Sameness circa Geoffrey Chaucer, 14th century give or take

It has been a while, but I am back on the Chaucer bus.  I am supposed to have the Knights Tale re-re-read by New Year's eve, but it is not looking promising.  Sorry A*****, this business of colicing horse on Christmas Eve is still eating into my time.  Then there is all the usual year-end craziness, even though we barely celebrate Christmas (but I did get my mah jong set woo-hoo) craziness, personal year end stuff, also the students wrapping up & trying to get out of town & some of them graduating & not coming back so they can be little bit wired.  Lastly, there are actual students coming back after getting advanced degrees elsewhere (we have been here a long time) & one HILARIOUS story about two former students meeting in Prof. R******'s lab & now they are married with kids.  The time really does fly.

So, the Knight's Tale.  I am remembering...via my notes how hilarious I found this the last time I read it.  Yes, it was a while ago, but wholly unrelated to deciding to sit down & do this again, but all the way to the end this time, I have been thinking on certain elements of the Knight's Tale lately.  Specifically, the way the knight had to make the fair maiden, well, fair, despite all evidence to the contrary what with her being the sister of the Queen of the Amazons.  Yes, yes I know Wonder Woman was an Amazonian princess as well, but as far as mythical figures taking on the audiences characteristics go, Wonder woman just keeps proving my point.

That was a lot of commas!  Let me see if I can think it out in smaller pieces.  The knight is describing a desirable woman.  He describes her as looking an awful lot like...the mother of his fair haired son probably looked.  The knight does this even though he is telling a story about a warring Athenian prince & some other prince from Thebes.  I guess this is BECAUSE if they don't look like him, he just cannot relate, although there is plenty of evidence he doesn't look anything like I would imagine an ancient Greek might look.  What news story could possibly have triggered this thinking in me?  Hmmmm.

Just to be clear, I don't care what anyone who might have existed might have looked like, but I do find this business of insisting they must have looked a certain way intriguing.  & there is always what they zero in on.  No one is going to the wall insisting a particular figure was probably quite short, except for Napoleon, which turns out is very likely a myth anyhow.

But whatever, that is not really what I wanted to talk about today, exactly.  Today is the martyr day of Thomas à Becket.  You can get all the info you want on himself elsewhere, I will just give you the highlights:  he was made Archbishop of Canterbury by a king who thought he would be the king's man in Canterbury.  Turns out Thomas à Becket was his own man & started telling the king what he could do with his influence.  This is not the first time a political appointee went his own way (US History buffs can start extolling on Chester Arthur or Warren Burger anytime now), but it was plenty big because best case scenario, the king accidentally had him killed.  I know, right?  Which is why we have the pilgrimage to Canterbury & the Canterbury Tales. 

I guess I am done, except did anyone else see that bit on Bill O'Reilly basting the pope? Because the pope is not God's man on earth if he disagrees with you, then he's just a crackpot.  I like how O'Reilly had mixed feelings on the former Nazi, but is completely certain the new guy is just wrong.  & I really like how he is pretty sure Jesus would not endorse a system that helped the poor at the expense of the rich.  Because it just might be human nature the think our heroes look just like us.

Is that all there is?

We took a break (A***** has a real job, can you imagine?), but next week we were supposed to be back with The Monk's Tale.  Then A*****'s job popped up again, but this post was all typed & queued & I figured I would go ahead with it anyhow.  It isn't as though I have anything new to say about the Monk's Tale.

I have read the Monk's Tale.  I have read it thrice.  & all I can remember is it was quite the series of downers.  Wikipedia tells me it is "a collection of seventeen short stories, exempla, on the theme of tragedy".  I was too disheartened to count.  For me it was a waterfall of failure in which the hero's hubris did not play the pivotal role (which makes it not-tragedy in my high school but whatever), it was merely incidental.  As near as I can tell, if you are up on the wheel of fortune, you should kill yourself now because the wheel is just waiting to toss you down & grind you beneath.  Not that you can kill yourself because that is a mortal sin & you will only be making things much worse for yourself.

Did I mention this was the Monk's Tale?  This collection of famous people screwed by fate was being told by the guy you would go to for counseling if you were having some kind of crisis. The nicest thing you can say about the monk is at least he is not overtly corrupt.


As for these list of sufferers, what can I say.  He starts with Lucifer (falling from grace was not his fault - G*d made him that way), moves on through history to Nebuchadnezzar (that whole gold statue worship thing was just a misunderstanding), then Nero (matricide is good-time-party-fun, besides she had it coming) & ends with Michael Vick (those dogs wanted to kill each other).

In the end it took the Knight to say "Shut the F*CK UP you whiny baby", although he said it nicer than that.  He avoided saying what I wanted to say:  Why don't you just kill yourself & shut up about it?

Melabee in color

Yes we are still grinding our way through The Canterbury Tales & I am really really hoping this was the low point.  I am also taking a deep deep breathe & plan to revisit it-yes, I really do & all because of The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover.

I actually like (it is hard to say enjoyed) this movie.  I did even the first time I saw it.  As E***** described "I do not really care for movies with brutal rape scenes but in this movie it would have been a kind of relief".  I understand it now has an X rating; when I saw it, it was just flagged "Foreign" & the guy at the movie theater who sold us our tickets made sure we were absolutely clear there would be no refunds.  A*****, E*****'s daughter, swears the movie is about color & I think she might be right.  I caught that it worked with color that first go-round but that it might actually be about color makes sense too.

That is almost all I want to say about that, except I think Melabee is another one of those stories that is about something else.  First, there is the surface story which is an excruciating discussion of why Melabee cannot exact revenge on those who have wronged him (by assaulting his daughter & wife, too, I think-it was hard to stay alert).

Not so very far underneath that are two competing themes.  The first a parody of the husband as head of the house & the second a sort of 14th Century version of People magazine, in that randomly attributed spewings are all rehashed in an "if you do not know who this is you should not be here" kind of way.  Neither one of these interest me much;  I only read People magazine when I am at the allergist getting my shots & now that Jon&Kate cannot seem to get off the cover, I mostly just look at the walls.

But I think there must be something else, right?  Gratuitous violence should be easier than this.  The wounds to the daughter (& wife, I think) are just so oddly placed.  Also, I think there might be coded messages in the order that philosophers are referenced.  Maybe it is like Hamlet, & it turns out the whole thing is based on actual history, right down to the carnage.

I am convinced it cannot be quite so black & white as it appears.

Monk monkey in the middle or Tit for tat

It was 200 years too early for "Neither a borrower no a lender be" but somehow Chaucer managed a new slant with the Shipman's Tale.  The only guy who is happy is the guy who is both a borrower & a lender, the individual borrower & the individual lender mostly just get screwed.

Let me give you the highlights:

• There is a guy.  He wants to sleep with his friend-cousin's wife.  The friend-cousin is clueless, the wife slightly less so. 
  
  
• There is the wife.  Her husband makes plenty of money, in her view, for her to have nice things:  richer clothes, etc., but he is not so generous as she would like or even so generous as she has spent in a Chaucerian credit card debt kind of way.
  
  
• There is the husband.  He thinks the first guy is his friend.  He thinks he is happily married.

The story goes like this.  For a long time the first guy has been visiting his friend-cousin, eating his food, sleeping under his roof & lusting after his wife.  First friend-cousin aka Husband-friend-cousin sees nothing amiss in the longing looks his buddy casts his wife's way.  In fact, I never got that he even noticed.  I did not really even get that she much noticed.  Either my middle english is not great (which is true) or these two are quite the pair of rubes (also true).

One day, Husband-friend-cousin confides in Lecherous-friend-cousin that he 1) needs to go away on business 2) would like to park some cash somewhere short-term & 3) thinks his wife could stand to be watched.  Lecherous-friend-cousin says no problem & by the way he is temporarily light & maybe he could get a small loan...?  No problem right back at him, money moves from Husband-friend-cousin to Lecherous-friend-cousin & all is well when Husband-friend-cousin hits the road.

Lecherous-friend-cousin is happy to gift/loan same $$ to the wife & they have a wonderful athletic time together.  Husband-friend-cousin returns, Lecherous-friend-cousin leaves but not before a brief "where's my money?", "Why I gave it to your wife of course".  When the husband asks the wife what she did with it she says "Uhmmmmm I thought it was reimbursement for being such a lengthy house guest, but I will pay you back Husband by charging you for sex".  

Oh yea, Lecherous-friend-cousin, the guy who is both a borrower & a lender, the only wholly happy person in this tale:  he's a monk.

Über-mother

Before there was Woody Allen, before there was Philip Roth, there was...the Man of Law. That's right, everything begins & ends with the Canterbury Tales.

Let me get right to the middle: my freshman year in college I started watching soap operas for the first (& maybe last) time in my life. If you had lived on a woman's floor in the mid-80's you would know: one end of the floor was for General Hospital & the other Guiding Light. I lived almost exactly in the middle, but that whole Luke & Laura rape thing really put me off. Also the Guiding Light room was way cooler, so Guiding Light it was. I moved dorms for my sophomore year (to the all-women dormitory described here) & what with the rugby players & AG majors, soaps did not get much of a look in. Except in J***'s room. She had been watching Guiding Light faithfully with her mom most of her life & that was not going to stop anytime soon.

For those two years & not so much as one episode since, I was a faithful viewer. & a lot of what I viewed was one character -let's call her Reva- getting hit by a car. Again. Whenever beset by worries of any kind, this woman ran into the street. Which really just compounded her worries (could someone refresh my memory: did she lose the baby because she got hit by a car or did she get hit by a car because she was losing the baby?), making me wonder why she did not move somewhere with less traffic. I always wanted an Amish episode were she seduces Yoder & then his wife drives over her with a buggy.

I told you that story to tell you this one: in the Man of Law's Tale the victim keeps getting on boats & getting set adrift. Or is kidnapped & put on boats. Or flees on boats. I am quite sure she always end up drifting. It is all very murky & scholars have spent centuries talking about the boat: is it christianity or faith generally? Is it a re-birth thing? A better question would be: after the second time you have been set adrift, would you continue to live on the coast? Where someone might trick you onto another boat? Well, she never did move inland. I guess some women just cannot get out of traffic.

I think (& so would Woody Allen & Philip Roth if they were me) that the more important question is WHO keeps putting her on that damn boat? The first time, it is her father but she does not actually drift that time, just makes a lousy arranged marriage. After that though, it is always the mother-in-law. More than one mother-in-law. Each man she ahems has the mother from hell.

That is all I have really, except this final philosophy on mothers-in-law (which I should say I arrived at before I ever met my husband): mothers-in-law are like giant, hairy, poisonous spiders. No matter what it looks like, she is way more afraid of you than you are of her.

//it turns out my memory was better than I thought. Apparently Reva was Amish, briefly. I am sure I must have heard it somewhere; how could I just think that up?

A knight, a miller & a reeve walk into a bar

So we have been working our way through The Canterbury Tales (that is not a royal 'we'; A***** is reading them, too) & I have been struck by the alignment with current events. Specifically Senator What's-his-face from South Carolina & the whole conversation about civility in public discourse. Do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting we are not uncivil. My argument is we never were civil.

Let me start with Senator What's-his face. This is not actually the first time this particular jackass (or would he prefer the more Republican bull elephant?) has crossed my radar. After the interruption during the speech I asked myself "why is that name familiar?". So I looked up Senators from South Carolina & came up with that most civilized of Southern Gentleman Strom Thurmond. Right there in the archive was the story of how Senator What's-his-face was sure a black woman claiming to be Thurmond's daughter was 1) making it up & 2) smearing a good man's name. He ended up apologizing then, too. If you wish to look it up, save yourself some time: go directly to the NPR website as they seem to be the only news outlet that made the same connection.

There is a Canterbury Tales tie in, I promise. The Miller's Tale is a vivid account of one man's outrageous scheme to sleep with the wife of another man, her complicity & a third man's deliberate sodomizing of the schemer with a hot iron bar (because he was thwarted with same wife). But don't worry, everyone gets what they deserve in the end: the husband is viewed as insane, the wife & her lover get each other & the sodomizer gets no credit at all. It is all very uncivilized. The Reeve's Tale is not worse exactly: a miller steals grain from two customers who have sex with his wife & daughter for revenge.

Before these two is the Knight's Tale. It is a story of chivalry & order, where men lock each other up & throw away the key because they are battle field enemies, all the while acknowledging that former foes are now married to each other. Men fight to the death for love of a woman neither has ever met. & this woman is a shining example of white christian beauty, not something that would ordinarily have caught my attention as uncivilized if Emily were not the blonde blue-eyed sister of the Queen of the Amazons. All the other propaganda aside, inserting characters into other peoples religions/mythologies no matter how ancient, to emphasize how much more civilized your people are falls under the heading of uncivilized. I am certain the Knight failed to realize that & I think it is safe to say Chaucer wanted us to know he failed to realize that.

Being civil is not just not jumping up & down & shouting when you feel you are not being heard, although to do so is to be uncivil. Saying & doing disruptive, misleading & even untruthful or unethical things because you are sure the other guy cannot be right because of his skin color/religion/sexual orientation/car he drives/school he attends/food he eats & excusing it in the name of "I was sure he was wrong & this is what it took to show the world" is also not civil. In short, civilized people address their arguments to facts not characters. Most people do not know this because most people do not know any civilized people; they only know people who say they are civilized.

What would Chaucer do?

A few ?weeks? ago, I learned that A***** was interested in reading The Canterbury Tales & I was taken by a desire to read them as well. I had actually taken a semester of The Canterbury Tales, but can remember almost nothing, except the 'frame' structure, the first opening lines (which I will recite for you, in Middle English, you only have to ask) & the agony of reading the Prioress' Tale, not just the anti-semitism (which was uhhhhhmmmmm kinda the theme) but because of the overwhelming assininity of it all. I have often found myself looking at carnage (in person, in history books) & wondered how could such a stoopid idea have done this much damage? But that's me.

So earlier this month we got together over pinot grigio, some food, some more pinot grigio, had knitting lesson part deux (her not me) & mapped out the Tales. I have a stack of biographies & criticisms & spin-offs borrowed from the library & am ready to go.

How would Chaucer go about this? Well, I am only guessing but I think he might break it down into parts. & so that is what we will do. I was supposed to be thru the Miller's Tale by last this evening; as of this typing I have not finished the Prologue. I thought I was done with the Prologue a week ago but it was continued on the next disk. For those who know The Canterbury Tales, you know there is the Knight's Tale between the Prologue & the Miller's Tale. Of course, you probably also know, Chaucer never finished writing the Canterbury Tales.

//I really was not looking for a saint for this post, but in confirming how to spell 'prioress', I found one. No doubt the inspiration for her story & the source of constant conflict up to & including the present: Little Hugh of Lincoln. I will let you read the story yourself. The worst part of this particular bit of information is just the other day I read a story on the BBC that made my hair stand on end. According to one of the most widely read tabloids in Sweden, Israeli's are harvesting organs from Palestinians. The Swedish Ambassador to Israel is disgusted with the story. More than 1/2 a millennium has gone by since Little Hugh of Lincoln was canonized & stories like this are still getting play.