Geoffrey Chaucer

Unit three ended on a faith arriving in a warrior world, sung in Old English. After ten sixty-six that English went underground, and this unit follows the poet who chose to write in it when it returned. Its governing idea is that Chaucer's satire lives in a gap: the narrator praises, the details condemn, and the meaning sits between the two. We move in three steps: the language and the man, from the Conquest to Middle English, Chaucer's career and his dream vision; then The Canterbury Tales, its frame, the General Prologue and its portraits; and then the tales as answers to one another, the narrator, the verse and the Retraction, before a procedure for reading a portrait.

We begin with the language, French, Latin and English after the Conquest, and the civil servant who chose English.

First, what the Conquest did to English.

ENL 0301 After 1066: French, Latin and English

William of Normandy won the Battle of Hastings in ten sixty-six, and Norman French became the language of court, law and government. English absorbed French words, giving pairs like drink and beverage. A statute of thirteen sixty-two restored English to the law courts. Hastings, French at court, English returning. Three languages coexisted for centuries.

Next, how to read the English that returned.

ENL 0302 Middle English and How to Read It

Middle English is the language from after the Conquest to about the end of the fifteenth century: closer to ours than Old English, with French vocabulary and older spellings. The General Prologue's "When that Aprilis, with his showers swoot" can be read with a gloss. Readable with a gloss. Spelling dates a passage before meaning does.

Now the man himself.

ENL 0303 Chaucer's Life and Career

Geoffrey Chaucer, about thirteen forty to fourteen hundred, rose from the middle ranks through service: page, soldier, diplomat, customs official, justice of the peace and member of parliament. John of Gaunt was his chief patron. He chose to write in English though he knew French, Italian and Latin. Civil servant who wrote in English. Choosing English is part of his importance.

Before the Tales came a dream of birds.

ENL 0304 The Parliament of Fowls and the Dream Vision

In this dream vision the narrator falls asleep reading Cicero and dreams of birds gathered before Nature. Three male eagles court one female in the language of courtly love, and the lower birds offer comic opinions. The anchor notes that the female is given a voice. Birds as social classes, debating love. The dream lets Chaucer speak by metaphor.

Now The Canterbury Tales: a frame of pilgrims, an April opening, and a society in portraits.

The Tales begin with a road and a contest.

ENL 0305 The Canterbury Tales: Frame and Pilgrimage

The Canterbury Tales is a frame tale: pilgrims riding to Canterbury tell stories on the road. Unlike Boccaccio's Decameron, Chaucer's frame matters as much as the tales. It was unfinished at his death, and William Caxton printed it in fourteen seventy-six. Pilgrims, a road, a storytelling contest. The frame is a story in its own right.

The General Prologue opens in spring.

ENL 0306 The General Prologue: The Opening Lines

The General Prologue opens in April, with showers, the west wind Zephyrus, birds singing, and people longing to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of the "holy blissful Martyr" at Canterbury. The narrator joins "nine and twenty" pilgrims at the Tabard inn in Southwark. Spring, pilgrimage, the Tabard, twenty-nine. The opening is one long spring sentence.

The portraits sketch a whole society.

ENL 0307 The General Prologue: Portraits and Estates

The Prologue describes each pilgrim in turn, sketching the medieval three estates: those who fight, those who pray, and those who work. The anchor observes that the travellers do nothing pilgrim-like: they feast, drink, dress richly, ride, and tell stories instead of praying. A society in portraits. Estates satire measures each against an ideal.

Now the tales themselves, which answer one another, and the narrator who cannot be trusted.

The first tales come as a pair.

ENL 0308 The Knight's Tale and the Miller's Answer

The Knight tells the first tale, a story of courtly love. The Host then calls on the Monk, but the drunken Miller, insisting he is as good as a better man, interrupts with a tale to "quite," or repay, the Knight's. Rank and rivalry drive the frame. The noble tale, and its rude reply. Tales answer tales; read them as pairs.

The Miller's reply has its own genre.

ENL 0309 The Miller's Tale and the Fabliau

A fabliau is a comic, often bawdy tale mocking church and nobility. The Miller's is one: the student Nicholas and the carpenter John's young wife Alison trick her jealous husband, while the parish clerk Absolon courts her absurdly. The anchor reads it as a mocking revision of courtly love. A bawdy trick on a jealous husband. The fabliau parodies the Knight's ideals.

The Wife of Bath argues before she tells.

ENL 0310 The Wife of Bath's Prologue

The Wife of Bath has had five husbands at the church door and has been to Jerusalem three times. Her prologue opens on experience against authority, and recounts how her fifth husband, Jankin, struck her deaf over a book, until she won "the sovereignty." Experience against authority; five husbands. She argues from life, against the books.

Her tale proves her prologue.

ENL 0311 The Wife of Bath's Tale

An Arthurian knight, sentenced for rape, must learn what women most desire. An ugly old woman gives him the answer, sovereignty over husband and love, and he must marry her. When he yields her the choice, she becomes young and fair. Critics call her the loathly lady. A quest, an answer, a transformation. The answer is sovereignty, her own theme.

The Franklin imagines a different marriage.

ENL 0312 The Franklin's Tale

The knight Arveragus marries Dorigen and promises never to claim mastery over her. While he is away, the squire Aurelius woos her, and she rashly promises him her love if he removes the black rocks of the coast. The tale ends by asking, "Which was the moste free?" Equal marriage, rash promise. It ends on a question to the reader.

One pilgrim preaches against his own sin.

ENL 0313 The Pardoner and His Tale

The Pardoner carries pigs' bones in a glass as relics and preaches against greed for profit, his theme "Radix malorum est cupiditas," greed is the root of evil. His tale sends three young men to kill Death; they find gold under a tree, and murder one another. A greedy preacher's tale against greed. The irony is that he admits his fraud.

Three church pilgrims carry worldly details.

ENL 0314 The Prioress, the Monk and the Friar

The clerical pilgrims fall short of their callings. The Prioress wears a gold brooch inscribed "Amor vincit omnia," love conquers all. The Monk loves hunting more than the cloister. The Friar is a worldly beggar. The details accuse; the narrator does not. Religious pilgrims, worldly details. The satire works by detail, not by verdict.

There are two Chaucers in the poem.

ENL 0315 Chaucer the Pilgrim and Chaucer the Poet

A version of Chaucer narrates all his poems: in the Tales, a pilgrim who describes his companions with apparent admiration and no overt judgment. The anchor notes that he gives the audience enough to judge for themselves. The naive pilgrim and the knowing poet are different voices. A naive narrator, a knowing author. Do not take the narrator's praise at face value.

The portraits work by a single kind of irony.

ENL 0316 Irony in the General Prologue

Because the narrator praises where the details condemn, the General Prologue is built on irony. The Pardoner's relics are pigs' bones, the Prioress's motto is about love, and the pilgrims behave like holidaymakers. Readers supply the judgment the narrator withholds. Praise in the words, blame in the facts. Irony questions often turn on this gap.

Chaucer wrote in two main forms.

ENL 0317 Chaucer's Verse: Couplet and Rhyme Royal

Most of the Canterbury Tales is in rhymed pentameter couplets, which Chaucer pioneered in English and which later poets would call heroic couplets. He also introduced rhyme royal, the seven-line stanza, used in the Parliament of Fowls and in Troilus and Criseyde. Couplets for the Tales; rhyme royal elsewhere. Rhyme royal's definition here rests on one source.

The career ends on a tragedy and an apology.

ENL 0318 Troilus and Criseyde and the Retraction

Troilus and Criseyde, in rhyme royal, tells of lovers parted in the Trojan War; Shakespeare later based Troilus and Cressida on it. At the end of the Tales, Chaucer's Retraction asks forgiveness for any of his writings that tend toward sin, after the reader has already read them. A tragic love story; an apology placed last. The anchor notes the Retraction's timing.

Here is the method for any portrait passage.

ENL 0319 Reading a Chaucer Portrait

Portrait passages are answered by reading the details against the narrator's words. Identify the estate, knight, cleric or worker, because each had an ideal the portrait measures. Collect the concrete details: clothing, possessions, habits, speech. Compare them with the ideal of the calling: a nun should renounce worldly love, a monk keep his cloister. Note the narrator's comment, usually praise, and set it against the details; the gap is the satire. The Wife of Bath's portrait gives five husbands, three pilgrimages to Jerusalem and partial deafness, a worldly, well-travelled woman. Do not adopt the narrator's admiration.

The capstone gathers Chaucer into one account.

ENL 0320 What Chaucer Made Possible

Chaucer is the medieval writer the exam most likely tests. After the Conquest of ten sixty-six, French ruled court and law, and English returned slowly, restored to the law courts in thirteen sixty-two. Chaucer, a courtier and civil servant patronized by John of Gaunt, chose that English, and the anchor counts the choice as part of his importance; its spelling dates a passage at once. The Parliament of Fowls is a dream vision of birds debating love by class. The Canterbury Tales sets twenty-nine pilgrims at the Tabard riding to Canterbury, and its frame matters as much as its stories. The General Prologue's portraits condemn in their details what the narrator praises: the Prioress's brooch, the Monk's hunting, the Pardoner's pigs' bones. The tales answer each other: the Miller's fabliau repays the Knight, the Wife of Bath argues experience against authority, the Franklin imagines marriage without mastery, the Pardoner preaches against the greed he practises. His couplets became the later heroic couplet, rhyme royal carried Troilus and Criseyde, and the Retraction comes after everything it apologizes for. The narrator is a character, and his admiration is part of the joke.

This unit placed satire in a gap. We saw English return after the Conquest, learned to read Middle English with a gloss and to date it by spelling, and met Chaucer the civil servant who chose English. We described the dream vision and the Tales' frame, from the April opening to the Tabard. We read the General Prologue's portraits as estates satire, measured against each calling's ideal. We read the tales as answers, Knight and Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Franklin, the Pardoner. And we separated the naive pilgrim from the knowing poet, and named the couplet and rhyme royal. Unit five, Middle English Beyond Chaucer, turns to his contemporaries.