English 115b: The Canterbury Tales Class 2

Chaucer: Life, Works, World

Addendum: Next Few Classes(to be posted as “Announcement” on Site)

• Week Two:• 2: Tue Sept 7: Chaucer, Life, Works, World• 3: Thur Sept 9: Irony as Structural Principle: The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale• First Sections: organization/reading Middle English/METRO

• Tue to Thur READ “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” for Thursday; BEGIN METRO exercises• Over Weekend; READ “The General Prologue” (for Thur); WORK ON METRO PRONUNCIATION

•• Week Three:• 4: Tue Sept14: Books Before Print: The Canterbury Tales in Manuscript

• No special reading for class, but familiarize yourselves with two course texts

• 5: Thur Sept 16: The Tellers: The General Prologue• Extended Office Hours: reading Chaucer aloud, General Prologue

• Sign-up sheets will be handed round Tue for small group READING and TRANSLATION practice

• Second Sections: Houghton Library: manuscripts/early editions• (TBA: Houghton visit probably take place a later week; likely, work on General Prologue• Over Weekend: READ “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”; LOOK AT “Monk’s Tale” (read intro and a few small stories); download /read Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria Nova (in

translation) from site

• • Week Four:• 6: Tue Sept 21: Rhetoric: Nun’s Priest’s Tale and Monk’s Tale/Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova

• For Thur, READ “Second Nun’s Tale” plus short modernized translation of James’s “Golden Legend” version of story

• 7: Thur Sept 23: Sources: Second Nun’s Tale/James of Voragine, Legenda aurea• Quiz 1 (either short passage for translation or sets of individual lines: “How’s my Middle English?”)• [May also be a few short readings from our “Companion” book over these three weeks: TBA]

I: Preliminary Exercise: Middle English: Spelling and Pronunciation

(See http://metro.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do)

Middle English Spelling: Pointers

1) Middle English spelling is generally phonetic, pronounced nearly as it looks

2) Unfortunately, Modern English spelling is far from phonetic, so our internalized spelling systems are not so either: e.g. knight

3) Further, partly because phonetic, ME spelling was non-standardized: spellings could differ according to a scribe’s dialect, the place of a word in a sentence, or because the same sound could be rendered different ways. This means that ME needs to be “heard,” not read silently

3) Watch out for y used as i, and i or y used as j4) Watch out for sounds rendered by unusual-looking groups such as qw

for wh etc. (see METRO on spelling)5) In pronouncing, watch out for LONG VOWELS and learn to distinguish

between long and short vowels

The Great Vowel Shift(the evolution of English Long Vowels)

II. Course Introduction to Canterbury Tales: The Story So Far

1) The Canterbury Tales are important not only a) because they are of deep intrinsic interest, nor only b) because they have been understood as one of initiating works of the English literary canon, but c) because they helped establish the particular understanding of the literary that, with notable exceptions, has continued to dominate English-language writing.

2) This understanding is, for reasons we’ll see today, fundamentally comic, fictive, or ironic. The “literary,” in the Chaucerian tradition, tends to avoid explicit truth claims or didacticism. Instead, the literary is a space for philosophical, ethical, aesthetic, and sometimes theological experimentation.

3) Chaucer does this in Canterbury Tales in two ways. First, he establishes “distance” between himself and his poem, through use of a multiple series of audiences and narrators.

4) Second, the poem is governed by a single ironic figure: the “blaspheming Host.” Set as a story of a pilgrimage and full of references to religious themes, some of them serious, the poem constantly invokes ideas of Christian community – the image of that community as “the body of Christ” in particular – but often does so through “blasphemy,” the constant invocation of God’s life, death, body, etc. we would call “swearing.” The worst swearer in the poem is the Host.

5) As we’ll see, this governing device entails that the poem closes in penitence.

Defining the “Literary”: Chaucer’s Life, Works, World

For a chronology, and much else, see http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/For a literary history of Middle English, see Watson, “The Politics of Middle English Writing” (course website)For a wonderful biography of Chaucer, see Derek Pearsall, Geoffrey Chaucer (on reserve)For more on Chaucer’s social background, see Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (on reserve)

Key to bear in mind the following (whose significance will become clear as we go):1) Chaucer grew up a member of what we’d now call the “middle” class, as a civil and sometimes royal

servant. Highly educated, fluent in French, Italian, Spanish and with good Latin, he was not a member of the professions usually associated with this knowledge: not a priest, academic, lawyer. Nor did he make his living by writing. He was a “lay intellectual.” Thus although he worked for institutions like the city of London and the crown, he did not have to speak for any institution.

2) He lived during a time of special turbulence: a generation after the Black Death of 1349; during the Hundred Years War with France; also during the “Great Schism” of the Church and the rise of England’s famous “heresy,” Wycliffism; also through the reign of one of England’s most problematic monarchs, Richard II

3) He was one of the first high-art literary figures in England for several centuries to use English, not French, as his language of composition. Although there was an established tradition of English writing in the fourteenth century, stretching back to the Anglo-Saxons, much of the “court” poetry even of his own day was still written in French, often by writers from France. Hence his symbolic place at the “source” of the English canon. His own English is full of French vocabulary.

Medieval London (c. 1400)

Threads of Influence: 1) The Moderns

Chaucer participated in a modern movement of vernacular writing in English, French, and Italian. Key figures include:

William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, c.1362-85, i.e. being written during the first half of Chaucer’s own writing life: an allegorical “dream poem” whose focus, like that of CT, is contemporary society, and who also wrote as a satirist.

John Gower, poet and friend of Chaucer, author of Confessio Amantis, a collection of verse stories with which CT is in friendly competition

Guillaume de Machaut, Eustace Deschamps, Jean Froissart: French “court” poets, the last two of whom Chaucer knew personally; working in Europe’s best established and most prestigious vernacular language.

Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch: Chaucer was overwhelmed by The Divine Comedy and struggles to use it through his career; has a tough, aggressive relationship with Petrarch, as we’ll see; and borrows massively from Boccaccio. Decameron may have given Chaucer the idea of his “tale” collection.

Still modern but older: a fundamental influence on Chaucer’s poetics was The Romance of the Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris (c.1215) and Jean de Meun (c. 1270).

Threads of Influence: 2) The Ancients

1) Roman PoetsVirgil, the poet of empire (Aeneid)Ovid, the poet of love, flux, manners (Metamorphoses, Heroides, Art of Love)Statius (historical poet in Virgilian mode)2) Christian WritersThe Bible (ubiquitous)The “fathers,” especially Jerome and AugustineBoethius (Consolation of Philosophy)

…. And there is a good deal more, including numerous more “modern” (twelfth to fifteenth century) Latin theological, philosophical, ethical, and scientific texts…

Chaucer’s Works1) “French” Period1360s to around 1380: building on contemporary French vernacular tradition, Chaucer writes, first,

perhaps, a series of lyric poems in French (“Ch”); then Romaunt of the Rose; then one or more “dream” poems in the new French style, especially The Book of the Duchess. Octosyllabic couplets.

2) “Italian” or “Neoclassical” PeriodLate 1370s to around 1390: after diplomatic visit to Italy and encounter with Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch,

he begins a) to bring “Italian” materials into his poems, b) to imitate Dante’s “philosophical” vernacular writings and Boccaccio’s “historical” ones. More “dream” poems in French style with these “Italian” resonances: The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls (study of key Chaucerian theme of nature). A “neoclassical” narrative poem, Arcite and Palamon (which survives as The Knight’s Tale); and Troilus and Criseyde, great 5-book “epic romance” in Trojan setting. (Also various “complaints,” shorter works in neoclassical idiom.) Much of this translates, always with very significant, creative variations, works by Boccaccio. This phase cultimates in The Legend of Good Women, a story collection at last based directly on a classical source (not indirectly, via Boccaccio): Ovid’s Heroides. Theme of “abandoned women” and “hopeless desire.”

3) “English” Period1390s: Period of Canterbury Tales, likely begun as structure in late 1380s or so, and worked on

intensively through last decade of Chaucer’s life. English, contemporary, “waking” setting is a new departure for Chaucer, and relatively unusual in serious contemporary literature. His sources for this probably again include Boccaccio’s Decameron; but also William Langland’s Piers Plowman.

Otium versus Otiositas• Otium: a Roman term taken over by Christianity as early as Augustine.

Leisure; cultivated retirement; the time to think, contemplate, philosophize, pray; the time to do what your body and spirit need for their best health, including exercise, either physical or spiritual. Often the time during the monastic day when no formal activities are prescribed. Otium reading is pleasurable but serious; it seeks to teach moral or religious truths, in rhetorical or narrative forms that bring the body into rhythm with the soul; it allows enjoyment without moral risk; it avoids idleness, the enemy of the soul. Otium is an important source of the “literary,” both because otium reading needs to be fun and because it needs to be varied, individually tailored to temperament. Some people may want to read the Psalms; others to read histories and chronicles; others still to read thoughtful philosophical treatises.

The Orchard of Syon: an Otium textAround 1420, an anonymous translator Englished Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue, a religious treatise of the fourteenth century, for a group of nuns at Syon Abbey, near London. He describes his translation as an “orchard”:

“In this orcherd, whanne ye wolen be conforted, ye mowe walke and se bothe fruit and herbis. And albeit that sum fruit or herbis seeme to summe sharpe, harde, or bittere, yit to purginge of the soule they ben ful speedful and profitable whanne they ben discreetly take and resceived by counseil. Therefore, religious sustren, in this goostly orchard, at resonable time ordeined, I wole that ye disporte you and walke aboute where ye wolen with youre minde and resoun in what aleye you like, and namely there ye savouren best as ye ben disposid. Ye mowe chese if ye wole of xxxv aleyes where ye wolen walke, that is to sey, of xxxv chapitres, o time in oon, anothir time in anothir. But first my counceil is clerely to assaye and serche the hool orcherd and taste of sich fruit and herbis resonably aftir your affeccioun.”

Otiositas: Idleness(see brilliant study in Giorgio Agamben, Stanzas: The Phantasm in Western Culture)

Pointless pleasure, including pointless reading; time-wasting; letting the mind slip from this to that without directing it properly; letting the passions or the desires of the body get the upper hand, losing their subjection to the rational soul. According to The Benedictine Rule, followed by monks, “idleness is the enemy of the soul.” It can lead to gluttony; to fantasies of ambition; to loss of purpose; often to sexual longing; to sloth, its close cousin, and despair (“wanhope” in ME), its close cousin’s cousin. Idleness plays into the hands of the devil, even of a special devil, “the noonday demon,” who uses the heat of the day and the lack of other things to do as a point of entry into the soul. Outside the monastery, idleness is identified with the secular lifestyle in general, but also with non-serious entertainments, the productions of “minstrels,” including tales of Robin Hood or other mythical heroes; erotic stories (very bad); and, potentially, anything not based around the morally improving, the thrifty, the obviously useful.

Cursor MundiOpening a long narrative poem about the history of the world, from Fall, to Redemption, to Judgment, the poet (writing around 1300, 80 years before Chaucer) contrasts

his sort of “otium” text, which is full of morally improving insights and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, with the kinds of romance texts often associated with entertainment:

Men covettes rimes for to hereAnd romance rede of mony maner:Of Alsander the Conquerour,Of July Cesar the Emperour,Of Grece and Troy the grete strifeTher mony thousande lost thaire life,Of Brute that was bolde of handeFirst conquerour of Ingelande,Of king Arthorow that was rike,In his time was nane him like…Sanges sere of selcouthe rime,Ingeles, French, and Latine.To rede and here ilkan is prestThe thinges that ham likes best.The wise mon wil of wisdome hereThe fole him drawes to foly nere.

Otiositas and the Ovidian“Ovid” literature: the literature of hopeless desire, of the passions as they overwhelm the reason,

of rationality and order laid down, of beauty, the erotic, the sensual, the extravagantly wasteful, the voluptuous, the indulgent. “Ovidian” poetry has different modes, but a key one is “elegiac”: elegy, the lament for that which is lost, becomes, in Ovid, the habit of making mourning permanent, identifying the self with the lost worldly object: DIDO (see next slide). Ovidian poetry is thus, in serious philosophical or Christian terms, the definition of the “useless.”

However, Ovid’s works also used as primary school text throughout middle ages, studied for their deep mastery of rhetoric, internalized at the level of the rhythms of language by anyone learning Latin, including Chaucer. Ovid was thus rendered useful in one sense (and Christianized). In another, he represented a perpetual possibility, a temptation, somewhere “inside” medieval culture, and as a key sign of the literary in this fictive, non-utilitarian mode.

Ovid much imitated by Latin poets from eleventh century on. Short “Ovidian” lyrics associated in twelfth century with the troubadours, writing in Provencal. The great vernacular Ovidian text that influences Chaucer is The Romance of the Rose. The second of this work’s two authors, Jean de Meun, is often called the magister amoris, the “master” of love, a term also used of Ovid himself.

Dido’s Lament from House of Fame• In suche wordes gan to pleyne• Dydo of hir grete peyne,• As me mette redely;• Non other auctour alegge I.• "Allas!" quod she, "my swete herte, 315• Have pitee on my sorwes smerte,• And slee mee not! goo noght awey!• O woful Dido, wel-away!"• Quod she to hirselve thoo.• "O Eneas, what wol ye doo? 320• O that your love, ne your bond• That ye have sworn with your ryght hond,• Ne my crewel deth," quod she,• "May holde yow stille here with me!• O haveth of my deth pitee! 325• Iwys, my dere herte, ye• Knowen ful wel that never yit,• As ferforth as I hadde wyt,

• Agylte [I] yow in thoght ne dede.• O, have ye men such godlyhede 330• In speche, and never a del of trouthe?• Allas, that ever hadde routhe• Any woman on any man!• Now see I wel, and telle kan,• We wrechched wymmen konne noon art;

335• For certeyn, for the more part,• Thus we be served everychone.• How sore that ye men konne groone,• Anoon as we have yow receyved,• Certaynly we ben deceyvyd! 340• For, though your love laste a seson,• Wayte upon the conclusyon,• And eke how that ye determynen,• And for the more part diffynen.• write.

Dido’s Lament 2• For thorgh yow is my name lorn,• And alle myn actes red and songe• Over al thys lond, on every tonge.• O wikke Fame! for ther nys• Nothing so swift, lo, as she is! 350• "O, wel-awey that I was born! 345• O, soth ys, every thing ys wyst,• Though hit be kevered with the myst.• Eke, though I myghte duren ever,• That I have don, rekever I never,• That I ne shal be seyd, allas, 355• Yshamed be thourgh Eneas,• And that I shal thus juged be, --• 'Loo, ryght as she hath don, now she• Wol doo eft-sones, hardely;'• Thus seyth the peple prively." 360• But that is don, is not to done;• Al hir compleynt ne al hir moone,• Certeyn, avayleth hir not a stre.

• And when she wiste sothly he• Was forth unto his shippes goon, 365• She into hir chambre wente anoon,• And called on hir suster Anne,• And gan hir to compleyne thanne;• And seyde, that she cause was• That she first loved him, allas! 370• And thus counseylled hir thertoo.• But what! when this was seyd and doo,• She rof hirselve to the herte,• And deyde thorgh the wounde smerte.• And al the maner how she deyde, 375• And alle the wordes that she seyde,• Whoso to knowe hit hath purpos,• Rede Virgile in Eneydos• Or the Epistle of Ovyde,• What that she wrot or that she dyde; 380• And nere hyt to long to endyte,• Be God, I wolde hyt here

The Worship of Venus

Thesis

• Chaucer’s poem plays on the boundary between otium and otiositas, between the useful and the useless, that which is justified, ethically or theologically, by the official culture of his day and that which is not. This is the meaning of the “literary” or the “fictive” for him. This is the space The Canterbury Tales creates for experimentation.