Wrapping up!

I wanted to say thank you to Dr. MB and for all of my fellow students! I really loved this class and found it to be really challenging and engaging. I thought everyone respected each other's interpretations and point and we always got some really great conversations going.

I'm really impressed with how far I've come in reading Middle English. I remember at the beginning of class, I had absolutely no experience and was terrified. But I got used to it and now I can read it pretty well!

Some of my favorite classes were the storytelling class, the Shipman's Tale class (any class where we did interactive or group activities), the superlative class, and the discussions for the Wife of Bath's tale and the Sir Thopas/Melibee class.

For now I'll leave you all with this horribly historically inaccurate but amusing cartoon. I definitely wouldn't have known how inaccurate the language used was before this class so I think it's a cool way to quickly show how much I've personally learned:

Image found at http://artjcf.tumblr.com/post/69632064515/my-parents-are-pretty-middle-aged-so-thats

I hope I see everyone in the future and that they have wonderful holidays! It was wonderful getting to know you all.

Appius's name!

So I remember when we were reading The Physician's Tale, Diane speculated on Appius's name being related to bees and apiaries. I came across an interpretation while researching and thought I'd share!

In an article I was reading, it says, "Appius, whose very name resonates with the deponent Latin verb apiscor (a rare form of the compound dipiscor) meaning 'to reach after,' 'to seize,' 'to get possession of,' 'to percieve.'"

Obviously, I think this is a really fitting name for him.

(Article referenced is "Chaucer's Maiden's Head: 'The Physician's Tale' and the Poetics of Virginity" by R. Howard Bloch.)

A connection with modern day music

(Apologies to the people who are on the Self and Society blog as well! I posted something similar over there too a few weeks back.)

I just thought I'd share something a little fun with you guys. So since we discussed Fortune a lot this week, I'd like to show you guys a song that talks about her (though they call her Fate in this song, but I think the descriptions they give of her show Fate and Fortune to be the same woman in this context.

This is from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Beethoven's Last Night" and the story is basically that Mephistopheles appears on Beethoven's last night to tempt him to sell his soul. Fate is a character in the story.

Here are the lyrics just in case you'd like you read them as well:

Faith and belief and retreat
When you're standing all alone with your dreams in the dark
Never knowing what is real in the shadows you meet
Never knowing what is true in the answers you seek
Never knowing if 

Fate she hears me
Fate stand near me
Fate state clearly
Whether there will be another card 

Retrieve us
Time deceives us
Faith she hears me
But she doesn't listen very hard 

As she drifts through our lives tossing coins into the air
Watch them twist, watch them fall turning hope into despair
Watch them twist, watch them fall then she suddenly revives
Every dream that we've had and we find ourselves alive 

Believe me
Fate stands near me
Fate state clearly
Whether there will be another card 

Retrieve us
Time deceives us
The only moment in our lives
That ever really mattered fate is now

This is one of my favorite albums ever and I definitely recommend it!

Long comment on Laura's "A Note about the Prioress"

Good catch, Laura. So here's my breakdown.

The end note to GP lines 127-236 says that the Prioress's table manners are closely modeled on The Old Woman (La Vieille) in Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose). This poem is kind of funky because it was written by two men. The first part was by Guillaume de Lorris ca. 1230 (UCL). As near as I can tell, his part of the poem is an allegory about a guy seeking a rose to pluck (virgin to de-virginize) and has some rather bawdy innuendo (FEEL FREE TO JUMP IN ANYONE WHO KNOWS MORE THAN ME). He gets his rose and is happy. Until....Jean de Meun adds the second part, which happens to be way longer than the first. (UCL) Jean de Meun  was an antifeminist and you probably would really not like him. Neither did the WOB. Anyway, his part of the poem in my interpretation has the La Vieille telling young women lots of ways to screw men over. Chaucer translated the Romance including the Jean de Meun part, which is very obvious in his treatment of the WOB.


Here is the passage where La Vieille describes table manners.

'She ought also to behave properly at table. . . . She must be very careful not to dip her fingers in the sauce up to the knuckles, nor to smear her lips with soup or garlic or fat meat, nor to take too many pieces or too large a piece and put them in her mouth. She must hold the morsel with the tips of her fingers and dip it into the sauce, whether it be thick, thin, or clear, then convey the mouthful with care, so that no drop of soup or sauce or pepper falls on to her chest. When drinking, she should exercise such care that not a drop is spilled upon her, for anyone who saw that happen might think her very rude and coarse. And she must be sure never to touch her goblet when there is anything in her mouth. Let her wipe her mouth so clean that no grease is allowed to remain upon it, at least not upon her upper lip, for when grease is left on the upper lip, globules appear in the wine, which is neither pretty nor nice (NAEL 8, 1.221-22, lines 127–36).  (Norton)

According to Murphy's note to line 126: This is a snigger at the provincial quality of the lady's French, acquired in a London suburb, not in Paris. Everything about the prioress is meant to suggest affected elegance of a kind not especially appropriate in a nun: her facial features, her manners, her jewelry, her French, her clothes, her name. Eglantine = "wild rose" or "sweet briar." Madame = "my lady." 

According to Murphy's note to lines

161-2: The gold brooch on her rosary had a capital "A" with a crown above it, and a Latin motto meaning "Love conquers all," a phrase appropriate to both sacred and secular love. It occurs in a French poem that Chaucer knew well, The Romance of the Rose (21327-32), where Courteoisie quotes it from Virgil's Eclogue X, 69, to justify the plucking of the Rose by the Lover, a decidedly secular, indeed sexual, act of "Amor".

Soooo......I think what all this means is that Chaucer was associating The Prioress with La Vieille, in the sense of someone following her advice, as opposed to the WOB who kind of embodies La Vieille. This leaves the Prioress kind of naive but headed a bad way, lustily speaking.


WORKS CITED

 MURPHY
"The Canterbury Tales." The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Michael Murphy. City University of New York, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/murphy/canterbury>.

NORTON
 "The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages: Topic 1: Texts and Contexts." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages: Topic 1: Texts and Contexts. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/middleages/topic_1/rose.htm>.

UCL
"Le Roman De La Rose (The Romance of the Rose). University of Chicago Library MS 1380." Le Roman De La Rose (The Romance of the Rose). University of Chicago Library, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://roseandchess.lib.uchicago.edu/rose.html>.

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)

The Shipman's Tale

I'm not sure if this is just my sleepy mind playing tricks on me, but for some reason I noticed the Shipman's involvement with this story more so than the other story tellers. He refers to himself in the story a few times. In particular, at lines 12-19, the Shipman uses words like "us," and "we," and "our."

"He moot us clothe, and he moot us arraye,
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."

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."

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.

 

Wow now I'm sad

I loved the Franklin's Tale so much. It was beautiful, and happy, and everyone was a good person (well, the clerk not so much, but he was nice in the end) and I really enjoyed that story. There were several passages that I highlighted because the wording was just so beautiful.

And then we go to the Physician’s Tale. WOW, was that a change in pace.

The ending didn’t seem to fit. The Physician warns against sinning in the end, but it seemed more like he was saying that if you sin, than someone will come up with a plan to steal your daughter and you’ll have to kill her. But unless I missed it, there wasn’t a sin which was talked about in relation to the Knight. He was even described as “fulfild of honour, and of worthinesse,/And strong of freendes, and of greet richesse” (lines 3 and 4.)

The sin committed in this tale was committed by the judge and the churl. However, the focus wasn’t on them. It was on the Knight and his daughter.

I was very confused by this tale. And saddened. I want more happy stories L

Happy marriages affect the morals of the participants

While reading the Franklin's Tale, I noticed some major similarities to the Merchant's Tale. Obviously, the tales are very different in their outcomes and the morality of the characters, but bear with me here:

First we have the Knight:

Picture here.

The Knight in the Merchant's tale, January is old, jealous, and shallow. The Knight in the Franklin's Tale is completely different. Arveragus is respectful to his wife, loves her, and gives her all of the freedom that she could want. These characters seem to be completely opposite each other on the spectrum of likability (at least to me.)

Picture here.

Then we have the wives:

May is young, beautiful, and doesn't seem to have much say in the marriage. Dorigene has all the freedom she wants, is very much in love with her husband, and is virtuous and caring. Again, not much of a similarity exists between these two women.

Next we have the squires. Damian and Aurelius are the most similar of all the pairs. They are both deeply in love (or in lust, however you interpret it) with the wives of the Knights they serve under. They both confront the wives about their feelings (Damian through a letter, and Aurelius face to face.)

The general situation of these two stories is also very similar. The squire is in love with the Knight’s wife, they make their feelings known, and through circumstances, whether the wives want to sleep with them or not, they seem to have won who they are after. The location where both couples are to have sex is even the same: the garden.

However, these stories are completely different stories. In the Merchant’s Tale May and Damian have sex in a pear tree, and lie to January about it. In the Franklin’s Tale, Dorigene is completely honest with Arveragus and he encourages her to keep her word and when Aurelius sees how miserable she is, he lets her go.

Why are these stories so similar yet different? The characters in the Franklin’s Tale are obviously more virtuous than the characters in the Merchant’s Tale. What makes them more virtuous? They are honest with each other, especially in the case of Dorigene and Arveragus, and they keep the promises that are made to the other characters until they are released from the promise. These two ideas are what ultimately make these characters more virtuous.

I propose that the Franklin heard the Merchant’s Tale and was unsatisfied with how things came about. Many of the ideals seen in the Franklin’s Tale are opposite of the Merchants.

Arveragus and Dorigene have a love that was built on mutual respect and on subordination on the part of Arveragus. He loves her passionately and pursues her and eventually wins her love. He then gives her ultimate freedom to do whatever she wants. Compare this to the marriage of January and May. January decided one day that he wanted the perfect wife and searched for one like searching for an object. Once they married, he treated her awfully, and was constantly jealous and controlling.

Dorigene’s agreement with Aurelius (though she had no idea it would be fulfilled) was that if he moved the rocks, she would love him most. The rocks were likely to have killed her husband and she was making this request out of love.

May was trapped in a marriage she mostly likely did not want to be in in the first place, with a man who told her he could do anything to her, and was constantly controlling and watching her every move. She did what she did out of desperation. One man treated her lovingly, and she probably fell for him instantly because she was so starved for that kind of attention.

Dorigene, in a happy marriage, was virtuous. May, in an unhappy marriage, was not. I believe the Franklin is proposing that a happy, respectful, and equal marriage will produce virtuous people.

Picture here.

I had such a hard time with the Clerk's Tale. I think I have trouble disconnecting my current feminist views and analyzing things through the perspective of the time. I'm hoping that during class today I will be able to appreciate the story more than I did while reading.

I just cannot imagine myself being okay after finding out that everything that had happened was a test to see how loyal I was. I imagine myself being so incredibly angry and hurt.

However, I'm a woman in the 21st century and I'm socialized to think differently than women in Chaucer's time. I realize that the strength that women had during this time was completely different than what I value as my strengths.

I’m not sure if I’m making much sense with this. I just had a lot of trouble reading this story because I couldn’t disconnect my personal values from my reading. Did anyone have a different experience or did anyone have the same experience as I did? I hope I’m not the only one!

Rape in the Middle Ages

(Trigger warning for rape, obviously.)

(Also warning that I’m totally not a historian and I could be getting everything horribly, horribly wrong in this post. Please forgive me, Dr. MB, if I’m butchering this subject terribly.)

I thought I'd share something I posted about on the blog for the ENGL 222 class. There was some discussion on how serious of a crime would rape have been in the Middle Ages. This was brought up when discussing the Wife of Bath's Tale and whether the Knight got what he deserved or not. I said that I thought it would be a pretty serious crime but that I wasn't sure. So I decided to look it up, and unfortunately, it seems as though I was wrong.

There looks to be  lot of research that has been done on rape in the Middle Ages. just googling "rape in the middle ages" brings up numerous articles and books written on the subject.

I found this post during my search which summarizes the issue pretty well.

In the early Middle Ages, rape was considered theft (nice objectification and dehumanization of women’s bodies, huh?) Women were seen as lesser than men, and so there was not many instances of harsh punishment for rape. Rape was seen as a loss of a woman’s honor and not anything more than that.

Not all rapes were reported (as is still true today.) Rape was a crime that occurred in every social class.

Punishment of rape differed from different classes. Sometimes a man was justly punished with mutilation or death, but sometimes a man would not be punished as justly, often being let off with a mild sentence.

Women could even be imprisoned for the crime of falsely accusing someone. I’m assuming that false accusations occurred a very, very tiny percentage of the time, as it still true today and that women were being accused of false accusations simply for not having enough evidence against their rapist.

The article concludes with the statement that "patriarchal societies tend to 'sweep…under the carpet' instances of rape and sexual violence."

I was really disappointed to discover a lot of this information. For some reason, I assumed that the extreme emphasis on female virginity in this period (which is another sexist idea, by the way) would have made rape a severe crime.

Unfortunately, I guess I overestimated the goodness of men.

King Midas' Ass Ears

While reading the WOB's Tale, I was very intrigued by the story of the wife who could not keep her husband's secret. As the WOB tells us to in line 981, ("The remenant of the tale, if ye wol heere,/Redeth Ovid, and there ye may it leere.") I decided to look up this story.

Image found here

What I found was a completely different telling of the story.

The version I found the most often was that of King Midas' barber being unable to keep the secret of his ears. He digs a hole in the ground and spills the secret and the hills then echo the secret back loudly so that everyone hears it. The wikipedia page for King Midas has this version and this retelling for children also has the version with the barber.

Another version I found, which seems to be from a German retelling, has King Midas being the one unable to keep his secret. You can read about this here.

So why does the WOB tell this story the way she does? It could be that there are different versions floating around at the time Chaucer is writing and this version is the one he is familiar with.

However, I believe he purposely chose this telling. Chaucer chose to attribute to Ovid, this story of the wife betraying Midas' secret. Ovid's version is one that has the barber. Chaucer would have known Ovid's stories and would have known what version he used.

Chaucer would have known Ovid's stories and would have known what version he used. Chaucer chose to change this through the WOB. He is telling us about the WOB by doing this.

We know that WOB is a well learned woman. She knows her bible, and she also continually references other literary works. However, with this, she is discredited. This change of the story makes me wonder whether the rest of her references were correct. I find myself wanting to go back and look at everything she said and fact-check everything.

Chaucer uses this story to discredit the WOB and in doing so, I start to wonder if maybe Chaucer is not as proto-feminist in his portrayal with the WOB as I thought. If she is wrong here, and could be wrong otherwise, she does not sound educated but instead she sounds as though she’s good at appearing educated. She sounds like a fool.

Maybe Chaucer uses this change in the story to say something else about the WOB. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Answer to "What is Diana's Temple Telling Us?" by Laura

Woops--my answer was too long for the comment section. Go figure....

What good questions. I really appreciated your pointing out the images having to do with change and transformation. I hadn't noticed that. Here's some thoughts.

First--It's hard to say what Chaucer, who had a different understanding of Roman mythology than we do, and was not worried about keeping strictly to the myths, meant with his gods.

I'm going to assume he knew the basic myths and if he was messing with them it was for a purpose.

2055--painted on the walls pictures of hunting and shamfast chastity. Shamfast could mean modest and humble, but also unwilling or ashamed of (MED). So we have chicks who are modestly chaste, would be better if they weren't chaste, or might wish to not be chaste.

According to the notes on this tale:
Calistopee (2056-2061)
--Jupiter got her pregnant, Diana kicked her out of her group of virgins, Juno got jealous of Jupiter and turned Calistopee into a bear, Jupiter made her and her son into constellations. Chaucer changes the myth so that Diana was the one that got mad and got even. So the problem goes from philandering husband and jealous wife, to leaving the goddess of virgins. So we go from a situation where it didn't matter whether or not Calistopee consented or not, the identity of her mate is what got her into trouble; to a situation where it is the act of sex, regardless of the situation, that gets Calistopee into trouble. Also in the original becoming the north star is kind of a reward from Jupiter.

Dane (2062-2064)
Chaucer spends three lines just identifying Dane. According to the notes he was writing about Daphne, a nymph who wanted to stay a virgin, and was turned into a tree by her father to save her from being raped. So this transformation was good. Chaucer doesn't mention the transformation as protective. He does connect Dane to Diane. It goes from a protective act to a maybe warning about perpetual virginity--becoming wood (mad), or isolated (trees live alone, not in pairs)

Actaeon (2065-2068)
as near as I can tell Chaucer keeps to the original story in this. Moral--don't spy on naked all-powerful goddesses if they might get mad. Or maybe, a warning to men like Palamon and Arcite not to lust after and invade the privacy of a woman who doesn't know or want them?

Atalanta (2070-2072)
OK, according to ye olde Wikipedia--Atalanta was a great hunter and virgin like her role-model Diane.Diane did send the boar to Calydon because King Oeneus neglected her worship. Lots of guys showing off hunting. Meleager, although married, had the hots for Atalanta, and made the guys include her in the hunt. Meleager shared credit for the kill with Atalanta, which made his family mad, so they killed him.

So now we have a virgin punished for being attractive to a married guy (but having it blamed on her giving up her chastity). A male (virgin?) being punished for being attracted to a virgin. And a married dude being punished for being attracted to a virgin.

To finish the story of Atalanta, she doesn't want her to marry, her dad says she must, she says she'll marry whoever can beat her in a race, Hippomenes wins by using 3 golden apples given him by Venus (which go on to cause the Trojan war). Hippomenes and Atalanta neglect some god and get turned into animals that can never have sex together again.

The portrait of Diane:
Diane is sitting on a hart, surrounded by hunting dogs. Underneath she has a moon near full. In general, new-waxing moon= virgin, full-moon = mother, waning moon = crone (at least in all the fantasy stuff I read). Diane is looking down to the ground and the realm of Pluto (the underworld, but not a necessarily evil underworld). In front of Diane a woman is struggling in labor and calls out to Lucina (which could mean Juno-mother or Diane-virgin) for help.

The gods' reactions:
Diane to me kind of represents acceptance of fate. She tells Emelye--this is going to be your fate, suck it up. Mars and Venus seem more attuned to fortune (and actually to Nicholas and Alisoun in "The Miller's Tale"). They whine and complain and don't accept things and finally get their ways.

So, putting it all together. I wonder if the way Chaucer plays with the myths represent the difference between men looking on the outside towards women's experiences, and women on the inside looking out.

To the men the myths mean:
Chicks who give up virginity are bad and will be punished.
Chicks who don't accept sex may end up never being women (being trees).
Chicks who entice (attract) married men are going to ruin those men's lives.
Giving birth can really suck.
Goddesses that only serve women don't have the power to change things.

To the women the myths mean:
Having a more powerful married man attracted to you, whether you want him or not, is going to ruin your life.
Withdrawal from the life of man (going to an abbey?) may be the only way to avoid rape.
It is not OK for men to spy on you with lust without your permission.
If a married dude is nice to you it's not your fault if it ruins his family life?
Women have goddesses that are only for them to help them give life to new people.
Accept your fate, don't whine and complain.

Well, this is my brainstorm for now.

What is Diana's temple telling us?

The temples that Palamon, Arcite, and Emily visit are obviously very significant points in the tale. The decorations in each of the temples are described in deep detail. In Venus' temple, we see love and all the consequences, good and bad, that come from it. In Mars' temple, we also see the consequences that can come from war.

The trouble comes when we look at Diana's temple in lines 2051-2074. Her temple is decorated with depictions of change. We see many transformations that are spoken of throughout Greek mythology.

I'm not sure what Diana's temple is supposed to tell us. Venus' and Mars' temples seemed to be warnings. If Diana is the goddess of virginity, could she be warning against the transformation from virgin to a sexually knowledgeable being? The transformations depicted were of humans being transformed into animals or plant: . One could argue that these would be a step down from humans and if we follow the metaphor, a loss of virginity would be a bad thing. Why then does Diana tell Emily that she must go through with the marriage?

I'm really unsure of this passage and would love to hear some other possibilities, if anyone has any ideas?