The Canterbury Tales and the Late Medieval World Take-Home Midterm Exam
A. Explain the significance of Chaucer’s choice of a pilgrimage as the framing device for his collection of tales and the impact of Harry Bailly’s introduction of a storytelling contest on that choice. What are some of the interpretive challenges a reader faces in analyzing Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales?
To understand the significance of Chaucer’s choice of pilgrimage as a framing device for his tales, we need to explore what pilgrimage meant socially, symbolically and literarily in Chaucer’s time. The tradition of pilgrimage became widespread corresponding to the popularity of the cult of saints within western Christianity. People who went in pilgrimage gained a higher religious and social status in addition to the special privilege of being distinguished from others even in the way they dressed. Symbolically, pilgrimage was seen as the human’s life journey. It was the point where pilgrims can be the closest to the heavenly realm trying to transcend their humanly concerns and weaknesses. From a literary perspective, Dante in his Divine Comedy used pilgrimage as a framing device for his work. Dante’s pilgrimage was a divinely privilege that allowed the pilgrim to travel to the other world and report his witnesses to people as prophecies. The pilgrim travels gradually through Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise until he experiences the beatific vision, the real and ultimate destination of his journey. Dante’s pilgrim tries to experience his pilgrimage from the Divine’s point of view. Chaucer’s pilgrim in contrary tries to experience his pilgrimage from man’s point of view. Even though the narrator mentions that pilgrims are traveling to visit the Canterbury shrine, there is no mention to any progress in their road. The pilgrims’ goal becomes the pleasure of being on a journey and living the experience fully, without caring about reaching their destination. Chaucer’s pilgrims can see Canterbury but they never seek reaching it.
Critics view the significance of pilgrimage as Chaucer’s work frame from different perspectives. Some of them emphasize the significance of pilgrimage as a device that enables the author to bring a wide variety of people together. Those critics view pilgrims as samples of their different social classes rather than individuals. In that sense, Chaucer’s pilgrimage is a literary device that unifies distinguished social concepts and classifications, which the pilgrims represent.
Some critics refer to the significance of pilgrimage as a protective mechanism for Chaucer himself, so that he can distance himself from his narrators and their scandalous attitudes. Those critics chose to view Chaucer disguised behind the masks of his pilgrims. They see his pilgrims as scattered pieces of himself through whom he tries to communicate his themes that he cannot express bluntly.
Other critics view pilgrimage as the unifying device that emphasizes the oneness of human nature and its universal needs. According to those critics, pilgrimage attracted people from all social classes, the fact that reflects people’s common need for salvation. Moreover, it enhances the oneness of people’s destiny and the commonness of their struggle in the journey. Pilgrimage in that sense encourages ‘social transformation’ (p.109) and more universal sense of fellowship and corporation.
Considering the different aspects of the significance of Chaucer’s pilgrimage, I am inclined to think that the pilgrimage framework serves as a perfect literary technique that enables him to project people’s religious and moral attitudes in order to indicate his social critique of them. Moreover, the framework as a device helps Chaucer in communicating his universal views of both human life and human condition Pilgrimage embodies people’s longing to travel to some place that holds hope for a happy life. Human’s need to believe in the possibility of having a new opportunity is what pilgrims seek. Opportunity ranges from the mere physical ones (e.g. opportunity to have sexual intercourse during the pilgrimage) to mere spiritual ones (e.g. opportunity to have one’s souls reposed). Thus, pilgrimage becomes both physical and spiritual reactions to fulfill human’s instinctive desire to take new opportunities. In addition, it is a physical response to a spiritual desire to embrace the constant motion of nature, which seeks to transcend space.
And the impact of Harry Bailly’s introduction of a storytelling contest:
Harry Bailly’s introduction of the storytelling contest emphasizes the irony of the actual social attitude towards pilgrimage as an opportunity to break rules and daily life routine rather than a spiritual purification. It illustrates people’s view of pilgrimage as an opportunity for entertainment before anything else. Most importantly, it sheds light on the pilgrims’ desire to gain authority and control over each other, which is a major critique that Chaucer implies about human nature.
The concept of the contest arouses tension among pilgrims since it makes pilgrims try to find weaknesses in each tale to be able to criticize it and transcend it by telling a better tale. In addition to the fact, Chaucer implies that competition causes jealousy and hatred among people, which can ultimately lead to revenge too. Chaucer does not exclude his pilgrims who are supposedly competing over telling the best delightful moral tale. The motivation of his pilgrims to win the contest is neither the big feast nor salvation. It is to gain privilege among other pilgrims, which becomes a social authority before anything else. Therefore, pilgrims try their best to meet the criterion that Harry Bailly sets for winning the contest. Some pilgrims fail to meet that criterion because they allow their personal emotions control them and thus their tales serve as responses to others’ tales.
Some of the interpretive challenges a reader faces in analyzing Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
The main challenge that a reader faces in analyzing Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is the structure of the work. The unknown order of the tales is a big question that critics did not reach any consensus. Nevertheless, they agreed upon the first tale (The Knight’s Tale) and the last one (The Parsons Tale). Whether Chaucer completed his tales or whether he intentionally left them incomplete is another big question that occurs to readers analyzing the tales. The difficulty that this question raises is the possible missing themes and other literary devices that might attribute to the structure of the work.
Challenges concerning characters in the Tales can be summarized in whether Chaucer’s pilgrims are representative of the classes they belong to or not. Related to those challenges is the difficulty of distinguishing Chaucer’s voice from his pilgrims’ voices. In addition, it is hard to figure out Chaucer’s literary objectives because of the fact that he distances himself from his characters.
B. Chaucer’s England was a linguistically varied and complicated scene. Discuss the nature and causes of the linguistic situation and the impact of Chaucer’s choices as a poet on the development of the English language.
The complexity of the linguistic scene in England in Chaucer’s time springs from the existence of three different languages, each of which has its different function in people’s everyday life. Those languages are Latin, French and Middle English. People used Latin and French for official and administrative purposes. In fact, French had a big role in the aristocratic societies especially as most British queens spoke French and taught their kids French too. The Anglo-French was dominant in England from 1066-1450. Hence, the French influence on Middle English was not limited to the high and refined record of the language.
Before the existence of Middle English, people kept using Old English in chronicles until the middle of the 12th century. Nevertheless, common people spoke the same dialects they spoke before the Conquest. As writing old English faded away, Middle English came to sight and the fact that it was derived from the existent dialects enabled it to spread faster. Gradually, the government and the wealthy used Middle English along with French, which was still the dominant language in law and literature. Because of its different origins, Middle English had radical changes in both grammar and vocabulary. The system of endings in Middle English was either simplified or removed and that was obvious in its diverse written forms. As the grammatical genders vanished in Middle English, it was easier for the ruling class to use it increasingly. Consequently, King Henry V took initiative in having English the main language in his court.
The decline of French and Latin in the fields of law, politics and in churches in England was due to the loss of the Norman originate English king to his possessions in France. This caused the explosion of the One Hundred Years War, which resulted in the separation of English islands from Europe. This separation stimulated the sense of nationalism among people even among those who had Norman origins, which called for the importance of having a national language that represents them. Since the ruling and aristocratic class were busy with fighting in the war, their significance had decreased, which gave merchants and clerks a chance to rise and have a bigger role in the English society.
Since Chaucer was concerned with people’s everyday struggle, he needed to use a language that was widely read by a large scale of people. As the result of introducing the printing, press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s, a new form of English, London-based: Chancery Standard appeared in England and became popular as well. The increase of bureaucracy in London, and the simultaneous increase in London literary output caused a greater conformity in English spelling. Nevertheless, the uniqueness of Middle English emerged from its ability to adopt a wide range of scribal and dialectal forms.
Nevertheless, the French influence in Chaucer’s work is unquestionable due to the three hundred years dominance of the French civilization in different fields in England. Chaucer represented the English king in diplomatic French negotiations with the French king to maintain peace during the One Hundreds War. Although Chaucer's Man of Law in The Canterbury Tales uses French terminology, that usage is neither random nor artificial due to the wide usage of French in the English courts of law a century before writing his tales.
Chaucer was amazingly aware of the linguistic scene in his time. Therefore, he chose to write in Middle English, which is based in various dialects, so that common people can understand his works. Since Chaucer’s works expressed the common people’s struggle, he implicitly attempted to popularize Middle English through his literary works. Moreover, by sticking to writing in Middle English, Chaucer whether directly or indirectly universalized it. Therefore, he is considered the founder of English language.
C. Chaucer’s tales can be approached from a wide variety of critical perspectives. Summarize the broad outlines of THREE of the following critical approaches as they apply to ‘’The Knight’s Tale’’: exegetical, formalist, new historicism, feminist. Which approach do you find most appealing? Why?
According to the Feminist criticism, the depiction of Emelye in the Knight’s Tale does not show her as an actual individual. She is more like the third vertex that completes the triangle of the supposedly courtly love story. We do not get to listen to Emelye’s voice except when she goes to the shrine to pray to marry the one who wants her the most. There is no physical description of her. We cannot capture her psychological features as well. Even when we know that Emily is sad for Arcite’s death, we do not see her showing any real emotion. Emily is more like a shadow that presents the subject of love in the tale. Even though she is the subject of love for the two knights, she has never been asked whether she wants to marry one of them or not. In addition, the depiction of the widows in Thebes, whom Theseus sees after his victory in Thebes, does not show their psychological features or status. Even when we know that they weep, we do not get to listen to their inner voice. They serve as concepts to maintain balance of the scale of passivity and positivity of Chaucer’s characters. We can clearly see that when Theseus takes one of the widows as a wife without even asking for her consent. We also do not see any clue to her reaction.
Considering a formalist criticism, Irony plays a big role in the Knight’s Tale, specifically in the destiny of both Arcite and Palamon. When Theseus releases Arcite, he cannot do anything about his love towards Emelye because Theseus banished him from his in land; While Palamon who is still imprisoned can see his beloved and is enjoying looking at her from the tower. Arcite gets what he wants but it turns out that he cannot use it the way he thought he could. The same thing happens to him when he wins the battle against Palamon but falls from his horse and dies. Therefore, Arcite gets what he prays for: victory but dies and unable to marry Emelye for whom he fought. The same thing happens to Palamon when he wins Emelye, but Emelye on the other hand is very sad for the death of Arcite and apparently not very excited about marrying Palamon. Even though Palamon wins Emelye in marriage, he does not seem to win her heart, which emphasizes the irony of man getting what he wants but in the wrong time and flips over the concept of a blessing to a curse.
A new historicist can interpret Chaucer’s Knight Tale drawing on various literatures in his time. Tracing the literature of medieval social classes is a big courtyard for a new historicist, in addition to the literature of the chivalry as well. Chivalric and knighthood values were highly questioned in this tale. We see Theseus taking a widow in marriage without bothering to know if she wants to marry him or not. Moreover, Theseus allows Arcite and Palamon to fight each other even though the church banned holding torments. Arcite gives Theseus his word to keep away from his land as the pay for his freedom. Arcite breaks his oath and enters Theseus disguised in order to get closer to his beloved, Emelye. These actions do not reflect chivalric values even though those people were considered noble knights according to the story. Chaucer brought up this paradox as a revolution gesture against the normative view of chivalry.
The history of the tradition of courtly love in medieval society is another dimension through which a new historicist can interpret the tale. Comparing the concept of courtly love in other literary works such as Dante’s Divine Comedy will be highly applicable. A close cultural study on the traditions of marriage in the English medieval society will helpful as well. A literature of medieval kings and knights will enable us to capture the big picture of the social and political medieval scene.
I find the formalist approach the most appealing because it allows a universal analysis of the Tales, which can be extremely interesting and relevant to our present time. Looking at the Tales as an independent entity enables it to transcend the timeframe of the work. A literary text when as a living being that can hold all possible interpretations of readers in different times and places. A literary work shows its greatness the best when it does not need any supportive literature or guided materials to prove its remarkable position in history of literature.
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