Geoffrey Chaucer (“Ellesmere” Chaucer)

1. English 115b: The Canterbury TalesNicholas Watson, BC 221 (nwatson@fas.harvard.edu)Teaching Fellow: Helen Cushman(helencushman@fas.harvard.edu)April is the cruelest month breeding Whan that Aprille with his shouresswooteLilacs out of the dead land, mixing The drought of Merch hath perced to the roote,Memory and desire, stirring And bathed every veine in swichelicoureDull roots with spring rain. Of whichevertuengendred is the floure…” (T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land) (Geoffrey Chaucer, The General Prologue) Geoffrey Chaucer (“Ellesmere” Chaucer)

2. Godedaye. Myne name is Nycolaus, sonne of Watte. Icham the clerke and maistre of thys course, The Tales of Caunterbury, y-write by myneprivefrende Geffrey Chaucere. He is botte lately y-laide in his grave. God have mercy on his soule! O Geffrey dere, allas, in dede, how wille thine soule don before the JuggementSete of the Almighty Gode! For in thine poeme, Geffrey, hast thou y-write manye a foulesonge and leccherouslaye, sowninge more to worldly vanitee than to morale vertue and to goodnesse. Treweit is, as thou hast y-write in thine endingeRetracciouns,thowe also hast enditedlegendesof seintes and tales of moralitee and devocioun, alle y-mingled amonges lying fables and materegrosse and lowe, of fartyng, of swyving, of blasphemy, ywis! The Nun’s Priest

3. A straungepoeme, a derkeconceiteindeede! The saintes in Paradise, y-wis, wollescracchetheireheades to see thee there amongeshem alle. Flightes of aungelles singe the to thine reste! Mynefelawe in thys course here, and maistresse of ouresecciouns, is Helene y-hightCushmonne. Manye a longeyere Helene laboureth in owre Graduate Programme to knawe the wayes of the Medievale Force and bicomme a doctoure of philosophie. She hath anekindeherte and a kenewitte. Standeuppe and take a bowe, Helene! The Prioress

4. As for yowe – but methinkes I mostenowelayedowne mine kinde tongue, this Englisshe I speke of faire kingeRichardestyme and lerne the custoumes of this new tyme and regioune, this place Harvarde, this londe the Yow Es of Aye, America hight. My speche then I chaunge. Pardounemyneaccente. Did any of you get any of that? Robin the Miller

5. Hengwrt Chaucer (manuscript of Canterbury Tales from c. 1400): General Prologue

6. What You Will Learn To read deeply and begin to understand one of the great masterpieces of English literature. To learn to think like Chaucer: through story and aboutstory with the intense engagement and passionate detachment this involves. In the process, to grasp Chaucer’s demanding and strange and influential notion of art. To learn to read, aloud, Middle English, the earliest easily comprehensible version of our language. To learn something of how literature, thought and society, worked during the late fourteenth century. The Merchant

7. What You Have To Do Learn to read Middle English. Read the poem. Attend class and section and contribute to both. Write two papers (or equivalent). Become an expert on one of the Tales: study it deeply, read about it, present on it. Try to get at least one Middle English word, probably “swyve,” into circulation around the Yard. (LARGE Prize for getting it into the Crimson.) The Friar

8. What We Will Do Hold sessions in office hours to teach you quickly to read Chaucer aloud and help you puzzle out the spellings etc. Help those of you who wish to take part in a reading of one of the Tales Take you to the Houghton Library to look at medieval manuscript books and early editions of Chaucer Give you extensive help with your research on the Tale you choose, and with presenting it and turning your work into a research paper All the usual stuff The Second Nun

9. Resources to Help You Do It METRO Middle English Teaching Resources Online Where to go for all your Middle English needs The Geoffrey Chaucer Page (Chaucer at Harvard) Professor Larry Benson's center for the study of Chaucer, especially The Canterbury Tales.  Feel free to make use of the "interlinear translations" at first The Middle English Compendiumonline (dictionary etc.) Also: books on reserve; contact with a research librarian; the website Inter Libros for more advanced work in medieval studies The Physician

10. Argument What is art for? Is art – especially the verbal art of narrative, or “fiction,” necessarily a positive force, or can it also be negative, corrupting, immoral?    Plato, after all, claimed that poets are liars and would have excluded them from his Republic. Mind you, Plato also, after all, conveyed his philosophy in the form of fictional dialogues, showing that fiction is, among other things, a way of exploring truths. Even that contradiction, though, suggests that these question should not lightly be dismissed. The Wife of Bath

11. Argument Why do these questions arise? In the case of literary art, “rhetoric” is part of the answer to this question, “fiction” another. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion as distinct from the art of argument. Argument seeks to convince us through reason. Rhetoric seems to move us through patterns of language, images, thoughts, irrespective of rational considerations. Fiction is like rhetoric: it patterns human lives; it presents not what is but what might be; it organizes reality for ends of its own, whatever they may be. The Pardoner

12. Argument We are all used to being acted upon by fiction: novels, film, TV, advertising. We are all also used to the idea that art is good: it represents creativity, fulfillment; aestheticpleasure; a space for critique of human institutions and of reality itself. Besides, fiction has a powerful advantage over other modes of exploring truths: its level of connectedness to our feelings and to the representation of human lives. This connectedness is one reason the truths of fiction are so often so rich. None of this means, however, that we should take fiction and what it does for/to us for granted. The Manciple

13. Argument Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are an exploration of the workings of fiction – and of the verbal arts in general – that refuses to make assumptions about what fiction is and whether we can feel good about it. The poem both asserts the distinctiveness of fiction – literature is not like other kinds of writing, nor life itself – and its intimate connectedness – literature is bound up with who we are, with how we interact. In the process, the poem ultimately places itself under judgment: it admits the possibility that it may be dangerous, its role in human culture questionable. But it also asserts its right to exist. The Summoner

14. How Chaucer Experiments with Fictions The Tales involve a double structure of tellers and listeners: there are two tellers,Chaucer and his pilgrims, and two audiences, the pilgrims and us, the readers. Consequences: 1) One fictional level, the pilgrimage, comes to correspond to “reality.” Here we see the connections between stories and those who tell them and the effects of story-telling worked out in a number of ways. 2) This means that we cannot get away with thinking of fictions without also thinking about their effects. 3) But it also partly removes us from those effects. It produces “structural irony” or “ironic distance.”

15. How Chaucer Experiments with Fictions: Structural Irony Levels of Fiction and Reality 1) The tale (itself often a retelling of a known tale and often in relationship to other tales) 2) The teller (a “Canterbury Pilgrim”) 3) The “inscribed” audience (the pilgrims in general; the Host in particular; sometimes specific pilgrims) 4) The scribe who inscribes them (Chaucer the pilgrim) 5) The author of the poem (Chaucer the author) 6) The poem’s reader (us; also, in a real sense, God) (Result: a great echo-chamber of possibility)

16. The Ellesmere Chaucer (in the Huntington in San Marino, CA): Miller’s Tale