Mutually Assured Destruction

            So in class Dr. MB set out the idea that the combination of Thopas and Melibee is to point out how stories turn out when they are either all form or all content. I thought it was an interesting idea and it seems to make sense. However, thinking back over the tales I am starting to see some points that don’t appear to fit. For example, for being a tale that stresses form way too far, “Sir Thopas” is a pretty ramshackle construction. The rhyme changes without reason. The stanzas go on for so long with six lines and then at seemingly random places jump to seven then back down again. Plus, as Dr. MB pointed out, the length of fits is based on an untenable pattern.  So if “Sir Thopas” is supposed to be the tale with all shell and no insides why is the shell so deformed?

 Pondering over this I looked back over the “Tale of Melibee.” When Melibee is first gathering advice from the mob of people he invited over, he got some interesting advice from the surgeons. They said “that right as maladies ben cured by hir contraries, right so shal men warisshe were by vengeaunce” (1017). When I read that I thought they were saying that the cure for war was vengeance because vengeance is war’s opposite. I didn’t understand why they were opposites but I let it be and moved on. Later on we learn that Melibee was also confused by their statement. He said “right as they han doon me a contrarye, right so should I doon he another… and thane I have cured oon contrararye by another” (1280-1282). After this, Prudence tells him he is wrong, quotes Paul, and proves that what they really meant was that “for good and wikkednesse ben two contraries, and pees and werre…” (1289). She goes on that you have to heal things with their opposite; so to heal war you use peace. Having recently heard a good presentation on medieval medicine (again, good job with that), I can see that what she is saying and that she is probably right. Still, I would have never have got so much from what the surgeons actually said.

            Ok, I am going to answer questions before they are asked. Yes that is all outside what we were supposed to read. Let me say that I was feeling adventurous, which may have actually been a touch of stupidity, when I sat down to read this tale and I went ahead and read the whole thing. I can say now that it doesn’t get any better in the middle. Back to the tale…

            Maybe I am being nitpicky, but it seems that some of the arguments prudence makes are of the kind I would be proud to pull off in a close reading paper. Some of the things she works with (what the surgeons said is my best example) don’t seem as clear and sturdy as she makes them out to be. It seems that the logic of this story is not only tedious but shaky in places. I think that the “Tale of Melibee” has the same sort of problems with its content that “Sir Thopas” has with its form. Perhaps what Chaucer is getting at is that when your take once piece of storytelling and not the other not only do you get bad tales, but also the very element that you isolate breaks down. Form starts to break down when it has nothing on the inside, and content becomes illogical with nothing to put it in shape.

Shocking or not

It seemed that we were split in class regarding what was shocking and not in regards to "The Prioress's Tale." In Chaucer's time, the content would not have been quite as shocking as it is to us. However, the description of the child being thrown into an excrement pit would have raised a few eyebrows. The murder of an "innocent," regardless of ignorance, child would also have shocked a few people, especially those with young children.

When relating this tale to "The Physician's Tale," the ability to be shocked does decrease. Virginia, a completely innocent girl, is killed just because of the judge's obsession with her. She is not ignorant by any means like the child in "The Prioress's Tale," so we are apt to feel more sympathy for her than the child. Regardless, the fact that one victim is more innocent than the other does not greatly impact the shocking nature of the tales.

That being said, I think Virginia deserves at least a little more sympathy than the child just due to the fact that she was completely innocent of anything and could not help the fact that she was gifted, or cursed, with beauty.

The only character I feel bad for in "The Prioress's Tale" is the mother. I agree with Dr. Mitchell-Buck; the three stanzas devoted to the mother's distress are quite moving. Still, where was the person telling the child not to go through that part of town singing Christian hymns? He was told what it was about, but no one instructed him on what it would mean to sing that among the Jewish.

A Note about the Prioress

Wow you guys are lucking out! Two posts from me in one night!

So I wanted to share an interesting tidbit about the Prioress that "A Companion to Chaucer" pointed out in the chapter that Suzanna and I presented on.

The book points out that the Prioress, in the General Prologue, has good etiquette. She "leet no morsel from her lippes falle,/Ne wette hir fingresin hir sauce depe" (128-129.) She doesn't let anything fall onto her chest when she picked it up (130-131.) This entire section (lines 127-134) makes it clear that she is very well learned in manners.

The book points out "whether a nun should pay quite so much attention to courtesy is of course a good question" (157).

I honestly don't know why the Prioress knows so much about etiquette. Does anyone have any ideas?

"Thy drasty ryming is nat worth a tord!"

Obviously the Host is not pleased with Chaucer's first tale. But what's interesting about his criticism is that he doesn't like the rhyming, which I felt was one of the more interesting thing about Chaucer's Tale. 

(Disclaimer here that poetry is really really really NOT my forte, but I found this to be really interesting and wanted to see where I could go with this.)

So far in the Canterbury Tales, we've had two different rhyme schemes. For all of the narrative, and most of the tale, the rhyme scheme has been aabbccddee (etc.) We have three tales which then deviate from this rhyme scheme (The Man of Law's Tale, The Clerk's Tale, and The Prioress's Tale.) The rhyme scheme for these is a rhyme royal (ababbcc).

Sir Thopas introduces a new rhyme scheme, which is aabccb. This rhyme scheme is called a Spanish Sestet or Sextilla. Usually though, each line has 8 syllables, though it's been done in Tetrameter or Pentameter before. Chaucer's lines don't seem to have a cohesive syllable count though (unless I'm reading my Middle English wrong!)

If we look at the words used by the Host to describe Chaucer's rhyming, we begin to see a connection between Chaucer's poetry and the English language (at this period in history.) The Host says it is "drasty," or poor in quality, crude, according to the Middle English Dictionary. (lines 923 and 930), "dogerel," or worthless, according to the MED (line 925), "nat worth a tord" (line 930), and even curses the rhyme to the devil! (924.) These descriptions of Chaucer's poetry being low class are similar to how the upper class would think of English at the time.

I'd like to propose that Chaucer is making a connection between his rhyme scheme in Sir Thopas, and the English language. While we can obviously see that Sir Thopas is beautifully constructed in form, the Host cannot see this. At this time when English was considered the language of the lower class, Chaucer is showing with the Canterbury Tales that it is not a low, churlish language, but a beautiful one. However, there are people who cannot see the beauty in it, much like the Host cannot see the beauty in the Spanish Sestet or Sextilla.

(Not to mention the irony of using a Spanish rhyme form to show beauty in the English language.)

(My information about the Spanish Sestet or Sextilla comes from here: http://www.thepoetsgarret.com/2013Challenge/form03.html)

Feast drinks

After spilling tea down me in class twice, coffee down me in Whitaker once, and spilling water all over a table, I've decided I will NOT be serving drinks.

with apologies for very crude humor

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The Prioress's Tale

Well, it's a challenge to find good things to say, at least for me.

There is no way around the anti-Semitism. Since Jews were ex-pulsed in 1290 (note to line 488), most of Chaucer's audience would never have met a Jew. Only those who went to a different country would have even the slightest chance of meeting a Jew. I love Chaucer as an author, but I don't believe that there's any reason he would be less anti-Semitic than any other Englishman. For one thing, he makes his version of this story even more offensive."Broadly speaking, the other tales...differ from the story told by Chaucer in the following aspects: (1) the murdered boy is buried by the Jews (rather than being thrown in a latrine), but having been discovered by his singing he is dug up alive and unharmed..." (p.983 or the second paragraph introducing the notes to The Prioress's Tale). Many years ago I took a class on anti-Semitism. I know there is a long tradition of stories about Jews doing things like mixing the blood of Christian babies into their Passover bread and doing other horrible things. I have no idea why these stories existed.

OK, so why write about a group that no one knows. To be cynical--Chaucer was among other things a survivor. Many of his stories would offend various groups. So here's a story that would unite all his listeners--"we may all dislike each other but we are all English Catholics and united in our hate of Jews" (who we've never met and know nothing about). I think they fulfill the same role that aliens, machines, and to some extent Muslims fill now--groups that are OK to always set as villains, groups that are relatively unknown and easy to project on to.

If you are projecting onto a group, then there are things within your culture that you would rather project onto someone else than face. We've talked about the medieval discomfort with the idea of money exchange. Yet that part of society was growing. Maybe Jews were a way to keep from admitting things about England's own medieval society (note to line 491). The things projected onto the Jews remind me of the things projected on to suspected witches.

Why does The Prioress choose to tell this tale? Let's look at her in the GP. She aspires to high culture. She has compassion for furry animals and gives them expensive treats--however, she doesn't demonstrate that same compassion for poor people. I hate to admit it but I see her as my personal stereotype of the woman who buys everything for her cat but is annoyed by the homeless man on the sidewalk where she walks. She also seems to live somewhat in a fantasy world about nobles and chivalry. I think I remember from 20 years ago that many medieval nuns prayed for stigmata or suffering in order to connect more with Christ. The Prioress can't stand suffering and I don't see her wanting to experience suffering in order to get closer to Christ. The Prioress tells a story of a little boy in Asia, about as far away from her as she can get. The purity of a child is a romantic image--especially for a woman sworn to not have any. I also think that The Prioress may feel somewhat intimidated by the good women stories that we've had so far. These are women who've completely obeyed, who've married who they are told to, or who have died to remain virgins. And the stories about questionable women are about women very comfortable with their sexuality. The Prioress is fantasizing about courtly love. That makes her less pure than the good women in the stories. And she isn't comfortable with her sexuality, which probably causes her some discomfort around women like the WOB, or men's stories of sexual women. I think this story is The Prioress' attempt to redirect the focus, away from stories of women that make her feel guilty or uncomfortable. She moves away from sexual or extremely pure woman to a story with no sex, , a boy, and a group that everyone hates.