12.August.2010
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Today we finished up the Canon Yeoman’s Tale. David suggests that perhaps the Yeoman’s tale with all its elemental (and base) alchemical imagery could be read as a metaphor for the artist’s (perhaps Chaucer’s) work. The artist takes the “dung and pysse” of the world and attempts (sometimes not so successfully) into a new form.
This is an interesting lens through which to read this tale, while others (including Susanna) prefer to read the tale more literally about an alchemist and his Yeoman.
However we choose to read it, there is a darkness and deception that surrounds that tale.
Maren suggested that when considered against the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, perhaps the Tales also contain a message about audience reception.
Nate wondered about approaching this tale through eco-criticism. According to David and Susanna, this is unexplored territory with this Tale. Potential dissertation, Nate?
Suggested film to pair with this tale: The Prestige.
We moved on to the Manciple’s Prologue and Tale. The Prologue seems to expand the “work” of the prologue as he includes a bit about the drunk Cook, who is, alas, unable to tell a tale. The Pilgrims pick the Cook up after he has fallen off a horse (horse and rider figure into symbolic idiom: passion and reas0n), perhaps suggesting that without others, the pilgrimage cannot be completed.
The Prologue ends with the Host and Manciple discussing words and how they can harm. There is also the contrast between the praise the Host gives Bacchus, and the Tale the Manciple tells about Apollo.
The Manicple’s tale is ultimately about the effects of words—a crow’s words—on Apollo.
The Manciple seems rhetorically duplicitous as he uses both high and low registers to tell his story—lemmen with lady, monting gnat, swyve. He seems to know better, even apologizes for the coarseness, but then continues.
Interestingly, it is the crow who speaks both “bird” and “English” who is the agent of catalyst for Apollo losing his reason, murdering his wife, and turning the crow black.
What is in other works an origin story, in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales becomes a multi-leveled, multi-valenced, narrative about the tensions between man and beast (eco-critcism—perhaps the crow never wanted to learn to speak in the first place; perhaps the crow just wanted out of his cage), between husband and wife (the wife is “caged” like the bird), between reason and passion, and the fissures between language and deed.
This afternoon Emily, Lee, Maren, Fran and I went to see a wonderful performance of Into the Woods in Regents Park. Intermittent rain made the outdoor performance…interesting…especially without a slicker. And then headed to our final dinner.
