Monday, 9.August.2010
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Today we attempted to tackle three tales. The highlight was Emily and Mary Kay’s presentation on the Prioress’s Tale.
I once had a student who did an anti-Semitic reading of this anti-Semitic tale. And since then, I have avoided it.
Mary Kay and Emily began by contextualizing the tale, having us look back at the prioress’s portrait in the general prologue and deducing 6-8 qualities with which Chaucer presents the Prioress—she is “simple and coy,” “vain,” two-sided, counterfeits a courtly grace, and so forth.
Then they asked us to go to the Prioress’ Prologue and Tale and search for how the Prologue/Tale transacts with these qualities.
What comes about is a new understanding that the tale—told in high style about a very violent end—is almost as layered as the Prioress. The tale is couched in “mercy” and “Mary,” but at its heart it contains the story of a violent death by Jewry and the subsequent violent death of those Jews. Emily points out that the setting of the town—the Jews surrounded by Christians mirrors this narrative structuring.
Additionally, the boy in the tale sings the Alma Redemptorus without knowing the meaning mirroring the Prioress’ own speaking of French.
The graphic organizer—General Prologue attributes, Tale/Prologue connections or irony (in style, subject, word, tone), Conclusions—was especially helpful and could be used to help students get at the undercurrents of any Tale.
It seems that the Tale gets its inspiration from a mix of Virgin Miracle and anti-Semitic stories making their way around continental Europe during the 13th century. Interestingly, most stories about Jews involve the corruption of a little boy, as Artis Butterfield suggests. We are left, though, a bit baffled about how to address this tale in a post-Diaspora culture (post-homeland-founding, post-Holocaust). It might be an interesting discussion to have with students.
Interestingly, the Prioress’ Prologue begins with Psalm 8, part of the Liturgy of the Holy Innocents.
Susanna provided an interesting entryway into the Pardoner’s complex tale by suggesting Chaucer’s source—a “Treasure of Sirrea Madre” folk tale. This usually involves three men looking to cheat the others out of treasure; ultimately they meet their ends by at the hands of their own greed.
Susanna also pointed out several connections that would have been contemporary to Chaucer’s readers including images of Three Living and the Three Dead.
Susanna links together the story of the Three Living and the Three Dead (scroll down for illumaged images from DeLisle Psalter) to the three male figures in the Tale—boy (youth), taverner (middle age), and old man (old age). This folk story is also depicted on walls of churches.
In this tale (and in the paintings and in the folk tlae), there is this idea of a “blind humanity” to precipitous to notice any chance at redemption.
To complicate and deepen this we have the Pardoner speaking from a position of the damned, but in a sense he is speaking from a place of deepest redemptive possibility.
David notes the role of the Apothecary who has “death in his hands.”
We are thankful to Artis Butterfield, who is certainly brilliant, even if she did muddy the waters of this thinker’s mind. I’ll look forward to mulling over some of the thinking she suggested today in class.
