus immediately, he cries but tries to help her protect her honour -Gilberto makes his wife tell, and then is disturbed, initially angry, and then puts it aside "charitably" -Gilberto: other guy worked hard on the garden, he deserves a night with you; his wife is very insulted -less cooperation / love / respect with the Boccaccio couple

edict of expulsion 1290

-edward i expels all jewish people from England, has to do with general appeasing of anti-semitic Christian English, but also a cash grab -you can take what you can carry but your land and larger holdings belong to the king -jewish people not allowed back until Oliver Cromwell in the 17th Century -so when Chaucer writers Prioress's Tale there are supposedly no Jewish people in England at all, Chaucer might never have met one -but they haunt the Christian psyche, psychological function held; The Other

the corpus

-enterred at westminster abbey -now called poets corner -first poet and first non-noble commoner buried there

samuel johnson

-even MORE harsh on Chaucer -doesn't like knight or nun's priest -says, why read Chaucer? it's not with our time -not realistic -calls him "a goth poet"

eunuch hermeneutics

-fascination with objects as substitution -does Pardoner substitute his relics as something he lacks? -Dinshaw -believes his things can make him whole? -January's view of marriage in Merchant's Tale is exactly this, fill his lack with the perfect young wife

truth

-fidelity to country, kin, friends (loyalty) -a promise / commitment (of fealty) -reality, actuality -correspondence to reality, accuracy, exactitude -Richard Firth Green: performative power of the words of an oath -most famous one today is "I do" in marriage -in oral society, performing words is binding -little room for mental states in oral society, but by Chaucer's time, this is ending -Thomas Aquinas: consent can only be known to another person but through words, since you can't read minds -but if someone mentally does not consent to marriage, there is none -but there is no fraud: you are excused from sin because of ignorance -question of mental consent is big in this era, not just in terms of marriage -you could use it to secretly privately remain a Catholic

william caxton

-first printer in England, huge shaper of the canon -2nd edition of Canterbury Tales, 1484 -refers to Chaucer as a philosopher, not just a poet, also called a laureate poet like Petrarch -Chaucer never took that laureate mantle for himself, but Caxton does it for him to legitimize the English language -prologue says Chaucer took out rude speech and made it better, more ornate -people write fanfiction, many Plowman's Tales written since he never wrote one -they don't sound like Chaucer: use tetrameter, singsongy, didactic, a b a b, not couplets -clearly not as good as the actual Chaucer -later ones have Hoccleve echoes, an anti-Catholic lollard text

cliche

-for us, cliche is bad for writers, but not so in middle ages -cliche could be good because of oral tradition and singing songs -stock phrases used when you're performing orally, off the top of your head, need to fill out a line -pronounced in old english like beowulf -Chaucer comes at transitional time, very aware of his transition -thinks of his writing not as oral but as primarily written, seen under a different criterion -"til on a day" he's cut off here, but it's automatic how to fill line: "it so bifel" -Host cutting it off reminds us that we know this conventional material well enough to fill in the blanks -Host says "thou makest me so wery of thy verray lewednesse", accuses him of being uneducated, behind the times, gauche doggerel -the devil take this rhyme (reminds us of Friar's Tale) -you waste our time (Host obsessed with time) -Chaucer pilgrim, why can't I finish my tale when everyone else can? -Host lets him try again

little saint hugh of lincoln, 1246-55

-found at the bottom of a well, could have fallen, but maybe murdered -people blame local jewish community -story spread that he had been kidnapped, tortured for a month, crucified -so sensational that the king of England came to Lincoln to investigate himself -90 people arrested, 18 refused to testify before an all-Christian jury and are executed, and their possessions are seized -motivation for blood libel: church and state wanting to seize your possessions -not officially canonized but becomes a martyr: cathedral gets rich off him because people come to venerate

memento mori

-icons, skulls, provoke in you a meditation on death and dying -short popular medieval lyrics, persists in whimsical fashion -form of confession -personifications of death can be super serious (the seventh seal) but also parody, satirized: death is so traumatic that you must mock it

blood libel

-idea of jewish ritual murder, Christian children stolen and mutilated, their blood used in religious ceremonies -no evidence, only phantasmic propaganda -William of Norwich, 1132-1144, body found in the woods: blamed on Cabal who is asked to stand before the court (which technically does not have jurisdiction over them anyways) -Surviving accounts by strident Christians -Minor cult builds around this boy, he becomes a martyr

the moral(s)

-fox says he stole Chauntecleer not of "wikke entente", even though Aquinas says animals have no entente -Chauntecleer: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me -I'm wise to your flattery, it won't work -"For he that winketh whan he sholde see, Al wilfully" (willful blindness), God let him fail -picks up on blindness of merchant's tale -fox says give mischance to those who jangleth when they should hold their peace, self callout -they cannot agree on the moral, they both screwed up -Reynard tradition, beast epic: combined with minimal fable tradition, Aesop -but in Aesop, morals come from exterior human point of view -these morals come from animals reflecting on themselves -Priest says alas lords, many a false flatterer is in your courts, be aware of their treachery -who is he addressing? priest embeds in his tale a warning to contemporary rulers: Richard II, many giving you bad advice -complaints: Rick II surrounds self with sycophants, leads to poor policy making -it's set once upon a time, but there are moments of contemporary relevance -Priest asks audience to take the moral, St. Paul says all that is written is written for our instruction -this meant, of course, in the Bible: Priests comparing his tale to the Holy scripture -take the fruit and leave the chaff, just like the Prioress -images of grains and husks, literal meaning, throughout tales -Chauntecleer digging for grains, not clear which is fruit, which is chaff -what's important and what's not? -Chaucer taking parody to it's extreme, tale functions as commentary on other Tales

the clerk in GP

-from Oxford, where he studied logic -horse is thin as a rake, really nailed it in the illustration -clerk also "nat right fat", "loked holwe", serious looking with ragged clothes -because he has no income, benefyce -perpetual grad student, doesn't want to involve self in secular capitalist life -biased views of people -a book addict always wants books, he dreams of one day having 20 (difficult to get any when you're poor) -rather have books than robes or a harp -remember Nicholas from Miller's Tale, a clerk who did enjoy the harp (less studious) -clerk spends all his money on books and learning -says nothing more than necessary, ascetic in appearance as well as speech -words for of high sentence (criterion of tales) -resounding in moral virtue, gladly would he learn and teach

retraction

-from ellesmere manuscript -final pages of Hengwrt are missing / destroyed, very frustrating -"Heere taketh the makere of this book his leve" -ambiguous, he takes leave at this line, or what follows is leave taking -is Chaucer the makere, or the scribe? -if you like anything in the book, thank jesus -if it displeases, attribute it to my lack of cunning, but not to my will -i would have said better if i was able -latter is common in Chaucer, but attributing good to Jesus is uncommon -"this little treatise", Parson's tale, or the whole Tales? neither parson's tale nor entire Tales are little -don't blame me card usually ironic, here it seems played straight -he names all his books as his sins, catalog list, and other books that he can't remember -I hope christ will forgive me this sin -great advertisement, "also by the author", humble brag -are they listed in chronological order? no! throws canterbury tales right in the middle -then he says his translations of Boethius, his other works, his omelies and moralitees, are okay to read, not very sinful -maybe he doesn't think of the Tales as a whole, revokes the ones that lead to sin, leaves the pure ones? -grant me grace of penitence, confession, satisfaction: mixing of parson and chaucer's voice -he wants to be saved at end of time -makes him seem not auctore, but mere compiler: odd, since he claimed earlier to have WRITTEn the tales -is this a deathbed recant? or sly, ironic? -lists the books not to be read but doesn't list the virtuous works (reverse psychology)

prioress tale

-genre? we get a clue at the end when the Chaucer pilgrim says "whan seyd was al this miracle" -Miracle of the Virgin was a popular genre, snappy tales about Mary doing miraculous things, often a current of anti-Semitism -idea for Jewish thinkers: virgin birth and incarnation are problematic, cut against jewish theological ideas -attempt to forestall that criticism in these virgin miracle tales -set in asia minor: why set it far away? -in a great Christian city that has a Jewish quarter

the prioress in the GP

-hard to tell how ironic she is, so pitous she would weep to see a mouse in a trap -small hounds that she feeds with roasted flesh and milk bread, weeps sorely if one of them were to die, or if someone hits one with a rod -all was conscience and tender heart -how to reconcile this tenderness / conscience to animals with the way she seems less concerned with humans? -see this critique throughout the tales, poverty as virtue -people who feed their dogs fancy human food, hypocrisy or at least tension between ideas -fastidious, immaculate, doesn't let any food spoil her clothes -reconcile with the gory tale she tells, about a child getting his throat slit and getting dumped in a privy -prologue has enimatic ending: her brooch says love conquers all -critics wonder, what kind of love? thy neighbour (charitas) or courtly love? -Spector chronicles how past critics have dealt with some of these contradictions in her character

pardoner's tale

-haunteden folye, like Walter -ryot, hasard (Cook's Tale) -overeating and overdrinking youths, doon the devel sacrifyse -superfluitee abhominable, by gluttony they worship the devil tearing apart the Lord's body -some brief anti-semitism, rioters think Jews didn't tear Christ's body apart enough so they gotta continue -Pardoner opened his prologue "By corpus bones!" a curse, worse than an f-bomb in the Middle Ages because you're taking God's name in vain and invoking God's body parts -relation between language and the body, Dinshaw says everyone has a lack / emptiness, and Pardoner lacks genitalia, tries to fill it with words

clerk responds

-his voice interjects throughout, critical of walter -he says it is cruel, evil to torment your wife like this -needless was she tempted -to explain Walter's bad behaviour, wedded mem know no measure while testing patience -when they got a purpose in mind they cannot stop themselves -he describes them as "folk" line 701, revealing: not just men, Griselda also has a solid purpose, too stubborn to quit -markis eventually feels pity and regret: is it repentance? -manipulating situation -medieval narrative: people don't really change from beginning to end, despite conversion narratives, no inner change as in a novel -Chaucer is exception to this usually -is Walter reformed? really there's no other way he could test her; he may just be out of ideas

translations of Griselda

-historical woman, subject to forces of patriarchy, feudalism (on the literal level) -as exemplum, positive or negative, a model: constancy or idolatry? (moral level) -clerk sees her as a positive model, Chaucer sees her as idolatry maybe? Treating Walter as God? -allegorical figure, Griselda as human soul, Walter as a wrathful God testing her (moral level again)

pardoner's entente

-if you trespass on me or my brothers i will sting you with my tongue (don't speak to me or my son ever again) -gets meta about tale-telling frame -he says we've all been doing this with our quiting tales, not to name names (occupatio) -we all spit "venom under heave of holinesse" -occupatio used all the time in courtroom drama "I'm bot going to say my opponent is such-and-such, but..." -other meta moment: "lewed people loven tales olde", sounds a lot like everyone loving the knights tale to "reporte and holde" -another jab at everyone -"lewed" began as meaning and can't read latin, but in this time it is transitioning to our modern usage, meaning "crude"

the virgin mary

-important to medieval imagination is mary worship -asociated with "affective devotion", cultivating certain emotions to get close to God, compassion etc. (for Mary, Jesus etc.) -affective devotion is open to everyone, from the learned to the lewd -this form of practice rose seemingly with interest among laypeople in wanting to have religious practice -not just monks and nuns, but ordinary people who may not have access to the bible; they can imagine Mary, pray to her, imagine Christ on the crucifix -post-trance John the Carpenter to Nicholas: had been watching Nicholas, thinking he was involved in the occult, and says think on Christ's passion -implication: Nick spends too much time thinking about weighty philosophy, he should do what simple working men like John do, simpler religious practice -Prioress's tale simple, designed for children -in medieval era, Mary has three roles: maiden, mother and queen -often combined in interesting ways -here we see mostly the mother in play -by praying to Mary, you get an almost direct line to Christ, she intercedes on behalf of Christ -she is closer to humans, she's intermediary -o moder mayde! o mayde moder free! chiasmus -chiasmus is important in the way medieval people talk about mary, structural parallel between Eve and Mary -Eve comes before Mary but Mary ends up superseding Eve, medieval poets like this idea of flipping things around, logic of supersession, new thing comes after old thing: does it replace it? -the new testament comes and replaces the old one, but what does that mean? -unburnt bush, reference to Moses: language drawn from the old testament, which could be ironic considering the anti-Semitism throughout -idea with mary of her unviability, she is the unburnt bush: anticipate what happens to child, body grievously violated but through Mary's grace he resists the violation -prioress to Mary: no tongue and no science can express your magnificence (evokes theologians, clerks and scientists: this is not a tale for clerks) -you give them the light of your prayer to guide them to your dear son, Mary guides our prayers -Augustin talks of this in his confessions: how would I know how to find God unless he has already found me? -disavowal of theologians and clerkly discourse, but grappling with central problems of theologians: my cunning is so weak but Mary will help me (sounds a lot like humility topos of Chaucer pilgrim, Chaucer is master of false humility: but here it is in a religious register, its purest form) -desires for Mary to speak through her, you do the speaking for yourself through me because you're the only one good enough (this happens at the end of the tale) -Prioress says, I'm like a child who can't really speak

jewish people in the tale

-in cahoots with satan, he considers part of their community, has wasps nest in his heart -this boy's piety offends the law (notion of judaism as obsessed with the literal, fixed, the law)

manciple's tale

-in cook falling behind, Host calls on him, but he's too drunk (Cook claims to be tired though) -manciple roasts him, angry cook falls off his horse -but cook has already told his tale... text in flux -manciple is middleman, a purchaser, seems shady, skims off the top -introduces us to phoebus, a crow he has taught to speak -talking animals, but more realistic -white crow can counterfiet any means speech, "whan he sholde telle a tale" -counterfeiting speech just as Chaucer pilgrim does -emphasis placed on capability to imitate -notion of counterfeiting hangs over Tales as a whole -parallel beteen wife and crow of Phoebus -his only flaw is jealousy, he's loath to be byjaped: echoes John the Carpenter -manciple says treating your wife like this avails not: if she's good, you don't need to keep her under scrutiny -if she's a shrew, she'll find a way to cheat you anyways -2 types of wife: true or shrew, Griselda and Alison/May -don't bother to scrutinize your wife

Parody

-intentional terribleness can be really meta -sometimes people don't pick up on the parody right away, whole audience might not have gotten the joke about Sir Thopas -some readers might have actually liked where the Tale was going -loving parody, Chaucer probably really likes romances -why do we DO parody? form of critique -can also be an homage (if people give you parodies, you know you're famous) -eagle picking up chubby Chaucer also funny because it's a parody of Dante: it has to be a dig at a Big Guy to be funny -today is the age of obsessive parodying -makes critique more accessible, reaches a wider audience, if you want sentence you must cushion it in solaas -it's hard to be original today, we've done it all

back to the tale in asia minor

-jewish quarter sustained by a lord of that country for usury and lucre -one lord who oversees the quarter allows foul usury -hateful to christ, man may walk because it is open at either end: metaphor of a privy, stomach or through-fare -internal organ that performs valuable function, associated with sinfulness -little child, little book learning, the word "little" repeated often -sense of what we might call melodrama, attempt to stir up sympathies in a transparent way

17th-18th centuries

-john dryden calls him the english homer / virgil -calls him perpetual fountain of good sense -now we thin of chaucer as common-sense and down-to-earth -also learned in all sciences -knows what to say and where to leave off, but Chaucer did have trouble with endings -says he's musical compared to his contemporaries Lidgate and Gower -picturesque: natural and pleasing, not perfect -not quite true: Chaucer IS pretty regular with his meter -meter showed us how to pronounce many words -evolutionist way to think of Lit, he's our father but he's also a baby -"not a single character has escaped him", he can observe and distill people -creates perfect, suitable voices for his characters (he believes the tale DOES fit the teller) -Dryden says he will translate only the tales which have nothing of immodesty in them (no Reeve, Miller, and of course no Wife of Bath); his favourite is the Knight's Tale -sentence over solaas -we must forgive Chaucer, he lived in a rude age

free will?

-keeps going about destiny, destiny makes Chauntecleer forget his dreams and jump off his perch -Fridag, associated with Venus: he is an amorous bird -narrator looking for forces to blame, seen already in the knight's tale -make a joke about people born under cosmic sign and use it as an excuse, like the Wife of Bath -destiny / Friday / Venus / Pertilote are to blame -then Chauntecleer moves into a new philosophical issue

parson's tale

-kind of a killjoy, doesn't seem to fit -seems medieval in a bad way -some scholars think Chaucer did not intend to end the tales on this note -maybe it was another work from Chaucer, maybe he didn't write it at all -disjunctive, weird ending, but no proof that Chaucer didn't want it there -structure of tale: handbook of penitence -after 1215, rule that you must confess 1 time a year, they write handbooks to teach you how -Schema of Parson is important for tales as a whole: contrition -pt. 2 talks about sin -pt. 3 talks individually of 7 deadly sins, pride being the worst one -for each sin there is a remedy -then gives rules for confession -but truly confessional Tales all transcend that framework, this schema is about types -but Tales have tension between types and individuals

nun's priest's prologue

-knight interruption, then host sucking up to knight as everyone likes to do -host doesn't like people talking in high, flowery, rhetorical language, warned clerk to save high style for court and church, gives us vernacular tales -as you said, it's a pain to hear heaviness when there's nothing we can do about it: practicality -such talking is not worth a butterfly, there is no sport -Host says sir, tell something of hunting, GP tells us monk prefers hunting to reading or labouring -monk says nay, i have no lust for play, so let someone else play -not like Chaucer pilgrim who is a good sport and makes an effort to try again -the monk is just no fun at all -host is upset at this disruption of his authority, usually people do as he tells them (except the drunken Miller, but the Host kind of likes his funky style) -Nun's Priest, "John", tell us something glad -your horse may suck but I think you can tell us a jolly tale

friars

-member of one of mendicant orders, from 12th c -criticism of monastic orders, monks can own collective property -monasteries own lots of land, own businesses like breweries, is that in spirit of Christ? -Christ said to give up all your money, but monks hoard resources -mendicant means begging, relied on alms, vowed to poverty -convents in urban areas, they move around and preach (not solitary rural like monks) -negative response to the movement leads to anti-fraternal satire -parish priests criticize them (priests live on tithes) -friars steal business from priests because they can hear confession and take sacraments

January

-knight who lives in Lumbardye, always follows his bodily delight (just like Walter, riffing off the clerk) -he's been a bachelor for 60 years (older than Walter though) -"ther was his appetyt / As doon thise foles that been seculeer"... but the merchant IS secular -Chaucer probably wrote this tale originally for a different pilgrim (the monk?), continuity errors -but is it just a blunder? give GC the benefit of the doubt -critical voice, as in Clerk's Tale, emerges: not certain if January being holy or acting out of dotage (needs a wife because he's getting senile) -Clerk's Tale idealizes virginity (as Wife of Bath accused) -Encomium in this tale idealizes marriage, but who is the voice? Can't tell if January saying it, or free indirect discourse, or what -"and trewely it sit wel to be so..." encomium starts from there -domesticity vs. natural and wild -rhyming couplets, encomium (piece of praise) on marriage -couplets create binaries: "bound" leads to "abound", being bound leads to abundance (from the masculine point of view) -having a wife will restore plenitude -references Adam all alone, God making Eve to held a dude out -wife is man's health comfort and earthly paradise, said Wife of Bath / woman is man's joy and all his bliss, Chauntecleer -kind of a joke, since Even got them kicked out of paradise, lost Adam his paradise, medieval audience would have been like "hey there" @ Wife of Bath -merchant says: if a husband follows a good wife's advice he'll never go wrong, gives the example of Rebecca (but that was a mother giving advice: here's where Freud gets involved) -this example is of a woman colluding with her son to deceive her husband, argument undercuts itself as in the Wife of Bath -picks up on motif of blindness; Isaac becomes blind, is deceived, like January, by not giving us the full story, we are made blind

the moral

-layers of morals offered -nostalgia to good old days, where women had strength of character as did Griselda -but also, it is impossible for women to be like Griselda -no one has that kind of fortitude -but everyone should try to be as constant in adversity as she was, says the Clerk -next few stanzas, moral becomes allegorical: we should receive what God sends, for he tests us to exercise us, make us better -allegorical reading in tension with the psyschological

medieval law

-legally husband ha a lot of latitude -Arveragus recognizes her right to make binding contracts outside of marriage -in the era, Arveragus could have overridden the contract easily since she made it without his permission -secular and sacred justice systems complicated -Aurelius uses illicit magical means, a cheater? -Equinas: any contract with impossible task is de facto defunct: but he follows thru -morally she is solid, legally she is not: although Arveragus could have taken care of it legally if he wanted to -Aurelius says to do it, not for his heart, but to save her own honour: manipulative, Chaucer knows the promise is not binding, so does Arveragus -he's unwillinhg to use his legal rights to cut it off, to keep his trouthe to her, he must recognize her pledge to Aurelius as valid -oral pledge, however, just as valid as a written in medieval era when many can't read anyways -people care about their reputations most, keep their words -this Tale is also set in older bygone era, Arveragus described as old-fashioned knight (that's why he cares so much about trouthe)

auchinleck / affleck manuscript

-likely made in 1330's -references to events that were happening -probably made in London, centre of the book trade -most books made in workshops by laypeople, commercial manuscripts -this one made by 6 copyists, 6 hands we can trance, it's a large book -using dialects associated with London (also Chaucer's dialect) -roughly 3/4 of book are romances, unusual -whoever commissioned it was a great lover of the genre -probably a monolingual reader, NO FRENCH, just English -but also gynaecological texts, planned to be read by women / household including women -changes the way we think about the poetic content -we suspect Chaucer knew of this manuscript, but there's no proof

telling his tale

-list of crimes the archdeacon must prosecute -a secular court does theft and murder, the church court does fornication / witchcraft / defamation / lechery / not doing sacraments / failure to pay tithes -archdeacon sends summoners to bring you to court, so no one likes them -summoner has network of spies, bauds and pimps, archdeacon does not know about them -particularly takes advantaged of lewed people, who cannot speak Latin -religious debates tied into vernacularity, lollards want bible in English -the summoner pilgrim himself can't speak latin (he is lewed) -friar seems shady, summoner even more so -summoner in the tale meets a merry yeoman in green (colour that suggests the supernatural)

dreams

-macrobius says 5 types (people love to cite him) -writes commentary on Cicero: comes from commentary on a commentary FALSE DREAMS (bodily) 1. visum (spectral; for edge of sleep when spectres run in and attack you, hypnagogic images described by Nabokov) 2. insomnium (nightmare caused by something that happens in day and spills over into dream, Freud would call anxiety dreams: could also be pleasurable. Macrobius says these are not worth examining, could also be a compensation dream, revenge fantasy, reaction to your daily life) TRUE DREAMS (spiritual) 1. Somnium: enigmatic, needs interpreting and decoding 2. Visio: revelation, clear prophecy 3. Oraculum: mouth of an authority to tell you what will happen, oracular -much blending between true and false dreams of course, Augustin says don't discount a fever dream because God works in mysterious ways

chauntecleer mansplains the nature of dreams

-madam, good for you for knowing Cato, but we men (not even a man wtf...) have read more old books and better authorities who say the reverse -dreams have significance and prophetic value, can be true or false on Macrobian scale -long excursis on this point, exempla of murder discovered through dream -"mordre wol out", famous phrase -God will eventually let culprit be detected, even if it takes years: this is my conclusion -rooster caught in digressive rhetorical flurry, amplificatio that gets out of control -parody of rhetorical tradition

self-parody

-man of law's tale, prologue -"chaucer is lewed and can't rhyme", but what else could he say? Chaucer has said it all, even if not well -he's told more about lovers than Ovid has -what can i tell them, since they've been told? -advertises for his other works, native advertising, embedded into the narrative

prologue of parson's tale

-manciple's tale ends starkly, telling us not to talk about other people -shut-down of language, goes against tale-telling altogether -suddenly it is nighttime, inconsistency in timeframe -"entring at thropes ende", are they arriving? -Host, doesn't even care about the end of physical journey, but end of tale-telling game -Host is self-satisfied with game, "I trowe that we han herd of ech degree", we've heard it all -asks parson, "say sooth... Be what thou be, ne breke thou nat oure pley", don't ruin it now buddy -he thinks parson, the last pilgrim, will "knytte up well" -if anything, Nun's Priest is the one who ties it all together -tell us a fable (just heard one from the manciple, perhaps host is In the Mood for Fables) -preachers have ambivalence to fables, they can help illustrate a point, but also distract from the sentence (remember that one scene from Doubt) -Parson, no, you won't get a fable from me, I'm interested only in truth -binary opposition for him between truth and fable, does not acknowledge allegory -"whan i may sowen whete", interested in wheat, truth -gives caveat: if you want to hear of morality, listen: but I am a southern man, I cannot give alliterative poetry -joke: southerners see north England as backwards, do old English style of poetry based on alliteration while southerners like rhyme -but, he can't rhyme well either: "I wol nat glose", I will be plainspoken -I'll just tell a tale in prose and knit it all up -Jesus wll show you the way "in this viage", voyage -I will lead you on a pilgrimage to the celestial Jerusalem, a different goal altogether from Canterbury -"this meditacioun", a different genre -he says "I am nat textuel", but in GP he is learned (humility, or inconsistency?) -if you want to correct me, feel free -but there is no room for correction: tale ends and so do the Canterbury Tales -longest tale by far -moment of unity, no dissent: first time all pilgrims agree -we said, give him space -shift in parson's tale from temporality to spatiality: his Tale is timeless -fictional narrative depends on time, but he moves us into realm of space, schematic

moral

-manciple: my mom told me not to say wicked words, you may regret it -if you tell a tale and someone doesn't like it, that's your fault -don't be the auctor of new tidings -don't repeat gossip, very pragmatic -be more tactful than the brid -not idealized truth, but what truth can do for you

Danse macabre

-middle ages tradition of personifying death, shows him especially as a dancing skeleton who comes for everyone -emphasis on idea of death as great equalizer -kind of a mystification, poor people still die more / sooner than the rich -in the Decameron, aristocrats all flee the city, hang out in a garden telling stories

quiting structure

-miller quites knight -reeve quites miller -cook quites reeve -wife of bath quites man of law -summoner quites friar -clerk quites wife of bath -merchant quites clerk -franklin quites squire -pardoner quites physician -prioress quites shipman -quiting in binary mode, self-generating and could go on forever -so how do you terminate it? -Parson makes the game unplayable -the genre cannot end from within, this is monolithic monolingual, as opposed to polyvocality of the Tales -significant that there is no end link, we do not get responses to the parson

chaucer with his source material

-more complex characters -highlights relevance to contemporary religious and political debates -epistemology

the franklin's tale

-move away from fabliau, more high formal style like knight's tale, more psychological and uses some signposting (less clunky than the knight) -happy ending, fairly light -mini romance

lee patterson

-multiple moralitees of Nun's Priests Tale -Parsons Tale, many readings, many truths, you can draw out -disjunction between occasion and form

sir thopas

-name dropping other well-known romances, Horn child, Ypotis, Bevis and Sir Gy -these romances all appear in Auchinleck / Affleck manuscript -parallels with Sir Thopas all -parody of a romance -echoes: opening lines of Beves of Hamtown -Lordinges, listen to my tale, merrier than the nightingale

The friar's tale

-not a major or greatest hit -wife of bath interrupted by friar and Summoner squabbling like little boys -why is the friar so concerned with the wife? -this "worthy limitour, this noble frere", an opposition, 2 synonyms together -extra verbiage prized in Middle English, Vinsauf says demonstrates your skill with these variations -Friar always glowering at the summoner, silent tension -Friar speaks condescendingly to wife, mansplaining, he says good tale, but you don't need to preach lady, leave it to the clergy because you don't know what you're talking about -he also says we're here to have fun, not listen to preaching -Margery Kemp, 15th c: trouble with the authorities because she was accused of preaching -defended self by citing Paul, who says women can preach (heavily paraphrasing, just like the Wife of Bath) -who can preach? only clergy, or laypeople too? -Summoner / Friar tension mirrors Miller / Reeve -Host says to be courteous, there should be no debate in good company, tries to quell dissension, leave the summoner and tell your tale -summoner says let him have it, when i tell my tale, i'll quite him good -Host says "Pees, namore of this"

pertilote on dreams

-nothing in them, cause of vapours, complexions (dispositions like melancholy or ire, sanguine), vanities, genetic makeup -born under certain sign gives inherent nature (Wife of Bath) -when humours are too abundant, imbalanced, you get dreams: digestion, superfluous images -she diagnoses him with red colera, angry personality, why he dreams of strife, arrows, fires, red beasts: you dream of red and angry things because your humour is red -melancholics dream of black things because of their black bile, black wolves/bears/devils -joke that this is a scientific lecture on nature of dreams delivered by children -what's Chaucer saying? is this absurd? -cites Cato who says don't trust dreams, she begs him to take some laxative to purge him of these uncomfy humours -she says there's no apothecary but she can recommend some herbs

pardoner and his bulls

-official documents licensed by Pope give sense of authority -these documents "my body to warente", document his body -bulls sound like balls, running pun joke -says, bulls license him to do Christs work and no other priest can tell me otherwise -speaks a few words of Latin (summoner connection again), to saffron his speech -by line 346, implication is that his bulls are fake, forged: he's licensing his speech himself -sprinkling spice to make words more palatable, sin of gluttony

monk's tale

-parodied by nun's priests tale -pretty awful tale, no one bothers to read it -sort of a sir thopas thing? telling bad tale to make a point? -story of what happens when Fortune list to flee: don't trust Fortune because it can be snatched from you -then series of little exempla, bad things happening to people -fate being inexorable, a notion that comes up again in Nun's Priest's Tale -monk goes on awhile and then there is a Thopas-esque interruption, from the knight who wants no more, this is more than enough -knight suspects that for most people a little tragedy is enough, and for me it is a disease to hear about these sudden falls -hits knight too close to home, he wants joy and solaas where poor people get sudden lifts, the opposite tale: rise to fortune, not fall (biographical sentiment because Chaucer has upward mobility)

the medieval curriculum

-parodies free will debate, but also participating in it -parodies the curriculum of Aesop's fables -students read Aesop, then paraphrase him, then give allegorical interpretation (bestiary) on natural, social and religious points -disputatio (debate) -translate Latin (Chauntecleer does it incorrectly) -distinctiones -imitate auctores (modernist technique, learn to write by imitating a great writer: this technique goes back for Geoffrey of Vinsauf, urging people to imitate his models) -these categories all parodied by the Nun's priest

a happy marriage?

-part of the marriage group -Boccaccio says nothing of the couple, how they met, but Chaucer puts in a cute backstory -standard approach to courtly love: he obeys and serves a lady, she takes pity on him eventually -but then, from line 744, gender-swapped pledge of Griselda to Walter: Arveragus to Dorigen -sense of mutual devotion, he pledges first of his free will -emphatic NEVER in all life will he make her act against her will -he will obey and follow her as any man should, no mastery over her, he will serve her as a lover should serve his lady -this kind of love has not come up in the Tales before, but they've discussed it -remaking concept of marriage: he gives up his legal right to mastery, she is a true humble wife -but he wants to pretend he still has soveraynetee -narrator addresses sires, maistrie will ruin love, "Love is a thing as any spirit free" -echoes the wife of bath's tale, but less intense than her ideal -goes against clerk's tale almost totally -he calls husband and wife friends, a new concept for the Canterbury Tales -"Wommen of kinde desiren libertee... And so don men", addressed to sires, appeal to their empathy and common sense -he thinks they can both be servants in love and masters to each other

the dream of chauntecleer

-perched among his wives, next to Pertilote -she hears him roar, is afraid: what ails you? you'r usually a good sleeper -he says he is afraid of his nightmare -significant that this happens at dawn, in medieval dream theory, dawn associated with prophetic visions: digestion finished, body less active, your soul is freer and more open to receiving prophetic images -dreams he saw a beast like a hound that wanted to kill me, physical description of a fox to follow -for fear I almost died: this is what caused my groaning -he doesn't use the word "fox", he doesn't know what to call this creature: it is like a hound -suggests he's never seen a fox, how does an animal know to be afraid of a creature it has never seen?

natures

-phoebus does his best to please her, but you can't change the nature of a thing -we expect he's talking about wife, can't train her against her nature -keep a bird in a cage, treat it as well as a human, good food, gold cage -birds true nature is always it would rather live in a forest rude and cold, eating worms -auctoritee, perceived against experience -wife / crow parallel, seems woman is actually the caged bird -but Manciple says all these examples are about men, not women: men will revert to primal urges -shows us how blind Phoebus is

Trouthe

-pledging formal binding promise -also fidelity and devotion generally -Aurelius gets rid of rocks, she must break her trouthe to someone -how binding was her promise? -she pledged trouthe to Arveragus first -trouthe to Aurelius has no witnesses and she is higher class / more credible: plus, she made the pledge in jest

the art of dying

-popular medieval self-help books, how to die -king portrayed perfectly preserved on to of coffin, rotting corpse belowL the king's 2 bodies -king has incorruptible essence, passes on to body of next monarch so he can rot

distinctiones

-preoccupation with precise meaning of terms, single term can signify different things (puns) -medieval education system very interested in this -overdetermine word, layer it with meaning -can lead to contradictions and inconsistencies

the tale of sir melibee

-prose treatise, consists mainly of proverbs and moral teachings -personification of prudence (carefulness, discernment, practical wisdom) -services independently in several copies, very popular -when he's done, Host says he wishes his wife had heard this tale -By Goddes bones, tells how his wife is always spurning him to do violence (he had said earlier that he would not tell more tales about his wife, occupatio) -medieval people loved proverbs, so they loved the nuggets of wisdom in Melibee

high fantasye

-psychology laid bare -makes in his mind a mirror -we saw "fantasie" in Millers Tale -MED: fantasy is one of faculties of bodily wits, often called imagination -it enables people to perceive the world, takes sensory input and makes images of it -his mind as mirror polished bright, Chaucer thinks heart is synonym for brain -he knows Henry that brain is centre for cognition, but he goes back to heart -mirror as metaphor for sight, receives images as does mind -mirror has other connotations: self-reflection, Narcissus, you can't escape the self -January can't see beyond his own sight, thoughts, impressions

punishment of jewish culprits

-punished for murder by provost, evil shall have that evil deserves -they are drawn and quartered by horses, then hangs them by the law -sounds a lot like an eye for an eye, which was a medieval Christian stereotype about Judaism -Christians thought Jewish people obsessed with literal law while Christians followed spiritual law, didn't need circumcision because they did it inwardly, circumcise the heart -is Chaucer pointing out Christian hypocrisy? -interest in typology, are they so radically different from christians as this tale would have it? are they a radical other?

friar vs. summoner

-reflect on each other -friar ends with summoner in hell; summoner begins with friar in hell -stories about ecclesiastical corruption -accuse each other of swindling -poor interpreters of latin, french and people -summoner in friars tale takes everything literally, doesn't consider entente -both tales work against the tellers, their criticisms look a lot like themselves -general prologue: summoner was lecherous as a sparwe (like the sparrow-kissing friar in summoners tale) -meta-hypocrisy

lollardy

-religious reform movement in late 14th century England -dubbed "premature reformation" -inspired by John Wyclif, an Oxford theologian -challenge orthodox views of sacrament, confession, scripture, as well as practices like plays, pilgrimages and oath swearing -they said confess right to God, cut out the middleman -1401, Henry IV passes statute against lollardy, creates paranoia to secure his claim to the throne, solidifies his authority -culture of paranoia develops

Pertilote

-says he has lost her heart, she cannot love a coward, what's wrong with you dude? a bit harsh -why are you afraid of a dream? have you no man's heart? (he's not a man... he has no beard... what are you thinking dame Pertilote) -blending of human and nonhuman, cross species boundary -why do this? is it a quirk or continuity error? what is chaucer saying about humans / nonhumans?

Low style

-see this in description of wedding night -January lulls her, kisses her with thick bristles of his unsoft beard, ouch -"alas, i moot trespass", ominous, alarming threat, vulgar, literally I will do you harm -recalls threatening Millers Tale, Nicholas -slack, shaky neck skin, jowly and gross -May gives deadpan response: she doesn't praise any of this love -fabliau begins

pope greg x

-sends letter in 1272 -opens with a slam of jewish people, they're stubborn and don't get it at all -but we must offer them the shield of our protection through the clemency of Christian piety -antagonistic and condescending -goes on to talk about blood libel, says that some Christians steal each others children to get money and injure the jews -pope says this is all ridiculous since jewish law forbids the eating of animals having claws (?? humans are now clawed animals) -explanation: it's not because of their basic decency that they don't kill and eat children, but because their law forbids it -backhanded magnanimity -helps not a whit

living death

-sermonizing Pardoner: he who lives in vices is dead, sin as a kind of death -old man figure: opposite problem of everyman, wants to die but death just won't take him -language picks up on lyrics, earth is his mother, his real home is under the ground -but she won't let him in, so he is wretched -enigmatic, maybe the man seems like Death himself -Gulliver's Travels, he meets immortal people and they are so miserable -the person who most wants to die is never able to do so -tells them to find Death under that oak, makes non-blasphemous oath "god save yow" -proxy figure for death

more pardoner's relics

-shoulder bone from "holy Jewes shepe", which will cure any animal -magical mitten that will multiply your grain, but only if you offer pence to the pardoner -pretty much admits he just wants your money -he says any woman who has cuckolded her husband has no grace to participate in my relics

other auctores on dreams

-so there's Macrobius, but we also have Daniel from Old Testament -REAL conclusion after long speech, this vision forebodes adversitee -I will put no store in your laxatives / suspect they are venemous (accuse your wife of murder why don't you??), I defy them and love them not -bathos: absurd, clunky, deliberately so -riffing on Daniel and Joseph then absurd bathetic reference to laxatives -speaking of mirth, I'm grateful for one thing: your beauty, you are so scarlet red around the eyes and all my grief fades -speaks Latin phrase, means "woman is man's confusion" but he translates it to "woman is man's joy and all his bliss" -I defy dreams because my wife is so lovely -mistranslation: is Chauntecleer tactfully mistranslating or does he really not know? -allusion back to Eden and Eve's fall

the problem of voice

-spector traces history of responses to the tale -for a long time, called one of Chaucer's best, poignant and moving -in middle ages it circulated by itself, not attached to the prioress or the tales, implication for any irony we might see here -after world war 2 it became ethically impossible to write off the anti-semitism -critics got around it saying that isn't chaucer, that's the prioress, she's a persona -lately that view has come under critique: can we really give chaucer that out? -who is speaking, the prioress or chaucer? to whom does the anti-semitism belong? is it self-aware? is chaucer pointing out hypocrisy or is it just straightforward bigotry? -is there irony, would his audience have picked up on it? the fact that it circulated alone suggests not

rhyme royal

-stanza form invented by Chaucer, seven lines with rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-b-c-c -used for serious or particularly religious tales -chaucer brings iambic pentameter to forefront of English poetry -but rhyme royal is specific stanza form used in iambic pentameter -usually this form used for serious matters but he retains this form in envoy -used this form in Troilus and Criseyde, a double tragedy, serious matter and high style -Vinsauf's idea of matching form and content

tale of sir thopas

-stilted, rhythmical meters almost absurd: easier to memorize by rote -short, end-stopped lines, recipe for boring -face white as bread, lips red as rose (top ten medieval cliches right here), he has a semely nose: SO tedious -anticlimax, bathos: goes into forest full of wild beasts... such as bukke and hare (deflates promise of romance) -rabbits are a big deal in the middle ages though, really mean, killer, ax-wielding on occasion (possibly the origin of that monty python gag?) -"he almost had a sorry time" -Sir Thopas hears a bird singing, immediately falls in love-longing -we see this in romances like the knight's tale, fall in love at the drop of a hat -Thopas priketh his horse like he's mad, taking out his aggressive desire on the horse, and horse just bleeding from the sides -meet a giant, but he escapes, anticlimax, no building suspense with detail -escapes with Gods grace and fair bearing, class structure built into the romance genre, drawing on cliches

yeman in green

-summoner knows nothing of him but swears to be his brother and always tell him the truth -remember Palamon and Arcite's broken oath of brotherhood -knight in wife's tale swore an oath to a hag and cannot break it

the old lady

-summoner says pay me or i'll take your new pan -makes up a story about a cuckold husband -lady says you lie! i remained true to my husband -she swears summoner and her pan to the devil -the devil is polite and asks "Mabely, myn owene moder deere", is this your entente? -she says yeah, fetch him unless he will repent -Summoner should be paying attention and repenting, but he says no, old lady, and I want all your clothes too -the devil says, sorry brother, you're going to learn about hell firsthand know -remember the Miller's Tale: you shall know our privetee

the temptations of Griselda

-taking away her daughter -Walter gets desire to test his wife, her sadnesse for to knowe -needs to know what goes on in her mind -needs to see if she has some resistance to his power, need to expose her inwardly -2nd temptation, her son: raising the stakes since sons are worth more -"this markis caughte yet another lest", catching a desire, passivity, like catching a cold: compulsion -3rd time, Griselda to be cast off as his wife, prove her character -he needs not only her word, he needs the experience for knowledge of her devotion

teller fitting the tale

-tale as memento mori tradition for his own profit -scare the audience about death, so they will confess to him -ironic and hypocritical, he drinks corny ale and then damns drunkards -maybe he's scared? who pardons the pardoner? -refusal to repent (Dr. Faustus), fatalism, I can't change so I might as well -Dinshaw says Pardoner is overcome with despair, the gravest sin: not believing you can be redeemed means you don't believe in Christ the redeemer -many layers to his personality, what is underneath? -"man" in the middle ages: can mean humankind, but can also mean men excluding women -telling this story to provoke people to buy pardons, such a salesman always coming out: "I forgot to tell you about my relics", but he did not forget -veiled threat? one or two of you might fall off your horses and break your necks, lucky I'm here to save your soul

bestiaries

-tension between animals zoologically vs. as symbols for something human -bestiary is a very popular medieval genre -collection of facts and lore about animals, both real and fictional, hard to say from modern point of view which should be taken for true -often would describe allegorical significance of an animal -fox and wolf as disruptive to life of human and domestic fowl -fox is clever, will hide self to deceive birds -physical description of fox, what it does, craftiness -but then comes allegorical reading, comparison to the devil who deceives, draws us into sin and then slays us: devil acts like a fox (prima significacio) -fox is devil allegory, cunning, manipulative, ravenous -significacio secundo: men are like foxes, speak good and have evil on his mind, difference between deed and entente -Herod was a fox and a deceiver -animals as part of symbolic economy, stand-ins -whale: leviathan in the bible -panther: exotic, rarely seen, Christlike -manticore: human head and lion body, clearly fictional

decameron as source

-tenth day, fifth tale is the source for the franklin's tale -the figure of Dorigen is more sympathetic than her Boccaccian equivalent -the unrequited lover in Boccaccio is more persistent, Aurelius just goes home to cry (what else can a squire do in love?)

chaucer in the renaissance

-think of him as our lineage, well and spring -edmund spenser fixated on him -like Hoccleve, has a moment in Faerie Queene where he waxes on how great Chaucer is -"well of English undefiled", it's been about 100 years and he already thinks the pure language of Chaucer has been defiled -Spenser very concerned with time, things being defaced -Chaucer's rhymes may APPEAR rude, but he likes them -writes in fake middle english, deliberately being archaic -wants spirit to infuse him, make him the modern chaucer -people use his name and "spirit" to justify their own creative endeavours

spiritual becomes secular

-this fart-as-pentecost reading is fairly blasphemous -divide a forthing, divide a fart, in 12 (for the 12 disciples) -he has plausible deniability, it's not overt, Chaucer could avoid being burned for this -but remember, medieval people like biblical slapstick: noah fighting with his wife in plays, etc.

glossing of summoners tale

-thomas: they're on a pilgrimage to st. thomas -bad behaviour comes from the devil -wife says he won't have sex with her, comfortable telling the friar all about it -this ire maketh the feend -friar comfortable being called maister, but pretends to be humble before the lord -liver, soft bread, pigs head are all fancy food, he hopes for a big feast -hypocrite -of physical and spiritual sustenance, i need onlythe latter -"I prey yow, dame"-- pun: prey as in praying to / for her, but also prey as in predation

chauntecleer

-transition from opening to the rooster is like the wizard of oz, going from black and white to glorious technicolour -effictio (Vinsauf), except of course it's about an animal -he was the best at crowing in all the land, his voice better than church organ: natural sound of rooster overlaid with human meaning -he was more regular than a click, fit into human world -follows trajectory of Vinsauf, head to toe, many similes for his body parts -hard to think of animals on their own terms, need simile -seven sister-wives to do his pleasure, wondrous to him: critique of king figures

the devil made him do it

-treasure behind the oak, not death -treasure is inert, but brings out internal death: drive (Freud) of the rioters -brings out the Death they had in them -"the feend, our enemy" -at first, pardoner passing blame from rioter to devil: but why did the devil pick this guy? -devil made him do it because he was already corrupted: "his full entente / to sleen hem bothe, and nevere to repent" -Pardoner believes some sins are unpardonable -apostrophe to sin in prologue

the devil

-uses "thou" as a sign of familiarity -devil is on different level of intelligence than the summoner in the tale -summoner asks all about hell, curiositas, devil tells him you'll find out better than Dante -Summoner totally misses this warning -devil says, lets ride and talk until you forsake me (reference to Judas) -being forsaken is big in Middle Ages, paranoia, informing on neighbours for being a lollard -Summoner says he won't forsake him, he has sworn trouthe as a brother, even though you are Satan himself (odd response) -Gawain promises rashly too (medieval motif) to let his head get chopped -Summoner is a literalist, old-fashioned about oaths -guy in the mud swears his cart horses and hay to the devil, but he doesn't mean it -devil cannot take it, churl thought something different from what he said, it's all about his entente -Aquinas : do angels know secret thoughts? -physiognomy: you can see thoughts by looking at a person (especially doctors can) -Summoner obsessed with appearances, asks devil how he got his form -only God can TRULY see into the mind -12 conclusions of the lollards (1395), text in English for lewed people -create scrutiny and paranoia, how to tell if your priest is a lollard, secret tests for homosexuality

chaucer and shakespeare

-very influenced, loves to borrow and steal (plots, characters) -the knight's tale seen in a midsummer night's dream and the two noble kinsmen -uses troilus and criseyde in romeo and juliet, and of course in Troilus and Cressida

the friar in the general prologue

-wanton and merry, a good talker -Wife of Bath: the fairies are gone, so now women have to worry about friars -he has seduced women and then paid them off in marriage -not-so-veiled innuendo -he says, confess to me, I'm better than a priest -quid pro quo! easy to give penance to him, he'll let you off for a bribe -giving alms makes you a good man -how do you know if someone is repentant?. Friar: if they give me money, they are inwardly contrite -lollards say confess straight to god, a human priest cannot see your privetees -he could get money even from the poorest of the poor, he brags about this-- narrator giving us some sarcasm

impressions

-wants young wife, more impressionable, malleable as warm wax -Dante, "my brain now bears your stamp" -continuing mirror passage: wants a girl whose virtue is praised by the common people -clerk: common people had trouble identifying virtue, here they are good at it: more generous portrait of common people -proverb, love is blind: story is about blindness, added resonance -no one could find fault with her, "this was his fantasye" -reminds of Andreas Capellanus describing falling in love

Pardoner's Conclusion

-warning, I'm drunk on ale -though I'm a vicious man, I can tell you a moral tale -connects to contemporary arguments about priests, like what lollards say -priests then say, even if a priest has vices, he can still perform the sacraments

Walter

-who is protagonist of the Tale? it is called the Griselda Folktale, but Chaucer's Tale begins with Walter -most folktales / simple narratives begin with the protagonist, and clerk violates this rule -"in delyt he liveth, and hath done yore", timelessness of his pleasure -anything he wants is provided, he is loved and feared, unlike Griselda -he has a good lineage -good guy and ruler, "save in somme thinges that he was to blame" -clerk's voice emerges critically, "I blame him thus" -he never considers the future, he lives in the present -he loved to go hawking and hunting, wealthy hobbies, but ambivalence, people think it is a waste of time -worst of all he would not get married and give up his lusty bachelorhood -kind of like people who stay in school forever, extending their adolescence and never contributing to society -in middle ages, having children was necessary in marriage, child to be your heir and also to remind you of your own mortality -Walter denying his mortality by not getting married -people tell him to bow his head under the "blisful yok of soveraynetee", bondage as blissful: canny and oxymoronic -commoners know he likes his freedom, so they frame marriage as a place where you can retain your soveraynetee -the Wife of Bath perks right up and gives him the eyeballs emoji

(un)biblical glossing and interpretation

-who needs the text of bible when you have glosses, says Friar John -uses the bible to disregard itself -Friar John says, quoting corinthians: "the letter kills, but the spirit gives life", using the bible to say we don't need the bible -when the wyf tells of a dead baby, he tells her about the friars praying for this child, and brags about how humble he is -blatant lies, he isn't married to poverty at all -also weird that he says wyf is prettiest girl at church -compares self to Elijah, Paul, Aaron, Moses etc. -turns everything about him -creates a spiritual economy, his prayers are better than yours

pardoner on poverty

-why should i make baskets like some apostle? -I'm not going to counterfeit an apostle (like the Wife: I'm not going to be some fake holy virgin) -Pardoner is too intense about playing the villain, I want money even from the poor towns: if their kids have to starve, so be it -is he performing his badness? seems really over the top

rash promises

-why would Dorigen do it? she didn't think everyone would take it seriously -Dianara's decision is clearly because she thinks it's never going to happen, also she has something to win and not just lose -Dianora makes calculated (if hasty) decision -Dorigen's promise is more rash -she finds out, suddenly thinks, and says "in pley", remove all the rocks from the coast and "have her trouthe" -change indecision, she says no is my final answer; then jokingly says BUT if you do THIS for me... -what are you thinking Dorigen. You played with this boy's heart and you played yourself -is she mocking, being cruel? is she giving him hope? or is impossible task a safety measure (her job is to make sure no one comes between her and her husband) -still thinking of husband, being beneficent -be mean to him so he'll stop being in love -everyone makes mistakes though -teleological perspective, Dorigen sounds like Boethius when she asks why God would make such rocks -to Aurelius, have heer my trouthe (but she already said the same to Arveragus) -in Boccaccio, it is less, formal a promise

poor widow

-whylom, once upon a time: fairy tale temporality -she lived a simple life, few possessions: reminds us of poor noble patient Griselda -virtuous idealized poverty -2 daughters, 3 sows, 3 cows, and a sheep called Malle -notion of naming your sheep brings up relation of human to non-human, anthropomorphization -she ate slender meals, no fancy sauce or dainty morsels -why begin with this pastoral image of a life of restraint? -sets up contrast with Chauntecleer, a fancy bloke -image of humans as unconcerned with animals to set up the mock heroic

impressionable may

-widows are too difficult, like wife of bath, may is young and impressionable -it turns out he's right, but she doesn't get impressed by him, her impressionability is not to his benefit -she can't drive Damian from her heart and fantasie -takes key to garden, imprints it in wax to counterfeit it, shown physically -January suddenly struck with blindness, weeps and wails, becomes jealous since he can't watch his wife -not until he goes blind can he see what might happen, irony -he's right, May is falling in folly -narrator: "O January, you've never been able to see things as they were anyways", foreshadowing -May cons him, lift me up to poor tree (implies pregnancy craving, I'll die without pears) -she stands on his back; Damian hiding in tree, "pullen up the smok, and in he throng" -merchant prefaces: "Ladies, I'm a rude man, I can't gloss: I'm just gonna come out and say it" -Pluto sees this, gives January his sight -January is shocked, but she says "what are you talking about? what eyleth yow?" -I cured you of blindness, I was told I could cure it by wrestling with a man in a tree -"I had good entente, but clearly you can't see and it didn't work, you have glimpsing but no perfect sight" -January buys this logic, apologizes, I THOUGHT I saw you having sex in that tree, I "wende" but I guess I am mistaken -she says, you're blurry right now as if you just awoke, scientific descriptions of blindness and sight -Chaucer likes science; treatise on the astrolabe -for awhile, many sights will trick you; "he that misconceyveth, he misdemeth": pun on conceive, as in pregnancy, which May previously implied -Devil: "you can't judge if you can't see", in Friar's Tale

the marriage group

-wife of bath, clerk, merchant and franklin -questions of gendered power dynamics -wife's prologue: impossible for a clerk to speak well of a woman unless she is a saint -clerks have the same mindset as st. jerome, unrealistic, idealized views of women, if you don't fit it, you're bad -clerks see only virgin mary or whores -clerk responds to this, misogyny embedded in his response

antifeminist rooster outburst

-women's advice expels Adam from paradise -"read auctores", coded male, and what they say of women -then Chaucer / narrator disavows this, I'm just repoting what the cok said -but how does cok know these human Christian constructions? -"I can noon harm of no womman divyne", many ways to translate this -divyne means "foretell" but also adjective meaning "holy": only religious women? -Nun's Priest is a priest who ministers to the prioress, is he resentful of a certain holy woman, he is her confessor?

book learning and song

-working in his primer, he hears a beautiful song and dares to come closer, learns the first verse by rote: alma redemptoris, medieval chant in latin -he learns it by rote but has no idea what the words actually mean, doesn't speak latin because he is so young and tender -he doesn't know so he asks his friend, so pious, asks older classmate -is it really about how great mary is? older friend expounds to him that this song is "maked of our blisful Lady free". to help us and heal us -very human interpretation comes from this older boy but he can't expound anymore, i know song but i don't know grammar -literacy in middle ages: means there is a widespread of possibile literacies -people like nicholas / clerk who can read latin, then maybe people who can read only english -people who can read but not write, people who can read some, people who have learned a little latin and have it memorized (summoner) -little boy says he will learn the song even if he is beaten thrice an hour for not doing his homework, indictment of medieval school system -by learning this song he will undergo punishment, he is already a martyr -his friend teaches it to him by rote, learning by memory, and he sings it while he walks to and from school twice a day, On Cristes moder deer set was his entente -reminds us, opposition of meaning of words vs. entente: affective devotion, you can pray without knowing words as long as your entente is fixed on God -Summoner in friar's tale very obsessed with meaning of words but forgets entente

The Tale

-would have been familiar to the audience, in sermons -exemplum, exemplify specific moral point -Robert Rypon: funny, but also careful what you say about the devil (moral warning) -but because it is so anti-Summoner, the moral is lostL all summoners are going to hell -do not name the devil out of negligence or rancour -guy with cart stuck in the mud curses without meaning it -but the tale isn't about that, either: tale is about what happens when you curse and you MEAN IT -are you responsible for what you say and don't mean? question of entente