Whan That April — Lucas Blogs About the Canterbury Tales: Part 1
The Intro
I like to take on reading projects every now and then. Back before I had this blog I read one chapter of Journey to the West daily for a hundred days. On the one hand, this made the episodic nature of the narrative feel a little repetitive. On the other hand it was an easy way to read a classic of world literature.
I just wrapped up another reading project for this blog— A Year of Unfortunate Events — wherein I read one entry in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events every month for thirteen months. Oddly enough this did leave me feeling a little burnt out. I'm not particularly satisfied with the way the feature turned out. I guess those books and I weren't quite as simpatico as I remembered and the whole thing started to seem like a self-imposed chore. I guess what I'm saying is that this next project can go one of two ways.
The Project
I first encountered The Canterbury Tales in college, and to this day I can still recite the first eighteen lines of the poem in Middle English, which is . . . a less impressive party trick than you might think. Anyway, in that class we only really covered the General Prologue (I'll explain later if you're a newbie) and a few of the tales. I can't remember which specifically, but we definitely read the Wife of Bath's Tale and the Miller's Tale. I read a few of the other tales on my own afterwards, but I still haven't read the entirety of my old Norton student edition (which only has fourteen of the tales anyway). Well, now Norton's put out a new edition featuring all twenty-four of the extant tales (edited by David Lawton) and I aim to read the whole thing in one year. Unlike A Year of Unfortunate Events there aren't any firm benchmarks or progress goals (aside from the whole "in one year" thing). I'm just gonna post a monthly update with my thoughts on what I've read as of that month. So, let's jump in.
But first things first: What is The Canterbury Tales?
But first things first: What is The Canterbury Tales?
The "What is The Canterbury Tales"
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of writing (mostly poetry) by Geoffrey Chaucer (134X-1400) comprising 24 tales with multiple linking passages and a General Prologue which fames the whole thing as a tale-telling contest. It was written in what is now called "Middle English" and is from the same general time period as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Pearl (both written by the creatively named "Gawain Poet" or "Pearl Poet"). Most of the tales have well-documented antecedents (some are just outright unattributed translations of Bocaccio). The stories themselves represent such diverse genres as chivalric romance, sex comedy, elaborate fart jokes, animal fables, outright sermons, and incomplete.
While we're here, let's address the olifant in the rowm. You may find that The Canterbury Tales didn't play much of a role in your secondary (or post-secondary) literary education (it certainly didn't in mine). That's fine, it's super-influential and everything, but it's also not written in Modern English (for reference, Shakespeare did write in Modern English, well, Early Modern English, but still a dialect of English much more intelligible to contemporary Anglophones than Middle English), so it doesn't play as large a role in modern syllabi. There are a number of ways in which Middle English differs from Modern English which is why the version I'm reading is basically a student edition where the spelling has been somewhat standardized (and any errant thorns and yoghs have been updated to "th" or "gh" respectively), likewise it has plenty of footnotes and a gloss in the margin to help the reader with unfamiliar references/vocabulary. I don't want to get too bogged down in this, but there are a bunch of words and grammatical forms that have been excised from English, and to me, that's part of the fun of reading something like The Canterbury Tales. Sure, you can read it in a Modern English translation, but like any translation, you'll lose a good deal of the original's flavor. That said, if you want to check out The Canterbury Tales feel free to check it out in whatever language you like.
All right, I think that's enough background, let's just jump in to what I've read this month.
The General Prologue
That's right, folks, The Canterbury Tales begins with a prologue, and you can't skip it, because then you'll be lost when you get to The Miller's Prologue. The General Prologue and other linking segments form the book's frame narrative: on his pilgrimage to Canterbury, Geoffrey Chaucer stops at the Tabard Inn (a real place) where he meets twenty-nine other pilgrims that, by coincidence, happen to form a cross-section of medieval English society. Don't worry, I'm not listing all of them, but there's the usual suspects: a knight, his squire, his page, an abbess with some nuns, a monk, a parson, a peasant, a merchant, a lawyer, several tradesmen, as well as people with really specific church jobs like a manciple, a summoner, and a pardoner, and a couple of wildcard picks like the sea captain or the Wife of Bath (who has both multiple marriages and pilgrimages behind her). These people are getting along so well, that they decide to travel together on their pilgrimage and this gives Harry Bailey, the Tabard's landlord, an idea. He'll go along with them to Canterbury and proctor a story-telling competition amongst the pilgrims, with each telling two stories on the way there and two more on the way back. Once they're back at the Tabard, they'll vote to chose the winner, then the rest of the company will pay for a feast in the winner's honor.
That seems to benefit Harry Bailey more than it benefits any of the pilgrims.
Oh, I wasn't expecting you, Hypothetical Reader.
Well, I don't quite get your fascination with this medieval bullshit but I might drop in from time to time.
Fair enough. And yes, you do seem to have identified the joke. Harry Bailey is clearly taking advantage of his customers' good cheer in order to drum up more business for himself. Do you have anything else to add?
No.
How'd Lucas Like the General Prologue?
So. . . let's talk a little about the General Prologue. It's written in iambic pentameter, but one of the quirks of Middle English (from the Modern Anglophone perspective) is the lack of silent letters (specifically the lack of a silent "e" at the end of a word), so several lines of the poem actually end up having eleven syllables rather than ten (par exemple: "The hó-ly blís-ful már-tyr fór to sée-ke/ That hém hath hól-pen whán that théy were sée-ke." 17-18). This helps break-up the meter to keep it from feeling too metronomic and introduces a pleasant rolling cadence when reciting the poetry aloud (believe me, reading Middle English words out loud can be a big help when trying to figure out what an oddly spelled word is). It's also composed in heroic couplets, which can make guessing at pronunciation easier, at least for the final syllable.
With that out of the way, it's a pretty good read, as far as Middle English poetry goes. Sure, by modern narrative standards, introducing each character with several lines of poetry describing their physical appearance and general traits is a no-no, but it also gives the contemporary reader something of a window into the world in which the poem was written. Some of the characters are introduced in a fairly straightforward manner, for example, the Knight and the Parson are both presented as exemplars of their social position, embodying the values of chivalry and piety, respectively. Then there are figures like the Abbess and the Monk who both get a bit of ribbing for their pursuits of personal habits like reading romances or hunting rather than devoting themselves entirely to the habits of their orders. Meanwhile, characters like the Miller, the Pardoner, and the Summoner are all outright satirized for their exploitation of others. Chaucer's descriptions don't really challenge any of the underlying assumptions of the medieval English worldview. He might point out a few individual cases of hypocrisy, but the hierarchy represented in the General Prologue isn't criticized in any significant way. The closest it gets is the fact that while the old hierarchies of aristocracy and the church are still in place, it's hard to categorize the status of the newly rising monied tradesman and merchant classes. But Chaucer doesn't seem to have any interest in shaking things up.
This is reinforced by the ending of the prologue in which Bailey has the pilgrims draw straws to see who goes first, and wouldn't you know it, the Knight draws the winning lot. wow! very surprise much lucky This brings us to:
So . . . yeah. That's The Knight's Tale. This is one of those stories that I don't think has held up that well. I'd read it before, but it wasn't one of the one's we'd covered in class. Partly because it's longer and would take up too much of the quarter, but also because it's pretty dated. It's hard to feel invested in the conflict between Palamoun and Arcite because for the first half of the story, the reader has no idea what Emelye thinks of any of this, and once you find out that she doesn't want to marry anyone in Part Three, it's hard to think either of them should end up with her. Though for the record, I also think Palamoun is a bad friend to Arcite for freaking out when he found out they were both in love with Emelye. That said, courtly love is at its purest when the object of your affections is unattainable and can be set on a pedestal. And neither of them comes across as creepy as Dante does in La Vita Nuova where he details his love for Beatrice, who was nine when he first saw her. So that's something, I guess.
Oh, and how is the moral of this story: "It's better to die young because otherwise you'll have to face the ravages of age and might besmirch your good name." I'm pretty sure the moral is "Don't be an asshole if you and your friend are in love with the same person. Especially if neither of you has actually met this person."
Isn't part of the point of reading literature from another time to gain a better understanding of the time period that shaped it?
That is a fair point, Hypothetical Reader, I don't necessarily expect Chaucer's views to mesh with my own. It's just that Arcite died due to the capricious intervention of Saturn. There was nothing noble in his death, no cause that he was prepared to die for, the moral just seems to be that it was better for him to die of any cause as a young man so that he would be spared the diminishment of his physique and name by the progression of time.
Speaking of the disconnect between medieval and modern values, I was surprised to come across the section where Emelye prays to Diana. Up until that point, she's completely voiceless. I mean, she's been the object of both Palamoun and Arcite's affections for years without knowing it, and you never find out how she feels about either of them, but you do at least find out whether she wants to marry anybody in the first place. I mean, it's not much, but I was surprised to see her desires given even that much consideration in the text.
With that out of the way, it's a pretty good read, as far as Middle English poetry goes. Sure, by modern narrative standards, introducing each character with several lines of poetry describing their physical appearance and general traits is a no-no, but it also gives the contemporary reader something of a window into the world in which the poem was written. Some of the characters are introduced in a fairly straightforward manner, for example, the Knight and the Parson are both presented as exemplars of their social position, embodying the values of chivalry and piety, respectively. Then there are figures like the Abbess and the Monk who both get a bit of ribbing for their pursuits of personal habits like reading romances or hunting rather than devoting themselves entirely to the habits of their orders. Meanwhile, characters like the Miller, the Pardoner, and the Summoner are all outright satirized for their exploitation of others. Chaucer's descriptions don't really challenge any of the underlying assumptions of the medieval English worldview. He might point out a few individual cases of hypocrisy, but the hierarchy represented in the General Prologue isn't criticized in any significant way. The closest it gets is the fact that while the old hierarchies of aristocracy and the church are still in place, it's hard to categorize the status of the newly rising monied tradesman and merchant classes. But Chaucer doesn't seem to have any interest in shaking things up.
This is reinforced by the ending of the prologue in which Bailey has the pilgrims draw straws to see who goes first, and wouldn't you know it, the Knight draws the winning lot. wow! very surprise much lucky This brings us to:
The Knight's Tale
Unsurprisingly, the Knight decides to tell his fellow pilgrims a tale of courtly love. If you're not familiar with the genre, courtly love is more about nobility and chivalry than it is about romance or intimacy. This is my way of saying that a modern reader might receive a tale of courty love differently than someone in Chaucer's day. With that out of the way, here are the bones of The Knight's Tale.
Part One
Duke Theseus has just conquered Feminia (also known as Scythia, home of the Amazons) and is returning to Athens with his new wife, Ipolyta (Hippolyta), and her sister Emelye. But upon his arrival, he is petitioned by a group of Theban noblewomen to go to Thebes and depose the cruel tyrant who has seized the throne and killed their husbands and sons. So that's what he does, and in the campaign he captures two Theban knights named Palamoun and Arcite and takes them back to Athens to rot in a cell for the rest of their lives. One day, Palamoun espies Emelye walking outside their cell and immediately falls in love with her. This really bums him out because he realizes that he'll never be able to marry her, given that he's a prisoner. But he tells Arcite and Arcite can sympathize because as soon as he looks at her, he falls in love as well. Palamoun doesn't take this well (after all, they have sworn an oath to support each other in all things, which Arcite says doesn't include love, but Palamoun is a bit extra). After a few years in prison, a mutual friend of Theseus and Arcite convinces the Duke to release Arcite on the condition that he will be killed if he ever returns to Athens, this, of course, precipitates an argument between Palamoun and Arcite over who has it worse: Arcite for never getting to see the woman he loves again, or Palamoun for having to see the woman he loves everyday but being unable to act on his feelings.
Part Two
After two years of pining and self-pity in Thebes, Arcite realizes that he's so haggard and emaciated that no one in Athens would recognize him. So he does what any reasonable person would do: he travels back to Athens under an assumed name and presents himself at the gates as a laborer and gets a job as a chamberlain in Emelye's household. This in turn leads him to become a trusted advisor of Theseus. But he's still not happy because he still isn't with Emelye. Meanwhile, Palamoun has escaped from prison in a manner that was apparently too exciting to describe, but he does stop to camp in a grove where, by coincidence, Arcite has gone hunting. And wouldn't you know it, he does that thing that we all do where we speak our deepest secret aloud when we think no one's around to hear it. So now Palamoun and Arcite have each other in a bind. On the one hand Arcite could turn Palamoun in to Theseus, but then Palamoun would reveal that Arcite has been living a lie. So, they decide that the only civilized way to resolve this conflict is by having a duel. But, while they're going at it, Theseus, Ipolyta, and Emelye happen upon them and they have to reveal the whole thing. You might think that Theseus would be super-pissed off to find out that Arcite has violated his decree, but nope, he decides to host a Tournament where the two cousins will resolve who gets to marry Emelye (who notably is not asked whether she wants to marry either A) a complete stranger, or 2) someone who's been lying to her for several years).
Part Three
You can tell the Knight is a bit of a Richie Rich type because he begins Part Three by saying, "You'd probably hold it against me if I didn't tell you how opulent the arena Theseus built for the tournament was." And it is pretty opulent, it even has shrines to Venus, Diana, and Mars. On the morning of the tournament, Palamoun prays to Venus that he may win the hand of his love. Emelye prays to Diana that she will not be forced to marry, I repeat, either 1) a stranger, or B) someone who's been lying to her for years. However, it isn't for either of those reasons, but because she wishes to remain a maiden. And Arcite prays to Mars to defeat Palamoun. And while all three receive a sign of some kind, Emelye is actually visited by Diana who tells her that she's gonna get married one way or another, so she'd better get used to the idea. Cut to the heavens where Venus entreats Saturn to make sure that Palamoun isn't kept apart from his love, and Saturn tells her not to worry, the fix is in.
Part Four
Given the Knight's martial prowess, it's surprising that he doesn't go into too much detail about the tournament, but suffice it to say that Arcite and his allies manage to defeat Palamoun and his. Seeing this, Theseus calls the tournament and declares Arcite the winner, and everyone's stoked that no one died, but Palamoun is pretty bummed. So's Venus because Saturn said that she'd get her way, but keep reading, there's still hundreds of lines of poetry left. It turns out that when Arcite is taking a victory lap, he's thrown from his horse and lies in bed for days before he calls for Emelye and Palamoun to tell them they should get married after he dies. Which they . . . don't because they're mourning his death. That is, until Theseus gives a speech about how it was actually good that Arcite died young and renowned instead of growing old being forgotten, because now his loved ones will always remember him at his best and also Emelye could do worse than marrying a complete stranger who's been spying on her from a prison cell for years. So they get married, the end.
How'd Lucas Like The Knight's Tale?
So . . . yeah. That's The Knight's Tale. This is one of those stories that I don't think has held up that well. I'd read it before, but it wasn't one of the one's we'd covered in class. Partly because it's longer and would take up too much of the quarter, but also because it's pretty dated. It's hard to feel invested in the conflict between Palamoun and Arcite because for the first half of the story, the reader has no idea what Emelye thinks of any of this, and once you find out that she doesn't want to marry anyone in Part Three, it's hard to think either of them should end up with her. Though for the record, I also think Palamoun is a bad friend to Arcite for freaking out when he found out they were both in love with Emelye. That said, courtly love is at its purest when the object of your affections is unattainable and can be set on a pedestal. And neither of them comes across as creepy as Dante does in La Vita Nuova where he details his love for Beatrice, who was nine when he first saw her. So that's something, I guess.
Oh, and how is the moral of this story: "It's better to die young because otherwise you'll have to face the ravages of age and might besmirch your good name." I'm pretty sure the moral is "Don't be an asshole if you and your friend are in love with the same person. Especially if neither of you has actually met this person."
Isn't part of the point of reading literature from another time to gain a better understanding of the time period that shaped it?
That is a fair point, Hypothetical Reader, I don't necessarily expect Chaucer's views to mesh with my own. It's just that Arcite died due to the capricious intervention of Saturn. There was nothing noble in his death, no cause that he was prepared to die for, the moral just seems to be that it was better for him to die of any cause as a young man so that he would be spared the diminishment of his physique and name by the progression of time.
Speaking of the disconnect between medieval and modern values, I was surprised to come across the section where Emelye prays to Diana. Up until that point, she's completely voiceless. I mean, she's been the object of both Palamoun and Arcite's affections for years without knowing it, and you never find out how she feels about either of them, but you do at least find out whether she wants to marry anybody in the first place. I mean, it's not much, but I was surprised to see her desires given even that much consideration in the text.
That said, there are some primo Middle English words in this story, like gruccheth (grumbles) and bijaped (tricked). And while I might not have been in love with the story, Chaucer's poetics remain engaging. Part Three does drag a bit when he's going on about the shrines, (it brings to mind the bit in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where the poet describes the importance of the Pentangle on Gawain's shield), but Chaucer does a good job of keeping the story going. And that said, it does make sense that someone like the Knight would be so preoccupied with the opulent splendor of the tournament lists.
There is one thing that took me out of the story a little, and it's apparently related to the source of this tale. It turns out that The Knight's Tale is a condensed, unattributed translation of Bocaccio's Theseid, Concerning the Nuptials of Emily. Retelling someone else's story as if it were your own wasn't so unusual back then, but well, there are a couple of points where Chaucer has the Knight saying that he doesn't have anything else to write about something, or saying that he personally saw the shrines in the arena even though the story takes place in ancient Greece. So, I'm gonna have to deduct a couple of points for that.
Well, that's it for this month, so, to recap, the General Prologue is a good opening that helps to orient the modern reader and get them ready for what's in store. The Knight's Tale suffers from dated messaging but at least has a readable poetic structure.
What did the other pilgrims think of the Knight's tale? Who will tell the next tale? Will there be petty infighting? Find out next month as Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales.
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