Final thoughts

 http://atomiccaravan.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-canterbury-tales-1972.html

Since I won't be there tomorrow, you've been a wonderful class and I will miss you. Hopefully one of you will fill in my void and argue lots tomorrow.

Random Thoughts on the last readings:

• The Parson sounded so nice in the GP I was kind of expecting a sugar-coated beginning, but at least to me it seemed like it started with, OK, we are all sinners big time. And really bad things are going to happen if we don't change. Kind of reminds me of a friend who is very trustworthy because he doesn't sugarcoat.
• To me, it's not till he gets to the remedies to the 7 deadlies that we readers get hope.
• I got the feeling that none of this was directed to the pilgrims, it was all for Chaucer's real audience. If I remember right, books were still expensive then so the audience would be the rich and powerful. Which means this would feel rather pointed at them.
• One of the things I think about comes from (yet again) Prof. Sandona's Renaissance Drama class. He talked about Dr. Faustus or Volpone where you laugh and then realize you are cheering for horrible people. What does that say about you. We enjoyed "The Miller's Tale", "The Summoner's Tale" and "The Friar's Tale". We viewed women such as Griselda and Custaunce as unreal examples. I think "The Parson 's Tale is a wake up call to the audience, to look at who and what they have been applauding.
• The Host asks for an entertaining story (20-21) and asks The Parson to tell them a fable (29). The Parson says that's not his thing, but that he will give them an entertaining tale in prose (46). Which is NOT what he gives them. The Host later says OK, be edifying and that in "litel space" (which I think means "short space") (71). If so, the next 88 pages are going to be a surprise.

 "Chaucer's Retractions" in Meg's terms

• First I'm going to cover my butt. Things you like came from God, things you didn't came from my ignorance and the fact that I'm a fallible man as are we all.
• And as I just mentioned in 88 pages, forgiving people for things that make you angry and praying for people are good things.
• Now let me casually mention a whole bunch of famous things I've written (do you really want to say I'm not good? (People don't mess with Stephen King or James Patterson--and they stink)
• Let me do the stuff the Parson said so I may be one of those who makes it to Heaven.

http://angela-michelle.hubpages.com/hub/Canterbury-Tales

  

Comic by: Unknown (via Imogen Quest)

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"Parson's Tale" in bullet points

PARSON’S LIST

·         Penitence

o   Contrition

§  What is contrition

·         The sorrow a man receives for his sins

§  What causes a man to be contrite

·         Remembering his sins

·         Not wanting to be a thrall to sin

·         Dread of Hell

·         Sorrow for the good he didn’t do and the evil he did

·         Remembrance of the Passion of Christ

·         Hope for forgiveness of sin, the gift of grace, and the glory of Heaven

§  How he should be contrite

§  What contrition is available to the soul

o   Confession

§  Confessing ALL his sins to his priest

§  Understand the source of the sins

·         Adam and Eve

·         7 deadlies, coming later

§  Types of sins

·         Venial

o   Man loves Christ less than he should

o   Can be forgiven through confession

·         7 Deadlies

o   Man loves anything more than Christ

o   deadly

o   Love of God

·         7 Deadlies

o   Pride

§  The root of all sins

o   Remedy to Pride

§  Humility

·         In heart

o   Sees himself as worth nothing before God

o   He despises no other man

o   Doesn’t mind what other people think of him

o   Doesn’t regret his humiliation

·         In mouth

·         In works

o   Puts other men before him

o   Choose the lowest place overall

o   Gladly assent to good council

o   Submit gladly to judgment of his superiors

o   Envy

§  Worst sin there is because it is against all virtues and goodness

o   Remedy to Envy

§  Love of God principle

§  Love his neighbor as himself

§  Against the manor of wrongs of his enemies:

·         Against hate of heart love him in heart

·         Against hate and rancor of heart love him in heart

·         Against chiding and wicked words pray for his enemy

o   Wrath

§  Good anger

·         Anger at wickedness

·         Hating the sin but not the sinner

§  Wicked ire

·         Unplanned, so venial

·         Planned, so deadly

·         Manslaughter

o   OK—carrying out death penalty

o   OK—self-defense

o   Deadly—going beyond self-defense

o   Killing on purpose in all sorts of ways including abortion

o   Remedy to Wrath

§  Gentleness

·         Suffer the wrongs men do to you

·         Suffer  sweetly man’s goodness and don’t get angry at man’s bad acts

§  Patience

·         Suffer gently the outrages  of adversity and wicked acts to him

o   Sloth

§  Makes one heavy, moody, and peevish

o   Remedy to Sloth

§  Fortitude and Strength

·         Magnanimity and courage

·         Undertake hard things

·         Reason and discretion

·         Faith and hope in God

·         Confidence and security

·         Constance

o   Avarice (Greed)

§  Loving Earthly things

§  Coveting is wanting things you don’t have

§  Greed is withholding and keeping things you do have

o   Remedy to Avarice

§  Mercy and pity

§  Performing charitable works

§  Lend and give, forgive and release

§  Moderate generosity

o   Gluttony

o   Remedy to Gluttony

§  Abstinence

o   Lechery (Lust)

§  Very specific about each act, read on your own if you want

o   Remedy to Lust

§  Chastity

§  Continence

§  Good marriage in medieval terms

§  Withdraw from temptation

·         Penitence part 2 continued—Confession

o   Confession of the mouth (may not be my best interpretations)

§  What is the sin

§  Consider who you are

§  Did you do it alone or with/to someone else?

§  Where did you do it

§  Did you get talked into it or talk someone into it?

§  How many times

§  Why did you sin, tempted by others or by one’s desire

§  Who have you hurt by sinning?

o   True confession signs

§  Sorrowful bitterness of heart

·         Shamefast

§  Humility in confession

§  Weep in eyes or heart

§  Don’t let shame stop one’s confession

§  Be obeisant to receive penance

§  Do it quickly after sin

§  Do it by your own will

o   Confession must be lawful

·         Penitence part 3—Satisfaction

o   Alms

§  Offer one’s self to God

§  Have pity of defects of neighbors

§  Giving of good council and comfort (including material things)

§  Try to keep works private

o   Bodily pain

§  Prayers

§  Wakings--vigils

§  Fastings--

o   Forbear of food and drink

o   Forbear of worldly jollity

o   Forbear deadly sin

·         Reasons for fasting

o   Largeness to poor folk

o   Gladness of spirit

o   Not to grouch while fasting

o   moderation

§  Teaching of prayers

§  More ways of bodily pain

·         Wearing painful clothes

·         Scourging

o   Blockers to penitence

§  Dread

·         Fear of suffering

·         Fix by remembering this life is short, heavenly life eternal

§  Shame

·         If he wasn’t ashamed to do foul things, he shouldn’t be ashamed to do good things

§  Wanhope

·         Distrust in the mercy of Christ

·         Fear that he won’t be able to keep up penitence

·         Answers

o   As many times as he falls, Christ will be there to receive him in mercy when he rises again

o   God is way stronger than the devil—God will strengthen hime

§  Desperation—can’t find a definition

·         Reward of Penitence—Heaven and the perfect knowledge of God

Meg's comments on "Shocking or not" by Jessica

OK--First I think you have to know the history from which I draw when reading "The Prioress' Tale".

Thus, when the Jews first began to be accused of being bloodthirsty,
this was linked only to their desire to damage and weaken Christian
society, which, on the contrary, was strengthened by the alleged martyrdom of the
young victims, who soon after their death began to have miracles attributed to
them. The sacrificed children, although apparently despised and tormented by
their executioners, thus shared the same redemptive destiny of Christ.
On one side, therefore, there was the alleged wickedness of the Jews; while on
the other the innocence and purity that diffused from the children’s bodies,
affecting the whole of Christendom, was emphasised. We have to see how, from
these premises, ideas about the crime developed, and how the portrayal of Jews as
murderously greedy people was motivated, not only as a result of their assumed
moral turpitude, but also by their supposed peculiar physiological and religious
necessities.
It was on the continent in the same century in which the Ebstorf map was
drawn, that the blood libel legend made its first vague appearance in an
accusation of ritual murder of Christians by Jews. In 1235, thirty-four Jews were
executed by the crusaders at Fulda, having been accused of killing the five sons of
a miller, whose blood they then poured into sacks sealed with wax, which they
burned as part of a magical rite (Strack 1909, 178 and 277; Trachtenberg 1983, 132;
Introvigne 2004, 21–8).We do not know anything regarding the nature of the rite,
but we can try to interpret the action, inferring that the drying up, the
consummation of the blood by fire, symbolised both destruction and
purification—an attempt to annihilate the Christian life enclosed in the fluid
without being tainted by it. As Trachtenberg has emphasised, many of the earlier
accusations against Jews were only vaguely supported and the ritual use of dead
children was not specified as something Jews engaged in, although there was
mention of the “abstraction of the blood and other parts of the body,” and
reference to the head of a Bernese boy, Rudolph, said to have been severed by Jews
in 1294 (Strack 1909 186–8; Trachtenberg 1983: 126; 135–7). It is probable that the
blood libel legend, as we understand it, began when the idea of ritual murder
became entwined with the crime of host desecration, which was first attributed to
the Jews in Belitz, a German town close to Berlin, where in 1243, all the Jews of the
community were burned at the stake. The host was believed to have been stolen
either for magical purposes or to be ritually mutilated so that it would bleed
copiously. In the fourteenth century, when the notion that Christian blood was
required by Jews for mock crucifixions during the celebration of Passover, came to
the fore, the picture was complete, the boundary had been crossed. Jews were
believed to be shedding, stealing and finally employing the substance of life to
empower themselves (Trachtenberg 1983, 114 and 134–5) (Matteoni)

That quoted, I guess it's time for my personal thoughts.

I am probably numbed out to certain forms of violence to children based on my personal history. I tend not to react as much. I do agree that the search of the mother was incredibly moving. I'm so glad people pointed it out because I totally missed it--perhaps because I had numbed out to the violence. My two most moving lines are:

"This povre widwe awaiteth al that night/After hir litel child, but he cam noght" (586-587).  and
"She goth, as she were half out of hir minde" (594).

I've felt that feeling of fear, of being half out of my mind, about my own son.

I think the idea of the boy naively singing the song in the Jewish quarter was actually designed to make the Jews look bad. It assumes that they would not be forgiving towards a child. "They will kill you if you even sing a song, they are bad people." Maybe the moral is that when people use language no one understands (I don't know if the Jews spoke Latin but the boy didn't understand what he was singing), when communication is impossible, death follows.

I think I have more sympathy for Virginia because I have an easier time picturing a father killing a daughter to save her from rape than picturing Jews sacrificing a boy for singing a song. And we get to see things from the father's point of view. We never get to see the Jews as people, just as the other.





WORKS CITED

Matteoni, Francesca. "The Jew, the Blood and the Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe." Folklore 119.2 (2008): 182-200. Print.

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>.

with apologies for very crude humor

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