The Miller's Tale and the Destabilization of Authority
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Russo Georgetown 0076D 127
LIBROS DE BUEN HUMOR: UNDERSTANDING THE COMIC IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FRAME NARRATIVES A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish By Maureen C. Russo, M.S. Washington, DC April 25, 2014 Copyright 2014 by Maureen C. Russo All Rights Reserved ii LIBROS DE BUEN HUMOR: UNDERSTANDING THE COMIC IN FOURTEENTH- CENTURY FRAME NARRATIVES Maureen C. Russo, M.S. Thesis Advisor: Dr. Emily C. Francomano, PhD. ABSTRACT This dissertation is a comparative study of the functions of humor in three fourteenth-century frame collections: the Iberian text, El Libro de buen amor, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. With the Libro de buen amor as the backbone of my investigation, I isolate several specific comic trends present across the three texts, identifying the nuances of their function and analyzing their relationship to other intersecting elements such as hermeneutics, parody, didacticism and reception. This study is the first piece of scholarship to treat all three of these canonical collections side-by-side for an in-depth examination of their humor. Humor is an essential element in each collection as well as an important commonality among them, but it is also one of the most complex themes for critical treatment. The way in which the comic functions in narrative discourse is at once central to self-expression and yet also impossible to fully theorize or describe. In order to manage the vastness of my project, I have focused my investigation on several very specific comic modes so that I may examine their roles in-depth and trace their functions across each collection. -
Ovid's Wand: the Brush of History and the Mirror of Ekphrasis Presented In
Ovid’s Wand: the brush of history and the mirror of ekphrasis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Reid Hardaway, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2017 Dissertation Committee: Ethan Knapp, Advisor Karen Winstead Sarah-Grace Heller Copyright by Reid Hardaway 2017 Abstract The recent work on the manuscript reception of Ovid’s canon and Ovidian commentaries in western Europe has affirmed the author’s significant literary influence in the late Mid- dle Ages. The production and reception of Ovidinia flourished, and Ovid’s poems in- creasingly became read as coherent compositions rather than dissected for bits of moral exempla. In particular, the Metamorphoses profoundly affects the literary landscape of late medieval France and England. Allusions to Ovid’s poem reemerge throughout the late Middle Ages at defining moments of poetic self-consciousness, most often through figures of ekphrasis, the use of poetry in order to portray other media of art. By examin- ing such moments from a selection of influential medieval poems, the mind of the late medieval poet reveals itself in perpetual contestation with the images and figures of an Ovidian lineage, but the contest entails the paradoxical construction of poetic identity, which forces the poet to impose the haunting shadow of literary history onto the mirror of his or her craft. ii Acknowledgements The following work would not have been possible without the considerate and insightful assistance of my advisor, Ethan Knapp, as well as the other members of the dissertation committee, Karen Winstead and Sarah-Grace Heller. -
“General Prologue,” Canterbury Tales: Informational/Explanatory Writing and Close Reading Task Text Grade Band Placement
“General Prologue,” Canterbury Tales: Informational/explanatory Writing and Close Reading Task Text grade band placement: 11-12 Text Text Complexity Analysis Title: General Prologue, The Canterbury Quantitative: Tales Lexile: 1310L Author: Geoffrey Chaucer Qualitative: Meaning - Several levels/layers and competing elements of meaning that are difficult to Citation/Publication info: identify, separate, and interpret; theme is implicit or subtle, often ambiguous and revealed over Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury the entirety of the text Tales. Trans. Nevill Coghill. Prentice Hall Literature: The Text Structure - Narration: Complex and/or unconventional; many shifts in point of view and/or British Tradition. Upper Saddle perspective; Order of Events: Not in chronological order; heavy use of flashback River, NJ: Pearson, 2012. 97- 119. Print. Language Features - Conventionality: Dense and complex; contains abstract, ironic, and/or figurative language; Vocabulary: Some use of unfamiliar, archaic, subject-specific, or overly Link: academic language http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CT- prolog-para.html Knowledge Demands - Life Experiences: Explores many complex and sophisticated themes; experiences are distinctly different from the common reader; Intertextuality and Cultural Knowledge: Some references or allusions to other texts or cultural elements; Subject Matter Knowledge: requires some prior content knowledge Reader and Task: The Common Core State Standards name The Canterbury Tales as an exemplar text for the 11- 12 grade band. It is important to note that even in a translated version, the text remains a challenge given the complexities of meaning, text structure, language features and knowledge demands placed upon the reader. ELA Common Core Standards addressed by task CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain. -
Women in Geoffrey Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales: Woman As A
1 Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Vladislava Vaněčková Women in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Woman as a Narrator, Woman in the Narrative Master's Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Doc. Milada Franková, Csc., M.A. 2007 2 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. ¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼.. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. Medieval Society 7 2.1 Chaucer in His Age 9 2.2 Chaucer's Pilgrims 11 3. Woman as a Narrator: the Voiced Silence of the Female Pilgrims 15 3.1 The Second Nun 20 3.2 The Prioress 27 3.3 The Wife of Bath 34 4. Woman in Male Narratives: theIdeal, the Satire, and Nothing in Between 50 4.1 The Knight's Tale, the Franklin's Tale: the Courtly Ideal 51 4.1.1 The Knight's Tale 52 4.1.2 The Franklin's Tale 56 4.2 The Man of Law's Tale, the Clerk's Tale: the Christian Ideal 64 4.2.1 The Man of Law's Tale 66 4.2.2 The Clerk's Tale 70 4.3 The Miller's Tale, the Shipman's Tale: No Ideal at All 78 4.3.1 The Miller's Tale 80 4.3.2 The Shipman's Tale 86 5. Conclusion 95 6. Works Cited and Consulted 100 4 1. Introduction Geoffrey Chaucer is a major influential figure in the history of English literature. His The Canterbury Tales are read and reshaped to suit its modern audiences. -
On Huang Gaoxin's Choices in the Translation of the Canterbury Tales
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by CSCanada.net: E-Journals (Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture,... ISSN 1923-1555[Print] Studies in Literature and Language ISSN 1923-1563[Online] Vol. 20, No. 2, 2020, pp. 9-15 www.cscanada.net DOI:10.3968/11652 www.cscanada.org On Huang Gaoxin’s Choices in the Translation of The Canterbury Tales ZHU Kun[a],* [a]School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China. asceticism and praises people who pursue happiness * Corresponding author. and freedom, which embodies the humanism spirit of Received 26 December 2019; accepted 17 February 2020 Chaucer. Meanwhile, in this work, Chaucer created the 1 Published online 26 April 2020 heroic couplet , which has been widely used by later English poets. As a result, this collection is regarded as Abstract the beginning of modern English poetry. As a Chinese translator, Huang Gaoxin has been Over the next few hundred years, the collection has devoting himself to the translation of poetry for over been translated into many languages and spread to many fifty years and has successfully translated a large number countries. Since the 1940s, it has been translated into of collections of English poems into Chinese, among Chinese by many Chinese translators, one of whom is which The Canterbury Tales is an essential one. By Huang Gaoxin. However, Huang did not translate it into comparing the translated version of The Canterbury free verse, nor did he adopt a unified translation method Tales by Huang with its original version and analyzing to translate different poetic forms in the original work. -
The Canterbury Tales the Comedy of Marriage in Chaucer's Fabliaux
THE CANTERBURY TALES THE COMEDY OF MARRIAGE IN CHAUCER'S FABLIAUX According to Joerg Fichte, "The object of comicality is anything that questions a culture as system, i.e., either the relapse into nature or the isolation of a culture from nature, that is, a culture presented as an absolute."1 Also, for Mikhail Bakhtin, in Rabelais and his World, "Laughter purifies from dogmatism, from the intolerant and the petrified; it liberates from fanaticism and pedantry, from fear and intimidation, ... from the single meaning, the single level, from sentimentality."2 "Chaucer's poetry", Derek Brewer says, "is also notable for the hospitality it offers to the unofficial cultures; to secular and lower-class elements, to folk-tale, folk-humour even of a coarse kind (as in some fabliaux), and to the laughter he raises often enough against the official culture"3. In fact, the official ecclesiastical culture revealed its weakness particularly in its treatment of sexual love and of women, themes of great importance in the Middle Ages. The character who attacks clerical culture most decisively, subjecting it to laughter, is precisely the Wife of Bath, with her five husbands. She feels it is her right to acquire property through marriage and to control it unchecked, at the same time following her amorous inclinations in freedom; thus, she stands up eloquently for sensual enjoyment of sexuality and turns against all anti-feminist doctrines. If the literary form par excellence of the aristocratic class was the romance, in counterpart the middle class invented the fabliau. "Fabliaux tended to be ribaldly comic tales. -
Summary & Analysis of the Pardoner's Tale
Summary & Analysis of The Pardoner’s Tale Summary Apparently deeply affected by the Physician's sad and gruesome tale of Virginia, the Host praises the Physician by using as many medical terms as he can muster. However, he rejects the Physician's moral to the tale and substitutes one of his own: Thus the gifts of fortune and nature are not always good ("The gifts of Fortune and Nature have been the cause of the death of many a person"). Thinking that the pilgrims need a merry tale to follow, the Host turns to the Pardoner. The more genteel members of the company, fearing that the Pardoner will tell a vulgar story, ask the Pardoner for a tale with a moral. The Pardoner then explains to the pilgrims the methods he uses in preaching. His text is always "Radix malorum est cupidatis" ("Love of money is the root of all evil"). Always employing an array of documents and objects, he constantly announces that he can do nothing for the really bad sinners and invites the good people forward to buy his relics and, thus, absolve themselves from sins. Then he stands in the pulpit and preaches very rapidly about the sin of avarice so as to intimidate the members into donating money. He repeats that his theme is always "Money is the root of all evil" because, with this text, he can denounce the very vice that he practices: greed. And even though he is guilty of the same sins he preaches against, he can still make other people repent. -
Female Desire, Fabliau Politics, and Classical Legend in Chaucer's Reeve's Tale
Exemplaria Medieval, Early Modern, Theory ISSN: 1041-2573 (Print) 1753-3074 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yexm20 “To Late for to Crie”: Female Desire, Fabliau Politics, and Classical Legend in Chaucer's Reeve's Tale Nicole Nolan Sidhu To cite this article: Nicole Nolan Sidhu (2009) “To Late for to Crie”: Female Desire, Fabliau Politics, and Classical Legend in Chaucer's Reeve's Tale , Exemplaria, 21:1, 3-23 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/175330709X372021 Published online: 18 Jul 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 151 View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=yexm20 Download by: [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] Date: 06 March 2016, At: 19:31 exemplaria, Vol. 21 No. 1, Spring, 2009, 3–23 “To Late for to Crie”: Female Desire, Fabliau Politics, and Classical Legend in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale Nicole Nolan Sidhu East Carolina University This article proposes that Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale is a fusion of classical legend plot with fabliau setting and characters. This fusion helps Chaucer push the fabliau beyond its own limits, allowing the Reeve’s Tale to reveal late medieval culture’s confl icting attitudes towards female desire and mas- culine control and thus to interrogate more fully the gender politics of the Knight’s classical romance. The article argues that because the Reeve’s Tale revises many of the traditional features of medieval obscene discourse — features that the Miller’s Tale embodies — it is a crucial part of Chaucer’s meditation on issues of gender and genre in Fragment One. -
Clerk's Tale." Robert R
East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works 5-2003 "And Gladly Wolde He Teche": Chaucer's Use of Source Materials in the "Clerk's Tale." Robert R. Brandon II East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Brandon, Robert R. II, ""And Gladly Wolde He Teche": Chaucer's Use of Source Materials in the "Clerk's Tale."" (2003). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 748. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/748 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “And Gladly Wolde He Teche:” Chaucer’s Use of Source Materials in the “Clerk’s Tale” ________________________________________________ A thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of English East Tennessee State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Arts in English _________________________________________________ By Robert R. Brandon May 2003 _________________________________________________ Dr. DiCicco, Chair Dr. Powers-Beck Dr. Stanley Keywords: Chaucer, Clerk’s Tale, Griselda, Canterbury Tales ABSTRACT And Gladly Wolde He Teche: Chaucer’s Use of Source Materials in the “Clerk’s Tale” By Robert R. Brandon Few of Chaucer’s works provoke such animosity as does his “Clerk’s Tale.” Modern critics are divided by the social and gender issues to which the tale lends itself. -
H-France Review Volume 16 (2016) Page 1
H-France Review Volume 16 (2016) Page 1 H-France Review Vol. 16 (June 2016), No. 95 Antoine de La Sale, Jean de Saintré. A Late Medieval Education in Love and Chivalry. Translated by Roberta L. Krueger and Jane H. Taylor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. 264 pp. Notes, glossary, selected bibliography, and illustrations. $59.95 U.S. (cl). £ 39.00 U.K. (cl). ISBN : 978-0-8122- 4586-8. Review by Estelle Doudet, Université de Grenoble Alpes Jean de Saintré is one of the most important pieces of prose fiction of the Late Middle Ages. Written in 1456, the book tells of the education that the young Jean de Saintré receives from an attractive lady, Madame des Belles Cousines. Jean grows into an accomplished knight, famous for his skills in tournaments and his courage in battles. Unfortunately, one day he learns of Madame’s romantic involvement with a plump abbot and he then decides to ruin her reputation. Celebrated by Julia Kristeva in 1970 for its modernity, Jean de Saintré is characterized by an original generic hybridity.[1] A fictionalized biography inspired by a historical knight of the fourteenth century, this chivalric novel ends ironically like a fabliau. The tale of Jean and Belles Cousines is mixed with moral lessons about vices and virtues and filled with descriptions of courtly protocol. The romance seems always to be turning into a didactic compilation, and vice versa. Antoine de La Sale (c. 1389-1460) spent his life in service to French aristocratic dynasties. Among other duties, he was preceptor for Jean of Anjou, son of King René, for whom Jean de Saintré was written. -
(2) Sexuality, Obscenity, and Genre in the Merchant's Tale
The Merchant’s Tale (2) Sexuality, Obscenity, and Genre in the Merchant’s Tale: The Case of Fabliau Marie Turner An essay chapter from the Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales (September 2018) The Merchant’s Tale is often considered to be one of the masterpieces of the Canterbury Tales. A lowbrow story told in a high rhetorical style, the tale’s richly allusive fabric interweaves sources and analogues both classical and biblical, Latin, French, and Italian, as well as self-reflexively referencing other parts of the Canterbury Tales; in the Merchant’s Tale, perhaps, we can see the man behind the curtain, the poet Chaucer at work. But in addition to all this high style and erudition, the Merchant’s Tale also has something of a reputation for crude and obscene content: the elderly bachelor Januarie seeks out a much younger bride, May, and, after a series of perhaps less-than-erotic romps, introduces her to a purpose-built sex garden where he hopes they will engage in those acts which are “nat doon abedde” (MerT 2051). Throwing a wrench in the works is May, who naturally has fallen in love with Damyan, a young squire in her household, with whom she hatches a plan to cuckold her husband, now blind. May copies the key to the garden and lets Damyan inside, where he lies in wait in a convenient pear tree. When May declares herself to have a craving for pears, Januarie delightedly assumes that his wife is pregnant and rushes to assist her in climbing the tree in search of the fruit which will satisfy her desire. -
Or... Geoffrey Chaucer's Flying Circus
or... Geoffrey Chaucer’s Flying Circus By Burton Bumgarner © Copyright 2007, Pioneer Drama Service, Inc. Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that a royalty must be paid for every performance, whether or not admission is charged. All inquiries regarding rights should be addressed to Pioneer Drama Service, Inc., PO Box 4267, Englewood, CO 80155. All rights to this play—including but not limited to amateur, professional, radio broadcast, television, motion picture, public reading and translation into foreign languages—are controlled by Pioneer Drama Service, Inc., without whose permission no performance, reading or presentation of any kind in whole or in part may be given. These rights are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by the Universal Copyright Convention or with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations, including Canada, Mexico, Australia and all nations of the United Kingdom. COPYING OR REPRODUCING ALL OR ANY PART OF THIS BOOK IN ANY MANNER IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN BY LAW. On all programs, printing and advertising, the following information must appear: 1. The full name of the play 2. The full name of the playwright 3. The following notice: “Produced by special arrangement with Pioneer Drama Service, Inc., Englewood, Colorado” THE CANTERBURY TALES Or… Geoffrey Chaucer’s Flying Circus By BURTON BUMGARNER CAST OF CHARACTERS # of lines BORING SCHOLAR.....................lectures on Chaucer 11 HARRY BAILEY ..........................host of the Tabard Inn and the 117 narrator of The Canterbury Tales STAGE MANAGER ......................of the play 4 SIGN CHANGER .........................changes signs for each scene n/a GEOFFREY CHAUCER .................author of The Canterbury Tales; 59 unfocused WRONG PILGRIMS 1-4 ...............Thanksgiving pilgrims in the 4 wrong story MRS.