Another Update from Chaucer
I can NOT even begin to tell you how relieved I am to discover, from Geoff's latest post, that he never wrote that gawdawful "Prioress's Tale," but intended instead to write "sum edifynge storie of frendship and cooperacioun bitwene Jewes and Christian folk." That terrible tale is Gower's! This is going to make teaching the Chaucer class so much easier, since we won't have to discuss the extent to which Chaucer was or was not aware of his anti-Semitism. Nope, it's Gower's work -- he slipped in his tale of Hugh of Lincoln, "whiche ys aboute as tolerante and charmynge as a badger on methamphetamynes."
In general, I'm grateful that Chaucer's seen fit to post his first fragmentary notes on the Canterbury Tales -- I'm just so sorry that we've apparently lost so much of what he originally planned: the Knight's Yeoman's Tale of the swyved blancmange; several workers' tales (the haberdasher, the carpenter, the weaver, the dyer, the tapestry-maker) -- all of which concern the workers saving the world from an asteroid; the Dog-Master's Tale, all about John Gower annoying the wool-quay, by pretending to be a ghost.*
And of course, many notes that clear up the stuff we DO have -- apparently Chaucer intended to keep the Tale of Melibee from being excessively boring -- to0 bad he didn't make it -- and there is indeed a section wherein the Host changes the rules, cause the original plan calls for way too many tales -- and then there's the news, happy news for all of us, that there WAS a winner of the game. It was the Miller.
Well. We could have guesssed. But instead we argued. Glad this has been cleared up.
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*I'm especially interested in this new fragment; I've written elsewhere (in my official writing life rather than my blog writing life) about some drunken guys in Cambridgeshire, early 17th century, who went over to the house of one of the local churchwardens, whose wife had just died that day, and pretended to be ghosts. It's bothered me for years that the entry in the church court documents give us not enough details. HOW does one pretend to be a ghost, in the early 17th century? Does it involve sheets? Whoo-hooing? Well, Chaucer tells us here that medieval faux-ghosts looked EXACTLY like the ghosts in Scooby-Doo. Sheets. Whoo-hooing. Thank God. Now I know.
In general, I'm grateful that Chaucer's seen fit to post his first fragmentary notes on the Canterbury Tales -- I'm just so sorry that we've apparently lost so much of what he originally planned: the Knight's Yeoman's Tale of the swyved blancmange; several workers' tales (the haberdasher, the carpenter, the weaver, the dyer, the tapestry-maker) -- all of which concern the workers saving the world from an asteroid; the Dog-Master's Tale, all about John Gower annoying the wool-quay, by pretending to be a ghost.*
And of course, many notes that clear up the stuff we DO have -- apparently Chaucer intended to keep the Tale of Melibee from being excessively boring -- to0 bad he didn't make it -- and there is indeed a section wherein the Host changes the rules, cause the original plan calls for way too many tales -- and then there's the news, happy news for all of us, that there WAS a winner of the game. It was the Miller.
Well. We could have guesssed. But instead we argued. Glad this has been cleared up.
****************************
*I'm especially interested in this new fragment; I've written elsewhere (in my official writing life rather than my blog writing life) about some drunken guys in Cambridgeshire, early 17th century, who went over to the house of one of the local churchwardens, whose wife had just died that day, and pretended to be ghosts. It's bothered me for years that the entry in the church court documents give us not enough details. HOW does one pretend to be a ghost, in the early 17th century? Does it involve sheets? Whoo-hooing? Well, Chaucer tells us here that medieval faux-ghosts looked EXACTLY like the ghosts in Scooby-Doo. Sheets. Whoo-hooing. Thank God. Now I know.
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