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.

"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)