A mad dash thru Chaucer

Key Words• Iambic Pentameter• Enjambment

• Fabliau (plural fabliaux)

• Flat vs. Round characters

• Blazon• Stereotyping

• Sermon• Vice• Self-confession• Exemplum

• antifeminist or misogynist literature

• romance • Experience vs.

auctoritee • Maistrye or sovereintee• Lerned vs. Lewed

• Metaphor• Pilgrimage• Prose vs. Poetry

Technical Issues

• Iambic pentameter in enjambed couplets

• Chaucer’s subversion of genre

• Naturalizing French styles and words

• Using humor to present serious issues

Visualizing The Miller’s Tale

A medieval city house

A “hall house” with cantilevered stories

What the streets looked like

Medieval smithy

Where are the morals?• Adultery interrupted by church bells

• Clerks telling tale to other clerks—they are supposed to know better. Problem is that lay people like the Miller think this is a great joke—they don’t see the problem

• Alisoun goes unpunished—it was her husband’s duty to keep her in line. Clerical view of women as being morally irresponsible and uncontrollable.

Visualizing the Pardoner’s Tale

Why Roncesvalles?

• The selling of indulgences to raise money for the hospital was a well known in Chaucer's day.

• In 1387, a scandal in Roncevalles concerning the sale of indulgences was 'headline news' so Chaucer's choice of a location made sense

• The con-artist stereotype of the Pardoner would be well known.

Roncesvalles

Purgatory

The doctrine of purgatory is based on the apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39-45. Later teaching on purgatory was refined by Thomas Aquinas who emphasized that that souls in purgatory may be assisted by masses, prayers, and indulgences offered by the living.

1480 Indulgence to Robert Plompton and Agnes (w)

from Bro. William of St Robert’s Knaresborough

The morals?• Raises big question: can grace come through a

flawed channel? (If gold rust, what shall iron do?)

• Is good spiritual advice effective when it comes from someone who’s a known fraud?

• Are people so desperate for salvation and spiritual authority to guide them that they’ll fall for this?

• Why does the Knight (representing secular order—those who fight) force the Pardoner (representing those who pray) and Harry (representing those who work) to kiss and make up?