Chaucer and his contemporaries and forebears

1
Chaucer and his contemporaries and forebears

• Dante 1265-1321
• Boccaccio 1313-1375
• Petrarch 1304-1374,
• Chaucer went to Italy at least twice, knew
  Italian, and read Dante, Boccaccio, and
  Petrarchs lyric poetry
• Gawain-poet wrote 1370-90
• Chaucer 1340-1400
• follows continental more than English models

2
Chaucer vs. the Gawain-poet

• Chaucer
• follows Italian model
• rhyming verse
• iambic pentameter
• frame tale
• see derivations from
• Dantes pilgrimage
• Boccaccios tales
• establishes English as a literary language
  throughout Europe

• Gawain-poet
• follows English model
• alliterative verse
• romance epic
• see derivations from
• Marie de France
• Beowulf
• Song of Roland
• looks to imitate best of past English literature
  no European audience

3
Chaucers Marriage Tales ask big questions

• What do women/men really want?
• What is the best balance of power in marriage?
• What should bring people together?
• physical attraction
• courtly love conventions
• admiration for the others talents and abilities
• natal rank

4
The Nuns Priests Tale

• Similarities between Chanticleer and the Priest
  himself
• both only males in female-run households
• both rely on the authority of the written word
• Contrast between language of the tale and its
  subject matter
• language of learning and of courtly love
• for Petes sake, theyre just chickens!
• What insights into marriage do we gain?

5
G S in Nuns Priests Tale

• Gentility
• Does gentility reside in the language Chanticleer
  and Pertelote use towards one another?
• Does gentility reside in physical surroundings of
  wealth, beauty?

• Sovereignty
• Chanticleer rules the roost
• Source of his power
• wit and cunning to outwit fox
• narrowness of world he inhabits
• ease of impressing Pertelote

6
The Wife of Baths Tale

• Romance tale of a knights adventure
• Knights sin of rape failure to understand what
  women want and to obey women
• Since rape seen here as a sin against women, the
  women of the court punish it.
• Knight shows himself redeemable because he spends
  a year trying to learn about women and what they
  want.
• Tale suggests that any sin can be forgiven

7
Wife of Baths Mini Sermon

• Preaches against
• idea that social class determines virtue
• upper class people not necessarily better
• despising poverty
• despising age
• elevating book learning above actual experience
• misogyny

• Old womens bargain
• gives the knight two choices
• old, ugly wife who will be sexually faithful
• young, beautiful wife who may be adulterous
• knight declines to choose, putting his happiness
  in her hands
• she rewards him for understanding that women want
  the power

8
Gentility Sovereignty in Wife of Bath

• Gentility
• what is gentility?
• who ought to be genteel?
• from whence does it come?
• Sovereignty
• who ought to exercise sovereignty?
• who is actually exercising sovereignty?
• from whence does this power to rule come?
• Fairy Wife both acts with gentility and exercises
  sovereignty.

9
G S in The Clerks Tale

• What is the source of gentility?
• God rather than ancestral birth
• Who is genteel?
• Griselda always, Walter from time to time
• Who exercises sovereignty in the marriage?
• Walter always, despite his lack of gentility
• Who most successfully exercises sovereignty over
  the people of Saluzza?
• Griselda, who is wiser than Walter

10
G S in The Merchants Tale

• Who acts with gentility?
• Not January, whos an old lecher
• Not May, who is an eager adultress
• Not Damian, who is a bad Squire
• Not Pluto, who is eager to catch May in adultery
• Who has sovereignty in marriage?
• May, because her youth and sexual beauty make
  January believe her lies

11
G S in The Franklins Tale

• Who has sovereignty in this marriage?
• Ostensibly Dorigen, because she is to be his
  courtly lover and his wife
• Actually Arveragus because Dorigen forces him to
  make the difficult decisions.
• Who behaves with gentility?
• Gentility is a commodity which moves about
• Gentility is detected in actions, not birth
• The magician is the most genteel because he asks
  nothing in return for his learning

12
The Millers Tale

• Fabliau a short tale in rhyming couplets that
  must be humorous.
• 2nd tale told on pilgrimage follows a very long,
  highly-exalted and refined courtly love romance
  about a two men/one woman triangle solved by
  older, wiser ruler.
• The miller disrupts social hierarchy of tale
  telling by insisting on telling his love story
  as a response to the knights courtly love tale.

13
Two triangles in Millers tale
lust

• Allison

• Control and Lust triangles among John, Nicholas,
  Alison, and Absalom
• all three men lust after and try to control
  Allison's sexuality
• Nicholas controls John by getting him to believe
  in the flood
• Nicholas tries to control Absolom by shaming him

control
John
Nicholas
Absolom
All would-be controllers punished