"He moot us clothe, and he moot us arraye,The Shipman also refers to some of the characters as "my lord." One instance is found in line 312, he refers to John as "my lord daun John."
Al for his owene worship, richely
In which we dauncen joilily.
And if that he noght may, paraventure,
Or ellis list no swich dispence endure,
But thinketh it is wasted and ylost,
Thanne moot another payen for oure cost,
Or lene us gold, and that is perilous."
This leads me to wonder if the Shipman is telling a story of a man or several men he once knew.
He also makes himself noticeable as the storyteller in another way. When he transitions between subjects or characters, he often announces that he is switching topics or points of views. Examples that I caught were:
"Namoore of this as now, for it is suffiseth" (52).
"And thus I lete hem ete and drinke and pleye,/This marchant and this monk, a day or tweye./The thridde day this marchant up ariseth..." (73-75).
"But as a marchant, shortly for to telle,/He let his lif; and ther I lete him dwelle" (305-306).
"And forth he rideth hoom to his abbeye,/Or where him list; namoore of him I seye" (323-234).To me, what this did while I was reading was jolt me from the story that I was absorbed in and remember that it is being told by the Shipman. It brings attention to him as the storyteller.
Perhaps I've somehow missed this strategy employed otherwise in the Canterbury Tales and just noticed it now but it was really interesting to me to see this in the Shipman's Tale and makes me wonder what it was telling us about the Shipman.
First of all, I have to note that someone was a bad bargainer. Don Juan paid 500 for one night while the merchant (Peter, I think), got a lifetime promise. Which either means that one night was really, really good, or the monk was a bad bargainer.
ReplyDeleteNow to your points, Laura. I'm really glad you brought them up because I didn't notice them at all and I've read this tale lots.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me there is 2 sets of interruptions. The first reminds me of Tolkien's interruption about Rivendell, when he says something to the effect that good things are hard to describe in interesting ways while bad things are interesting and take a lot of detail (yes, I can reference other things than Tolkien, but why?)
The second I'm not sure about. Each time the character exits the tale for a period. All I can think of is maybe the Shipman didn't want to lose focus, or maybe he didn't know enough about the 2 men's jobs to be convincing. Or he has a big ego.
One thing I wonder about...in lines 11-19 the speaker shifts gender, which makes scholars think this story was originally meant for the WOB. How different a woman would she be if she told this story?
I'm very interested in the "we" and "us" he uses, especially given that many of them seem to come from the wife/other wives in her position. How is the Shipman positioning himself with these pronouns ... and why?
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