Modernizing Chaucer and the New Lessons Learned

I realize this is very late, but here is the additional JK Rowling story from both Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the Tales of Beetle the Bard, as told in the film by Hermione.

This is called The Three Brother’s Tale, and is apparently based upon the Pardoner’s tale. However, instead of there being three friends who go looking for death, as in the Pardoner’s tale, three brothers, who are also wizards, approach a dangerous creek and meet Death, who feels he was cheated out of their lives. Greed and pride are still integral parts of the story, but instead of the brothers killing each other for money, as the three friends plot to do, Rowling’s story involves more of the gain of power.

In Rowling’s story, Death pretends to be kind to the brothers, and offers each an object. The eldest, who lusts the most for power, demands the most powerful wand in existence. The second brother wants to humiliate Death, again lusting after power, and asks for the power to bring back the dead.  The youngest brother simply asks for something to hide him, from both Death and his enemies, but as an added benefit, allows him to observe the world without disturbing it.

We are then told that the eldest brother goes on a power bender, settling old quarrels with rivals, killing them. Because of his arrogance, a thief comes and kills him in the night, taking the wand for himself.  The second brother is driven mad because he returns to life his fiancé, whom he could not touch.  He kills himself because of the intense longing he dangled in front of himself, and thus, Death was able to claim two of the three brothers.

But the interesting part of the story, and where it differs the most from Chaucer’s original, is where the third brother offers us hope. In the Pardoner’s tale, all three friend-thieves decide to kill each other to take the gold, which they found in the forest, as each hungered for wealth and suffered from avarice.  The youngest brother, however, with his cloak of invisibility, simply wanted to hide from Death and any other enemies he might have.  He was not concerned with taunting and manipulating death, or with meting out punishment to any who had wronged him. Instead, he chose to simply side-step the problems he might face, until he was ready to pass into the next life, or, through observation, to gain a new perspective in a given situation.  He chose learning over power.

The hopeful message of the third brother’s story is one where self-actualization is found through knowledge—the knowledge of both self and one’s world.  It’s clear that his brothers were not content in themselves, and thus asked for external stimuli to support themselves. The third brother must be someone who was driven instead by internal motivation, and desired to maintain his happiness in his daily life to spend time with his family.  Thus, he passes on his cloak to his children, who passed a legacy of high self-esteem to the next generation as well, realizing the power to unobtrusively look at the world without disturbing it allows you to understand it that much better.

Thus the power of Rowling’s story is not the simply children’s story it is slated to be.  It offers a calm and quiet lesson to all—when given the opportunity to dominate or humiliate, it’s best to learn and walk, even unknowingly, in someone else’s shoes. By doing so, you gain true understanding and humility.

Here is a link to the tale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1_h_eGitE

Enjoy!

The Humor of the Pardoner

In my research for my final paper, one topic which has come up is the discussion of the humors, and where certain characters fall.  In Elspeth Whitney’s article “What’s wrong with the Pardoner? Complexion Theory, the Phlegmatic Man, and Effeminancy” she discusses the different ways that the complexions (a way to incorporate the humors into a physical set of traits in humans) can indicate what character traits a person might have. These traits are based entirely on the looks of the person, something we’ve discussed throughout the semester in the descriptions of each of the travelers.  According to Whitney, “masculinity and a “hot” complexion were linked with moderation, self-control, and self-discipline, while “cold,” feminized complexions were thought to produce incontinence, excess, deceitfulness, cowardice, and negligence” (361). Therefore, because of some of our pilgrim’s appearance, we can tell that some are more “hot” than “cold,” which, to Whitney, means that there are assumptions concerning the personality we can make concerning each pilgrim based upon the superficial.

            Fire is the long-standing element of men, and therefore has the more masculine qualities.  Water is tied with the cold, and is therefore feminine.  So, for the humors, Sanguine and Choleric natures are more heated, whereas Phlegmatic and Melancholy run more coldly. To further this idea, Whitney feels that men with no beards are more on the cold side of things, and thus more feminine, which is part of her argument concerning the phlegmatic nature of the Pardoner.  Perhaps, then, the outspoken nature of the Wife of Bath might make her more “hot” and masculine, and able to not follow the typical “colder” and more acceptable roles of women of the time? What about the Reeve? Would he be considered Choleric?

            Additionally, Whitney explains that this complexion theory is also important in conjunction to the different vices which afflict men. “The cold complexions of melancholy and phlegm promoted the heaviness of envy in the first instance, gluttony and sloth in the second” (Whitney, 385). Therefore, for the Pardoner, she feels that there is slothfulness inherently in his person as his body is too lazy to even produce facial hair.  Granted, this is not exactly his fault, unless he is shaving, but the idea is an interesting one.  If you continue this concept with the possibility that slothfulness in the clergy of this time showed a lack of involvement in aiding the world in addition to a negligence to religious duties. This seems as if it encapsulates our Pardoner well! What do you think?

The Recipe for Success?

After reading the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, the importance of alchemy has been on my mind. In doing additional research, there are many angles concerning Alchemy which I hadn’t considered.  Alchemy is a proto-chemistry, which involved mixing elements to create new things. The ultimate goal, as we’ve discussed, was to create a philosopher’s stone, something which has been said to turn any base metal into gold, (in some cases) to heal any disease and/or to offer immortality to anyone who ingested a potion which incorporated it.

Now, while we scoff a bit in our modern age, especially at the story of the Canon’s Yeoman’s where an alchemist specifically chooses to dupe the priest into believing he is actually performing alchemy, there are elements to alchemy as a science which I had not considered. Namely, we discussed the possibility that alchemy could be considered evil because it creates something from nothing, but this is not actually the case. Like a recipe, alchemy utilizes many different ingredients to make a final product. To use a borrowed phrase about alchemy, it’s the law of equivalent exchange—where you put in the things which make up the final thing you hope to create.  While the end result of the philosopher’s stone would be making gold in an almost magical way, it’s not creating something from nothing.

In reading an article from Peggy Knapp entitled “The Work of Alchemy,” she raised an interesting point to me about why clergy would’ve allowed alchemy and not magic. According to Knapp, “Alchemical treatises share a few basic ideas: that alchemy speeds up processes already at work in Nature, that gold represents the perfect balance between the elements of earth, water, air and fire toward which Nature is heading, and that alchemy could hurry the lower metals toward gold through “projections” involving mercury, sulfur and furnaces” (Knapp, 575).  This means that alchemy itself wasn’t reaching beyond the bounds of humanity, instead it was simply hurrying along a process which God already set in motion. Therefore, the philosopher’s stone was something which not only encouraged the natural order of things, but also embodied and kept the secrets of creation, and therefore, of God as well.

Part of the rules of alchemy, as mentioned, were of equivalent exchange. In most alchemic texts there were directions to create a chemical wedding, where all the elements needed to create the philosopher’s stone were actually to be “married” or unified together. The most important point though for this chemical union was actually for there to be balance—between the elements of gold and silver, of the sun and the moon, of fire and water.  In creating anything alchemical, there must be balance for the union to occur—too much or too little of anything would cause disastrous results.  There is also a balance needed between the knowledge behind the science of alchemy and the physical work and timing which goes into each alchemical reaction.  A perfectly balanced person is the start of a perfectly balanced equation for alchemy.

This then made me reconsider the problems with the Canon’s Yeoman’s tale.  The deceit of the alchemist towards the priest is not just buffoonery to be ridiculous or to show that you shouldn’t put your faith in things which are unholy, but to show that charlatans exist partly because part of themselves is unbalanced, much like this alchemist’s “alchemy.”  Without balance, one could not achieve happiness, for one would not be able to find a balance between work and home, or earth and heaven.  The proper balance of common sense and intelligence is needed for a professions such as an alchemist’s, but also for a priest, who should’ve been somewhat educated, to know that this alchemist was not what he seemed.  This imbalance of knowledge is even more apparent in the alchemist, because he cannot be someone who had actually studied alchemic texts, because he relies entirely on parlor tricks to get his victims to believe that he is truly noteworthy and someone who understands the secrets of creation.  And yet, at the same time, it occurs to me that only others who are similarly imbalanced would trust a con artist. 

While many may think that Chaucer was simply angry towards someone who cheated him and claimed to be an alchemist, and that interpretation makes complete sense, I feel differently.  In this case, the message might be for us to be wary of things which seem too good to be true, but additionally to find a true unity with our creator in order for the true transformation to begin.  In this way, perhaps we can work towards finding a balance in our own lives to begin the journey of recreation!