Friday, June 26, 2009
Yet the message of the tale changes as well with these slight changes. In Ovid’s version, the main message was simply that one ought not to convey information that the hearer will not like. In Chaucer, it becomes “A wikked tonge is worse than a feend,” (320) perhaps, because, after all, women cannot be expected to control their appetites. In Gower, the lesson is to “Be war therfore and sei the beste” (815). These slightly different morals seem to point to the way the authors apportion blame differently among Phoebus, Coronis, and the raven variously. Chaucer’s tale seems to place most of the blame on the raven; for him to tell Phoebus of the affair was “wikked.” Ovid, meanwhile, seems to depict Phoebus hasty action and mercurial nature as the cause for both the raven’s and Coronis’ unfortunate fates.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The word moot cosyn be to the werkyng.
211 I am a boystous man, right thus seye I
212 Ther nys no difference, trewely
213 Bitwixe a wyf that is of heigh degree,
214 If of hir body dishonest she bee,
215 And a povre wenche, oother than this --
216 If it so be they werke bothe amys -
217 But that the gentile, in estaat above,
218 She shal be cleped his lady, as in love;
219 And for that oother is a povre womman,
220 She shal be cleped his wenche or his lemman.
221 And, God it woot, myn owene deere brother,
222 Men leyn that oon as lowe as lith that oother.
223 Right so bitwixe a titlelees tiraunt
224 And an outlawe or a theef erraunt,
225 The same I seye: ther is no difference.
Contradiction in the Manciple's Prologue and Tale
This has been pointed to throughout the Manciple's tale, as he says "A jangler is to God abhomynable." (L. 343) This may again be the self-deprecation that Chaucer uses, as a means of fashioning the Canterbury Tales as a report of an actual event, while simultaneously highlighting its very textual nature. It is interesting that throughout this course we have seen Chaucer using other stories. In the aggregate one truly gets a sense of the deftness with which he chooses and then adapts stories to convey particular themes and the way he puts them into the mouth of his characters. In the case of the Manciple, whose words nearly get him in a fight in the Prologue his tale seems particularly fitting.
The narrator again contradicts himself when he indicts men - "Alle thise ensamples speke I by thise men/ that ben untrewe, and nothing by wommen./ For men han evere a likerous appetit" - only to present a tale of a woman's adultery (187-189). Again, the narrator's interjections seem incongruous with his tale.
It seems that the narrator is trying to adopt a persona and stance that directly oppose that of the tale's ostensible teller and its narrative. The tale-teller demonstrates learnedness and sophistication, and establishes credility through his multiple allusions; the narrator tries to portray himself as a simple-minded and "boistous" (211) relayer of folklore. The tale recounts the a woman's betrayal of her husband; the narrator is adamant that only males are guilty of extra-marital affairs. I wonder what the purpose establishing dual and duelling narrator identities through this paradoxical set-up could be.
I did think it interesting that Chaucer otherwise glossed over the family aspect, however. Ovid's inclusion of the first bird's tale, which brings in a curious thread of incest at the end ("But of what use was that to me if, after all, Nyctimene, who was changed into a bird because of her vile sins, was put into my place? Or have you not heard the tale all Lesbos knows too well, how Nyctimene outraged the sanctity of her father's bed?" 590), is completely dashed from the Chaucer. Family in Ovid seems to have a stifling function, as shown in the first bird's undoing (watching a family of girls unwrap a box against orders, which, contrary to the Pandora myth, here contains only a boy and a snake) and the Nyctimene parallel. It's arguable whether the mother in the Chaucer is serving the same function, as she is granted a voice for the final words of the piece, yet the voice is used only to ordain silence.
A major difference between the Manciple’s Tale and the story depicted in the Metamorphoses is the emphasis on social status. The Manciple takes great pains to establish Phebus’s high social worth. He then goes on to say: “This Phebus, which that thoghte upon no gile/ Deceived was, for al his jolitee/ For under him another hadde she/ A man of litel reputacioun/ Nat worth to Phebus in comparisoun” (196-200). In Ovid’s story, on the other hand, the narrator does not stress Phebus’s high status and refers to the lover simply as “the youth of Thessaly” (103). As a result of Chaucer’s alterations, the wife commits two transgressions: she is unfaithful to her husband and she crosses clearly defined class lines. Her act thus threatens to disrupt the social order. Since the figure of Phebus is associated with order, the murder of his wife could be read as an attempt to reestablish order. But his subsequent irrational behavior toward the bird makes such a reading impossible. The figure normally associated with order thus comes to be associated with chaos. A similar reversal takes place in the Manciple’s Prologue when the figure associated with disorder gains the capacity to bring harmony: “I se wel, it is necessarye/ Where that we goon, good drinke we with us carye/ For that wol turne rancour and disese/ T’acord and love, and many a wrong appese/ O Bacus, yblessed be thy name/ That so kanst turnen ernest into game” (95-100). I am curious to find out what other people make of this reversal.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Is Chaucer anti-Semitic?
Because we already know from the Prologue that the Prioress is a hypocrite and someone concerned more with the appearance of goodness and propriety than its substance, we can suspect her story of ringing false on some level. While I agree with Christen and Carlos that the irony in this tale is much less evident through a line-by-line analysis, I think the general ridiculousness and constant hyperbole of the tale lend themselves to a reading which places distance between Chaucer & his narrator and the Prioress. By general ridiculousness I mean the incredibly, overly pious little boy, the “Jewerye” whose only purpose is “foul usure and lucre of vileinye,” and the dead boy singing from a latrine. Aside from just the overall, seemingly exaggerated storyline, a few details also seemed off-key to me. The fact that the child sings “thurghout the Juerie” seems pretty obviously disrespectful and just obnoxious; while I know medieval people did not have our ideas about tolerance, I think the offensiveness of this behavior would be apparent to them. Also, the dead boy singing with his throat cut, which was supposed to be miraculous, had a sinister not that was hard to ignore. The phenomenon seemed more hellish than heavenly, especially when we learn toward the end of the story that Mary has enforced this uncomfortable life-after-death upon him because “Jesu Crist, as ye in bokes finde,/ wol that his glorye laste and be in minde,/ and for the worship of his moder deere” (652-654). So basically, because Mary and Jesus want glory, they grant this little kid the “boon” of getting his throat slit and then still being able to sing about them afterward. Lucky kid. I also thought there was something off about the abbot, whom the prioress twice hesitates in describing as “holy.” Perhaps he is holy in the same way the Prioress is courteous: in appearance only. In conclusion, I think it's possible that Chaucer may be trying to criticize the Prioress, her values, and maybe even the burgeoning popular narrative about evil Jews.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
irony in the Prioress' tale (?)
To bolster this, I'd point to two other instances where Chaucer seems to be invoking the sly aside: "as monkes been-- or elles oghte be [holy]--" (643) and "This hooly monk, this abbot, hym meene I" (670). The second example shows the descent from holiness to progressively more human institutions ("abbot," highlighting administrative rather than holy function) and subjectivity ("hym meene I"), again planting a seed (... or a field's worth) of doubt as to the Prioress' objectivity. While this is the slimmest of evidence to go on, it was the best my irony reconnaissance mission could dredge up.
That her story varies with the stories presented in Rubin's text speaks to Chaucer's authorial hand, if not in adapting the tale, in selecting it from a wide array of it. Rubin offers strong historical context for the story, however I believe he presents an overly academic explanation for a rather simple problem. His assertion of the Jewish connection to the eucharist and "fears of the danger which Jews posed to the physical and spiritual well-being of Christians" (pg. 4) may overlook the culturally universal concept of ethnocentrism. The Jews lived apart from the Christian society, as mentioned in the Prioress's tale with her mentioning, "...thurghout the Juerie / This litel child, as he cam to and fro" (l. 551). Harsh treatment likely arose out of the Jews being the other and the fears of their effect of spirtitual well-being were likely how dislike/fear of 'the other' were vocalized, rather than from whence they originated. Moreover, that the Jews had this connection to the Eucharist I believe speaks to the power of this hatred/fear rather than a cause of it. Rubin also seems to gloss over the deicide aspect of the harsh treatment of Jews, which seems a more likely cause of harsh treatment than indirect connection with the Eucharist.
Deviations from the Marian Tale
At the end of her tale, the Prioress says: “Preye eek for us, we sinful folk unstable/ That of his mercy God so merciable/ On us his grete mercy multiplye/ For reverence of his moder Marye. Amen” (687-90). I find these lines curious in the context of a story that emphasizes the righteousness of Christians and the sinfulness of Jews. Her last lines appear to dissolve the distinction set up by her story. Does she, on some level, compare herself to the Jews in these lines? And do the lines, to some extent, soften the harsh treatment of the people she describes with such seeming contempt?
The manner in which the events after the child's death address the deficiencies of science, tonge and song is strikingly literal. The solution, administered by the Virgin herself, to the inept tongue bounded by the limits of science, takes the form of a divinely empowered dead martyr's tongue endlessly chanting praises it learned by rote while living. The tale's exemplification and glorification of the tragic martyr, especially after highlighting the difficulties of being devout, seem to advocate overcoming the limits of the intellect and ability through the rote and mechanical enshrining of the divine through songs of praise incomprehensible to the speaker and the sacrifice of oneself . It also comes perilously close to alluding that devout but antagonist acts are the means of precipitating miracles and circumventing the realm of the ordinary.
Monday, June 22, 2009
“But certeinly no word ne writeth he
Of thilke wikke ensample of Canacee,
That loved hir owene brother synfully –
Of swiche cursed stories I sey fy! –“ (77-80).
He denies that Chaucer would ever tell such tales even as he does, albeit in abbreviated format, through himself. Chaucer seems to indicate here a disconnect between the values of the author and his narrator, and argue for a greater latitude of subject material, justified because it passes from the mouth of his character and narrator, not his own. Added to all this is the fact that we are hearing all these words through Chaucer’s pilgrim, who may or may not bear some resemblance to him, and who certainly filters and affects the tale we receive from him as well.
Man of Law
Personally, because the introduction was so incredibly self-referential ("I kan right now no thrifty tale seyn/that Chaucer, though he kan but lewedly/on metres and on rymyng craftily/hath seyd hem in swich Englissh as he kan" l. 46), I found it hard to slow my impulse to give it a postmodern spin. It seemed to me that Chaucer could be parodying and thus parrying the figure that the public would go on to misinterpret him as: the moral Chaucer, given staid and starchy breath in the form of the narrator. Chaucer also litters the tale with little tags (such as "and wel rede I [in my source] he looked bisiliy" 1095) that worry away at the narrative, perpetually bringing its artifice and his authorship back into focus. It seems to be a caricature of "Chaucer the scribe," blindly notating all that follows in his pages.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Man of Law's Introduction
The Host's ensuing words to the pilgrims continued to surprise me. Whereas thus far the Host has seemed to be quite rowdy and reckless a character, he is incredibly well spoken here. As he is urging the pilgrims not to lose time, his speech resembles an epic simile, albeit reversing the traditional order:
Lordinges, the time wasteth night and day
One other section of the Introduction I found incredibly intriguing was the Man of Law's sigh that Chaucer (not the pilgrim nor poet, but presumably some "other" writer even greater than Ovid... how impossibly cheeky he is!) has already written in poetry all their is to tell. Still, though, he says: "But nathelees I recche noght a bene, / Thogh I come after him with hawe-bake. / I speke in prose, and lat him rymes make" (94-6). However, he then goes on to give us an incredibly long tale in poetry, not prose, complete with rhyme. In fact, he actually changes the rhyme scheme used in what we've read thus far (as far as I can tell, though I did not check every line). Whereas the General Prologue, the Wife of Bath, and the Pardoner all have rhyming schemes of AABBCC, as does the Introduction to the Pardoner's Tale, as soon as he begins with his Prologue, he changes it. His stanzas are not only all of equal length, but all follow the rhyme scheme ABABBCC-- it's almost as if he is one-upping the rest of The Canterbury Tales despite his claim of inferiority!
Paradoxically, some narratorial interjections are at odds with this initial setup and the pattern of events in the tale itself. From line 365-372 the narrator derides and castigates women for the grievances which befall mankind in sin and marriage. To me, this assertion is incongruous to the tale as apart from mother of the Sowdan and Donegild, the knight - a male - also destroys Custaunce's marriage and exacerbates her sorrow. At this stage, I am unable to reconcile this conflict.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Til Crist hadde boght us with his blood agayn!
Lo, how deere, shortly for to sayn,
Aboght was thilke cursed vileynye!
Corrupt was al this world for glotonye.(501-504)
This leaves with a weird double consciousness that puts the intent of the story in even more uncertainty than usual; are we meant to disdain the admonitions against greed since they come from a corrupt source?
Even more interesting is the pardoner's attempt to lure the host into giving money to him after he has told his story, even though he has already told him he does not believe a word of it! Is the pardoner just hopelessly dense, or does he have faith in a story's power to convince apart from the motives or involvement of its teller?
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Pardoner and False Seeming
The underlying truth which recurs in both the Prologue and the tale is that avarice is the root of all evil - the creed of the undevout Pardoner. The Pardoner's tale and Prologue, through featuring excessive, deceitful and ultimately impotent religious teachings and authorial texts, question the legitamacy and relevance of such authorial figures in daily life.
The kiss split into a 70:30 ratio of bizarre to interesting for me. The Pardoner essentially calls him out beforehand, with some fairly taunting words: "for he is moost enveloped in sinne"... "thou shalt kisse the relikes everychon" (942), the antagonist tinge to which suggests that they have some sort of history. Chaucer seems to be willfully passing over chunks of The Pardoner's history/psychology here and leaving readers in the dark.
As I was reading the Pardoner’s section, I was reminded of a scene in George Bernard Shaw’s play, Major Barbara. In the scene, a powerful war industrialist offers a donation to the Salvation Army. Before handing his check to the Salvation Army Commissioner, he gives an overly theatrical speech that draws attention to the violence behind the money. He thus makes it impossible for the Commissioner to close her eyes to the fact that she is accepting blood money. Via this act, the arms industrialist illustrates that the Salvation Army on some level becomes complicit in his creation of destructive weapons. I feel like the relationship between the arms industrialist and the Salvation Army Commissioner is somewhat similar to that between the Pardoner and the pilgrims. Before he tells his tale, the Pardoner openly admits to the fake nature of his relics. He uses them to make money, he says. But upon the completion of his story, he claims that the relics are real and asks the pilgrims for contributions: “I have relikes and pardoun in my male/ As faire as any man in Engelond/ Whiche were me yeven by the popes hond/ If any of yow wole, of devocion/ Offren and han myn absolucion/ Com forth anon, and kneleth here adoun” (920-925). The offer, which invites the pilgrims to buy absolution and participate in the Pardoner’s hypocrisy, places them in a similar position to that of the Salvation Army Commissioner of Shaw’s play. But while the character in Major Barbara accepts the offer, becoming complicit in the unchristian acts, The Host rejects the Pardoner’s offer.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Leicester Jr. makes the excellent point that these characters are "products" rather than "producers" of their tales. In the Wife of Baathe's tale she defends premarital sex stating "Thou seist that oxen, asses, hors, and houndes, / They been assayed at diverse stoundes; / Bacyns, lavours, er that men hem bye" (l. 285ff). She uses this and a series of other analogies. This sets up the Wife of Baathe as not only self-aware, but reasoning and the originator of a line of questioning which undermines what I presume to be the moral characterizations of such behavior. It would be interesting to see if these analogies would resonate with those in Chaucer's audience, thus supporting her point, or are not analogous and thus reemphacizing her lechery.
Pagan Elements
This combination of religions is also apparent in the Romance of the Rose. In the Jealous Husband's speech, he says that women are "misguided fools" who "give great shame to God" because "they do not consider themselves rewarded with the beauty that God gives them," and instead a woman "preens herself and primps as she goes through the town" (p 164, c. 9045). He is ostensibly implying that women are impious for not being grateful for and happy with what God has bestowed upon them, and yet he seems incredibly displeased with just about everything he has and does not. When he describes his feelings, he makes it more than obvious that he is quite guilty of various sins. He says, "I am overcome with envy of their comfortable life" (p. 167, c. 9250) and "I quite pine away with anger" (p. 167, c. 9269). But it was quite unnecessary for him to admit those sins, because he makes it rather apparent otherwise-- especially when he calls his wife's mother a "dirty painted old whore" (p. 168, c. 9345).
Saturday, June 13, 2009
In The Wife of Bath’s prologue, the narrator says: “By God, if wommen hadde writen stories/ As clerkes han within hir oratories/ They wolde han write of men moore wikkednesse/ Than al the mark of Adam may redresse” (235). The suggestion in this passage is that a female narrator would reverse the sentiments of misogynist literature. And yet, the prologue, which is ostensibly created by a woman, perpetuates many of the misogynist stereotypes. For instance, she says that “half so boldely kan ther no man/ Sweren and lien as a womman kan” (219). She also claims that “deceit, weping, spinning, God hath yeve/ To wommen kindely, whil they may live” (225). And she writes “Namely abedde hadden they meschaunce/ Ther wolde I chide and do hem no plesaunce/ I wolde no lenger in the bed abide/ If that I felte his arm over my side/ Til he hadde maad his raunceon unto me” (225). Furthermore, she says: “I loved nevere by no discrecion/ But evere folwed I min appetit” (233). Does the Wife of Bath thus confirm that the male accusations are based on truths? Does she suggest that the attitudes toward women in patriarchal society are so ingrained in the culture as to make it impossible for women to envision themselves in another light? Or should her misogynist comments simply not be taken seriously?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Lawton
Chaucer the Pilgrim
I also find his analysis of the portrait of the Prioress unconvincing. Donaldson suggests that the pilgrim "cared little whether amiable nuns were good nuns." Her portrait did not seem to indicate so much to me that she was a bad nun, but rather that she was a shallow, fake person whose appearance was rather different to her true character. If he were actually trying to express his admiration for her, it would seem strange that he would present a good portrait of a nun but such scathing ones of the rest of the religious figures (again, I truly do not except Donaldson's notion that the narrator is "impressed by the Monk's virility" or shows "wholehearted approval" for the Friar [931]). It seems naive to me to think of the narrator as so naive, when there are so many obvious coincidences that cannot be accounted for should we not recognize the narrator's sarcasm.
Lawton writes: “The concept of persona was probably salutary when it first appeared in Chaucer criticism, for it helped correct an unliterary emphasis on ‘what Chaucer thought.’” The unliterary emphasis to which he refers appears in Donaldson’s essay: “Of course, all tritely approbative expressions enter easily into ironic connotation, but the phrase means a good companion, which is just what Chaucer means” (932). Donaldson thus claims to know Chaucer’s original intention. In other words, he presents as an absolute fact a notion of which he cannot be certain. This method of writing, of jumping to conclusions that cannot be established by textual evidence, appears several times in the essay. For instance, Donaldson writes: “[…] it must lead to a loss of critical perception, and in particular to a confused notion of Chaucerian irony, to see in the Prologue a reporter who is acutely aware of the significance of what he sees but who sometimes, for ironic emphasis, interprets the evidence presented by his observation in a fashion directly contrary to what we expect” (929). The narrator, he claims, is acutely unaware of the significance of what he sees. My issue with Donaldson’s argument here is that he has no substantial evidence of the narrator’s naïve nature. How does he know that the narrator is not aware of and deliberately hinting at the irony present in the portraits?
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Furthermore, Chaucer seems to employ less direct criticism with regards to others. In the case of the knight he reminds me a great deal of Chretien and Lancelot. The knight is presented with a cloying description of his positive qualities and a litany of his accomplishments. I am curious to see how Chaucer will use this somewhat 2-dimensional character.
General Prologue
The Prologue
I actually had a lot of fun reading the General Prologue in the Middle English. Although it was difficult and at times undecipherable, somehow the Middle English brought out more of the texture and wit in Chaucer’s writing. His rhymes gave a regular swing and punch to his lines which often served as a platform for a humorous jab; I could almost hear the rise and fall of his voice and the comical emphasis as he explained that “hir over-lippe she wiped so clene/ that in hir coppe ther was no ferthying sene.” Ostensibly he is praising her etiquette, yet the tone facilitated by the rhyme structure, by the somewhat disturbing rapaciousness implied by the absence of even a “ferthying,” even by the word “over-lip,” which seems to hint at appetite and its concealment, alerts us to the irony embedded in his treatment.
Like Christen, I noticed that his treatment of some characters seemed to be much less critical and even approving. The clerk, parson, and plowman stood out to me amongst the sea of other extremely flawed characters. Perhaps I missed the subtlety of Chaucer’s critique of these characters, but, in contrast to the others, they seemed superior, at least with respect to morality and avoiding hypocrisy. I couldn’t figure out what Chaucer might be trying to say with such an arrangement; are clerks, parsons, and plowmen more naturally inclined to honesty and moral goodness than others? Are they random choices because who is good among humanity has less to do with their class and position in life than their individual character? Or is it perhaps because each of them represents one of the lowest members of the hierarchy in their respective estates, and the less privileged are less inclined to corruption? Or he is in fact criticizing their naiveté, or lack of ambition, or some other flaw, hiding it under a veil of approval as he does with each of his other characters?
Chaucer's Narration
Saturday, June 6, 2009
I found it very difficult to decipher Chaucer’s tone based on the Middle English version of the General Prologue. Having to focus on the meaning of individual words, I failed to notice the tonal aspects of the text. The depiction of the Prioress, however, brought the tone back into focus for me: “But for to speken of hir conscience/ She was so charitable, and so pitous/ She wolde wepe if that she sawe a mous/ Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde/ Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde/ With roasted flessh […]” (8). The Prioress cries over a dead mouse, but gives no thought to the animal that must be killed in order to serve as food for her hounds. This discovery of irony inspired me to read the entire depiction again, and upon re-inspection, I discovered another passage that hints at an ironic attitude toward the Prioress: “At mete wel ytaught was she withalle/ She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle/ Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe/ Wel koude she carye a morsel and wel kepe/ That no drope ne fille upon hir brest/ In curteisye was set ful muche hir lest/ Hir over-lippe wiped she so clene/ That in hir coppe ther was no ferthing sene/ Of grece, whan she drunken hadde hir draughte/ Ful semely after hir mete she raughte” (7). The prioress’s behavior in this passage may just appear as a form of good etiquette. But the description illustrates that she knows how to keep her exterior clean while consuming food. The depiction of her eating habits may therefore function as a metaphor, hinting at her concern for exterior rather than interior cleanliness. Her portrait thus foreshadows the more overt hypocrisy of the religious figures that appear later in the prologue.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
In The Legend of Good Women, Chaucer omits the horrific details of Medea’s story, depicting her as an innocent victim of male betrayal: “This is the payment and reward that Medea received from Jason, even for her fidelity and kindness, as she loved him better than herself, I believe…” (16). In the Heroides, on the other hand, Ovid does not hide Medea’s crimes. And yet, Ovid’s depiction appears, on some level, more sympathetic than that of Chaucer. I believe this unlikely sympathy arises from Ovid’s emphasis on interiority. He reveals Medea’s psychological processes, in a sense, thus drawing the reader into the character’s mind and facilitating a form of identification.
Medea's lament
Ovid's Hypsipyle
Ovid, Verducci and Chaucer
Reading the pieces in conjunction with one another, it’s definitely harder to dismiss Legend of Good Women’s misogynistic tendencies. Chaucer’s string of exclamation marks in the opening paragraph of the Hypsipyle and Medea legend prefaces the women’s tale with shrill absurdity. In contrast, there is a restraint to both Ovid’s and Verducci’s opening lines. Obviously sex and power loom large in all of these pieces, but Ovid and Verducci seem to employ it more subtly. The first person narrative helps with this, I think, as do touches like Hypsipyle’s concern for her children with her stepmother; there seems to be a wider web of character references, so that it isn’t simply a tale of male-female x-done-wrong.
The Written Word
In fact, she complains about the mode of her reception of his fate for the first two stanzas before even giving mention to Medea. Before bringing up the fact that Jason abandoned her on an island, never to return, and took a new wife in marriage, she feels it more important to tell him that she would've really liked to have been informed through a letter from him because she could then be "proud" (Showerman, line 16; or perhaps a stranger adjective to describe it, "awesome" in Verducci) of his conquests and tell unbelievers that "'He has written me this with his own hand'" (Showerman, line 16; or "'That is exactly what Jason wrote'" in Verducci). Aside from the fact that it seems pathetic that she could take pride in his accomplishments after what Jason did to her, it is strange that she would begin with this complaint (as opposed to his abandonment of his wife and children).
Note: I drew from both the Showerman and Verducci translations, citing each but including both where appropriate. Where neither is cited, they have identical translations.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The other ways in which Chaucer animates the narrator make more sense-- for instance, his constant fastforwarding is a comic touch that punctures any sense of the epic. But I'm not sure quite what to make of this. Narrator and author are, of course, not necessarily the same being, but this casual parenthetical remark does seem to undermine Chaucer's reliance on tropes of mimicry.
The legend of Good Women
Hypsipyle and Medea
The character of Medea, however, is even more debatable. Although Chaucer decides to leave these parts out of his retelling of the story of Jason and Medea, in truth she actually committed some wicked deeds herself. To Jason's new bride she sends a robe as a wedding gift, but when she puts it on, it engulfs her in flames and she dies. This robe also kills the girl's father, Creon, the king. Obviously it was wrong for Jason to take a new wife, but I doubt that the bride had much say in the matter, and probably could have been spared. Also, perhaps because of Hypsipyle's curse, Medea also slays her own children as a way of avenging what Jason did to her-- which seems both cruel, unnecessary, un-motherly, and transgressive. True, she suffered greatly due to Jason's immorality, but I would hardly call her a good woman, as the title of the poem implies.
The legend of good women
As a result of choosing to remain true to their gentle, feminine values, women in the various stories in the poem neglect the lord Danger(2), and are eventually cheated and exploited by men. In Chaucer's accounts, women fail to see that "there are many flatterers, and many artful, tattling accusers, who drum many things in your ears out of hatred or jeolous imaginings, or to have friendly talk with you" (4). Ironically, these words are the advice of Alceste herself, the epitomy of the feimine figure. Perhaps this is Chaucers way of saying that while women of are aware of the double-edgedness of love, in the attempt to enshrine their purity, they turn a blind eye and become meek to the devious acts of males. As such, portraying women as the absolute victims of love, and men the oppressors, in line with the god of love's request, may result in an even more tragic and miserable image of women.
Furthermore, such an image also fails to reflect the indiscriminate harm love can inflict on both women and men(as in the case of Medea and Dido) . The god of Love is depicted as one who possesses 2 incongruously "fiery arrows" (3) and is embroidered in green (presumably symbolizing the envy which promulgates the turmoil arising out of jealousy in the later stories of the poem). Such a figure does not bear any traits to one which seems inclined to only victimizing women.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
In The Legend of Good Women, the narrator appears anxious to complete his story rapidly. He writes, for instance, that to “describe the wedding and the festival would take too long” (7). He also writes that he “could follow Virgil word for word,” but that “it would take entirely too long” (10). Similarly, he writes: “But because I am already oversupplied with writing about men false in love, and so that I may also hasten myself in my legend (may God grant me grace to finish it), therefore I pass on quickly this way” (22). And on page 23, he writes: “But I cannot write all her letter, point by point, for it would be a burden to me; her letter was very long and broad.” In addition, he repeatedly claims that he will keep his story brief and touch only on the crucial points. Why does the narrator stress his desire to reach the end of the story as quickly as possible? Is it really the case that he wishes to highlight only the most important aspects? Or is his impatience related to the fact that he is writing about an assigned topic? Alceste says: “But just as you shall direct, so shall [the narrator] write of women ever faithful in love, maidens or wives, whatsoever you wish” (5). Does his impatience suggest that he resents the task imposed upon him by Alceste?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Chaucer's omission of any reaction on Alcyone's part is striking. That we only see that he called her by her very name (Chaucer 201) implies that pseudo-Ceyx's words have been thoroughly convincing to his very wife; in other words, that verbal tics alone can, perhaps, constitute the self in the eyes of the rest of the world, to the point that the actual origin of the voice ceases to matter. Even the physical presence of the corpse is waved aside, while in Ovid, the corpse conspicuously comes to shore before the Alcyone/Ceyx reunion.
Morpheus's Dwelling
The second stark contrast, as Clemen notes, is the language of Iris the Messenger. Whereas in Machaut, Iris is "gentle" and "charming," and addresses Morpheus with "polished" and "elegant" speech, in Chaucer, the Messenger's speech "has an everyday, colloquial quality, at times even rough and drastic" (Clemen p. 35). But Iris is not only more formal in Machuat; in Ovid, she is similarly eloquent, as she addresses Morephus with various epithets ("mildest of the gods, balm of the soul, who puttest care to flight soothest our bodies worn with hard ministries, and preparest them for toil again!" [Ovid, p. 165]).
Why would Chaucer rewrite these scenes so differently? As Clemen surmises, perhaps Chaucer's more colloquial and urgent speech "makes his narration seem not only livelier, more 'true to life', but also more keenly personal" (p. 35). It also definitely adds drama: between the urgent speech and the fearful description of Morpheus's lair, the Messenger seems much more brave and the task more daunting. Since Chaucer was likely to be reading his Book of the Duchess aloud, these changes serve quite well to increase the drama and make the tale more interesting and gripping to an audience.
Foucalt, Ovid and Chaucer
This somewhat differing portrayal of the text in Chaucer, as well as his narrator's seemingly misplaced emphasis raised an interesting question. Foucault raised the concept of the ownership of texts. Using this framework I question how does this concept regarding ownership affect the use of texts within texts? What duty if any is there for a recounting author to be true to the original text? Is Chaucer's work diminished for 'sampling' from other works, or does this patchwork help to create a magnificent work?
After Ceyx’s death in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Alcyone and her deceased husband transform into birds: “And at last, through the pity of the gods, both changed to birds. Though thus they suffered the same fate, still even thus their love remained, nor were their conjugal bonds loosened because of their feathered shape. Still do they mate and rear their young; and for seven peaceful days in the winter season Alcyone broods upon her nest floating upon the surface of the waters” (173). The transformation reunites the married couple and provides them with a life after death. It thus turns a story about unbearable loss into a consoling tale. In The Book of the Duchess, Chaucer does not include the consoling transformation of Ceyx and Alcyone. Following the husband’s death, Alcyone simply dies of grief: “‘Alas!’ she said for sorrow, and died within the third morning” (2). There is no suggestion of an afterlife, of a realm in which her sorrow will be appeased. And yet the birds, so notably absent from Chaucer’s story, appear in a new context, as the narrator dreams of being awakened by song: “I was waked by a great heap of small birds that had startled me out of my sleep through the sound and sweetness of their song” (3). Perhaps the transformative power of the birds is here transposed onto the Dreamer, a melancholy character in need of a cure.