1. LITERATURA INGLESA MEDIEVAL

Después de los Pilares, pasamos a la unidad 2 - Renaissance literature. Necesitaremos los textos de Sidney, Spenser y Shakespeare (de éste hay varios).

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Un interludio en los Pilares: PREMIOS NOBEL RECIENTES (EN INGLÉS)

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Terminamos la Edad Media con una panorámica de los siglos XIV y XV: The Age of Chaucer.

 

Recordad que, simultáneamente a las clases presenciales, seguimos avanzando por la SECCIÓN B del curso, el siglo XX. Hay nuevos materiales sobre la unidad 6 en el enlace correspondiente de la columna derecha (Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, etc.).

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Última semana antes del Pilar:

Necesitaremos en clase los textos de:
-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

- Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

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Si queréis optar por hacer trabajos de curso, quizá os interese leer unas notas sobre cómo hacer un comentario de texto.
 

 

1. LITERATURA INGLESA MEDIEVAL

 

Siguen aquí notas sobre el tema 1. En la columna derecha irán apareciendo los enlaces a los demás temas, tanto de la Sección A (presencial) como de la Sección B (no presencial).
 

LATE MIDDLE AGES:

Battle of Agincourt (Henry V, 1415)
End of 100 Years' War and Wars of the Roses under Henry VI and Edward IV (Lancaster vs. York)
1476: Caxton's printing press
1485 Richard III (of York) defeated by Henry VII (House of Tudor)

Middle English literature: 15th century

John Skelton, Colin Cloute. Satire.
____. Magnificence. Morality play. 1515
 
Cycles of Mystery Plays (York, Wakefield, Chester, East Anglia)
Morality plays: Mankind, Everyman, The Castle of Perseverance

First women writers:
Julian of Norwich
Margery Kempe


John Lydgate (c.1370-c.1451):
- Troy Book
- The Siege of Thebes
- The Fall of Princes

Sir Thomas Malory, Morte Darthur, ed. by William Caxton, 1485.


Scottish literature:

Robert Henryson (1425-1508):
- The Testament of Cressid
- Moral Fables of Aesop
William Dunbar (late 15th)



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Una introducción a la sociedad de la Inglaterra medieval y al Middle English:

- vídeo titulado "Historical context for the Canterbury Tales" https://youtu.be/1epKYZURHB8
 

- y "Chaucer's England":

 

 

 

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Middle English Literature: 14th century


 

GEOFFREY CHAUCER     (c. 1343-1400)

Chaucer, Geoffrey. ?  The Romaunt of the Rose. Trans. from Guillaume de Lorris. C. 1368-72.
_____. The Book of the Duchess. Poem. 1368-72.
_____. "The Monk's Tale."  c. 1372-80. Later included in The Canterbury Tales.
_____. The House of Fame. Poem. 1378-80.
_____. The Parlement of Foules [The Parliament of Fowls]. Poem. c. 1380-82. _____. The Legend of Good Women. Poem.  1380-87.
_____. Boece. Trans. of Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy. C. 1380-87.
_____. The Knight's Tale. Romance, based on Boccaccio. C. 1380-87. Later included in The Canterbury Tales. 

_____. Troilus and Criseyde. Narrative poem. c.1382-86. (From Boccaccio's Filostrato).
_____. Treatise on the Astrolabe. Scientific prose. 1391.
_____. The Canterbury Tales. Verse narrative. Written 1388-1400.



Rhyme Royal stanza: ababbcc


SOBRE CHAUCER:

Unos apuntes introductorios a Chaucer, y otros A NIVEL AVANZADO

También aquí. una introducción a su obra.



Y en audio: 

© ''IntelliQuest World's 100 Greatest Books''* 1995:

Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1343 -- 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly written in verse although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.

Following a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron, which Chaucer may have read during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.

*This audio collection contains a treasury of 100 classic books and includes info on the life and times of the author, the theme of the book, the characters, the story outline, a concise yet detailed abridgement of the story and a discussion of the values that make each book one of the great classical works of literature.

 



An introductory video lesson on The Canterbury Tales:






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A nivel avanzado:

Chaucer: NIVEL AVANZADO


Some notes on John Gower
 
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14th century:

1336- Edward III begins Hundred Years' War
1348- Black Death
1381- Peasants' Revolt
1399- Deposition of Richard II by Henry IV


Geoffrey Chaucer    (c. 1343-1400)

John Gower (1325?-1408):

Speculum meditantis (Le Miroir de l'Homme)

Vox Clamantis
Confessio Amantis (in English)


Gawain poet:
Cleanness, Patience, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th c.)

The plot of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

William Langland, Piers Plowman (1362-92)

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NIVEL AVANZADO:

Un audio sobre Piers Plowman (In Our Time).

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (vídeo, NIVEL AVANZADO)

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Other religious works:

Cursor Mundi (encyclopedic poem, Northumbria, c. 1300) 

The South English Legendary
Dan Michel, The Ayenbite of Inwit

Religious Reformers: Wyclif and the Lollards

 

Other (anonymous) works:
William and the Were-wolf (from the French, c. 1350)
Morte Arthure & Le Morte Arthur (note that these anonymous romances are not the later work by Malory)
King Alisaunder
The Destruction of Troy   (Continental sources, the Troy stories)




Chroniclers: 

Robert of Gloucester, Robert Mannyng of Brunne

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Middle English Context (NIVEL AVANZADO)

The History of the English language: An overview
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El martes 28 hablaremos algo más de literatura medieval, y leeremos algo de Beowulf. Traed la primera selección de lecturas de esta obra, Beowulf, en las fotocopias, y también las hojas que repartimos en clase.

 

Empezamos también a poner materiales de la SECCIÓN B de la asignatura (siglo XX, no presencial), que se irán añadiendo en los enlaces de la columna de la derecha. Empezando por el tema 6, Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana 1900-1960. 

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13th century:

Verse narrative:

Layamon. Brut. c. 1205.  (Arthurian Cycle)
Guy of Warwick
King Horn
Havelok the Dane c. 1280.

Moral works:
The Owl and the Nightingale. c. 1200.
The Seven Sages of Rome
Barlaam and Josaphat


Devotional works:
Orm. Ormulum. c. 1200.
Ancrene Riwle    c. 1215.
Kentish Sermons
Hali Meidenhad


Latin churchmen: 

Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus (philosophers)
Walter Map, De nugis curialum (c. 1200);  ? prose Lancelot
Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum (Flowers of History) (1235)
Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora (1259)





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12th century

NIVEL AVANZADO:

The Twelfth Century: Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Latin literature



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Anglo-Saxon Literature (up to the 11th c.)

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Beginning of the Middle English period:
Norman Invasion (Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror: 1066)

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NIVEL AVANZADO:

 

- From Old English to Middle English

- MIDDLE ENGLISH: THE LANGUAGE OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

 

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Para este primer tema (LITERATURA MEDIEVAL) es muy recomendable empezar por este capítulo de la Penguin Short History of English Literature: OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE.

 

Nuestra lectura principal para esta semana: Beowulf.  Para completar el tratamiento de estos temas, recomiendo acudir a los manuales. Por ejemplo, así trata el capítulo de Beowulf el manual de Michael Alexander. También tenéis aquí unos apuntes y lecciones adicionales, algunos a nivel más avanzado.  (NIVEL AVANZADO: Beowulf).

Aquí un vídeo sobre The language of Beowulf. Parte de una serie de lecciones muy útiles que se encuentran en YouTube.

Y aquí una breve película de dibujos animados sobre Beowulf:

En conjunto, la mejor película sobre Beowulf es la de Robert Zemeckis (2007), Beowulf—aunque no es nada fiel al original, como tampoco lo son otras que se han hecho con este título, sí es recomendable.

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RECAPITULACIÓN DE LA PRIMERA SEMANA

- Actividades de la primera semana


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OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE c. 500-1066


Celtic Britain

-   Rebellions vs. Rome: Boadicea

  The Roman occupation (c. 43-420)
       Julius Caesar, then Claudius  
 
Anglo-Saxon conquest c. 450
       Germanic tribes: Angles, Saxons, Jutes
       English kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Kent...
 
c. 600 Christianization (Ethelberth's laws)
       Monasteries: Iona, Jarrow, Winchester, Abingdon, Canterbury, Peterborough... 
 
Caedmon's Hymn (7th c.) (in Bede's work:)


The Venerable Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. 732.

The Danish invasions

871-899 King Alfred

1066 The Norman conquest

- Manuscripts:
The Lindisfarne Gospels
The Exeter Book
The Vercelli Book
The Beowulf Manuscript
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Some authors and works

- Saints' lives (Judith, St. Guthlac, Andreas)
 
- Biblical poems and translations (Genesis, the Gospels) - The Dream of the Rood, The Phoenix
 
- Popular sermons (Blickling Homilies)

- Religious poets: Caedmon, Cynewulf (Christ, Juliana, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles - early 9th c.), 
 
- Bestiaries, Riddles...

- Elegiac poems: Deor, Widsith, The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The Ruin, The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, Wulf and Eadwacer.
 
- Epic poems: Beowulf, The Battle of Brunanburh, The Battle of Maldon
 
 
Poetic style: 
The kennings. Alliterative verse. Understatement.

- Learned literate culture: 

    - In Latin: Aldhelm, Bede, Alcuin of York.

    - In English: Aelfric and Wulfstan (Homilies)
    

 - King Alfred (trans. of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Psalms)

- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

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- Old English and the Anglo-Saxons: NIVEL AVANZADO



- THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH (NIVEL AVANZADO)

The Fates of Men (NIVEL AVANZADO)

Poema anónimo anglosajón. Aparece en el Project Gutenberg eBook of Old English Poems. Tiene un cierto toque a la canción Who By Fire de Leonard Cohen.


Full often through the grace of God it happens
That man and wife to the world bring forth
A babe by birth; they brightly adorn it,
And tend it and teach it till the time comes on
With the passing of years when the young child’s limbs
Have grown in strength and sturdy grace.
It is fondled and fed by father and mother
And gladdened with gifts. God alone knows
What fate shall be his in the fast-moving years.
To one it chances in his childhood days
To be snatched away by sudden death
In woeful wise. The wolf shall devour him,
The hoary heath-dweller. Heart-sick with grief,
His mother shall mourn him; but man cannot change it.
One of hunger shall starve; one the storm shall drown.
One the spear shall pierce; one shall perish in war.
One shall lead his life without light in his eyes,
Shall feel his way fearing. Infirm in his step,
One his wounds shall bewail, his woeful pains—
Mournful in mind shall lament his fate.
One from the top of a tree in the woods
Without feathers shall fall, but he flies none the less,
Swoops in descent till he seems no longer
The forest tree’s fruit: at its foot on the ground
He sinks in silence, his soul departed—
On the roots now lies his lifeless body.
One shall fare afoot on far-away paths,
Shall bear on his back his burdensome load,
Tread the dewy track among tribes unfriendly
Amid foreign foemen. Few are alive
To welcome the wanderer. The woeful face
Of the hapless outcast is hateful to men.
One shall end life on the lofty gallows;
Dead shall he hang till the house of his soul,
His bloody body is broken and mangled:
His eyes shall be plucked by the plundering raven,
The sallow-hued spoiler, while soulless he lies,
And helpless to fight with his hands in defense
Against the grim thief. Gone is his life.
With his skin plucked off and his soul departed,
The body all bleached shall abide its fate;
The death-mist shall drown him— doomed to disgrace.
The body of one shall burn on the fire;
The flame shall feed on the fated man,
And death shall descend full sudden upon him
In the lurid glow. Loud weeps the mother
As her boy in the brands is burned to ashes.
One the sword shall slay as he sits in the mead-hall
Angry with ale; it shall end his life,
Wine-sated warrior: his words were too reckless!
One shall meet his death through the drinking of beer,
Maddened with mead, when no measure he sets
To the words of his mouth through wisdom of mind;
He shall lose his life in loathsome wise,
Shall shamefully suffer, shut off from joy,
And men shall know him by the name of self-slayer,
Shall deplore with their mouths the mead-drinker’s fall.
One his hardships of youth through the help of God
Overcomes and brings his burdens to naught,
And his age when it comes shall be crowned with joy;
He shall prosper in pleasure, in plenty and wealth,
With flourishing family and flowing mead—
For such worthy rewards may one well wish to live!
Thus many the fortunes the mighty Lord
All over the earth to everyone grants,
Dispenses powers as his pleasure shall lead him.
One is favored with fortune; one failure in life;
One pleasure in youth; one prowess in war,
The sternest of strife; one in striking and shooting
Earns his honors. And often in games
One is crafty and cunning. A clerk shall one be,
Weighted with wisdom. Wonderful skill
Is one granted to gain in the goldsmith’s art;
Full often he decks and adorns in glory
A great king’s noble, who gives him rewards,
Grants him broad lands, which he gladly receives.
One shall give pleasure to people assembled
On the benches at beer, shall bring to them mirth,
Where drinkers are draining their draughts of joy.
One holding his harp in his hands, at the feet
Of his lord shall sit and receive a reward;
Fast shall his fingers fly o’er the strings;
Daringly dancing and darting across,
With his nails he shall pluck them. His need is great.
One shall make tame the towering falcon,
The hawk on his hand, till the haughty bird
Grows quiet and gentle; jesses he makes him,
Feeds in fetters the feather-proud hawk,
The daring air-treader with daintiest morsels,
Till the falcon performs the feeder’s will:
Hooded and belled, he obeys his master,
Tamed and trained as his teacher desires.
Thus in wondrous wise the Warden of Glory
Through every land has allotted to men
Cunning and craft; his decrees go forth
To all men on earth of every race.
For the graces granted let us give him thanks—
For his manifold mercies to the men of earth.

El viento de tormenta

The Wanderer

The Wanderer 

An anonymous Old English poem

Often the lonely one longs for honors,
The grace of the Lord, though, grieved in his soul,
Over the waste of the waters far and wide he shall
Row with his hands through the rime-cold sea,
Travel the exile tracks: full determined is fate!
So the wanderer spake, his woes remembering,
His misfortunes in fighting and the fall of his kinsmen:

“Often alone at early dawn
I make my moan! Not a man now lives
To whom I can speak forth my heart and soul
And tell of its trials. In truth I know well
That there belongs to a lord an illustrious trait,
To fetter his feelings fast in his breast,
To keep his own counsel though cares oppress him.
The weary in heart against Fate has no help
Nor may the troubled in thought attempt to get aid.
Therefore the thane who is thinking of glory
Binds in his breast his bitterest thoughts.
So I fasten with fetters, confine in my breast
My sorrows of soul, though sick oft at heart,
In a foreign country far from my kinsmen.
I long ago laid my loyal patron
In sorrow under the sod; since then I have gone
Weary with winter-care over the wave’s foamy track,
In sadness have sought a solace to find
In the home and the hall of a host and ring-giver,
Who, mindful of mercy in the mead-hall free,
In kindness would comfort and care for me friendless,
Would treat me with tenderness. The tried man knows
How stern is sorrow, how distressing a comrade
For him who has few of friends and loved ones:
He trails the track of the exile; no treasure he has,
But heart-chilling frost— no fame upon earth.
He recalls his comrades and the costly hall-gifts
Of his gracious gold-friend, which he gave him in youth
To expend as he pleased: his pleasure has vanished!
He who lacks for long his lord’s advice,
His love and his wisdom, learns full well
How sorrow and slumber soothe together
The way-worn wanderer to welcome peace.
He seems in his sleep to see his lord;
He kisses and clasps him, and inclines on his knee
His hands and his head as in happier days
When he experienced the pleasure of his prince’s favors.
From his sleep then awakens the sorrowful wanderer;
He sees full before him the fallow waves,
The sea-birds bathing and beating their wings,
Frost and snow falling with freezing hail.
Then heavier grows the grief of his heart,
Sad after his dream; he sorrows anew.

His kinsmen’s memory he calls to his mind,
And eagerly greets it; in gladness he sees
His valiant comrades. Then they vanish away.
In the soul of a sailor no songs burst forth,
No familiar refrains. Fresh is his care
Who sends his soul o’er the sea full oft,
Over the welling waves his wearied heart.
Hence I may not marvel, when I am mindful of life,
That my sorrowing soul grows sick and dark,
When I look at the lives of lords and earls,
How they are suddenly snatched from the seats of their power,
In their princely pride. So passes this world,
And droops and dies each day and hour;
And no man is sage who knows not his share
Of winter in the world. The wise man is patient,
Not too hot in his heart, nor too hasty in words,
Nor too weak in war, nor unwise in his rashness,
Nor too forward nor fain, nor fearful of death,
Nor too eager and arrogant till he equal his boasting.
The wise man will wait with his words of boasting
Till, restraining his thoughts, he thoroughly knows
Where his vain words of vaunting eventually will lead him.
The sage man perceives how sorrowful it is
When all the wealth of the world lies wasted and scattered.
So now over the earth in every land
Stormed on by winds the walls are standing
Rimy with hoar-frost, and the roofs of the houses;
The wine-halls are wasted; far away are the rulers,
Deprived of their pleasure. All the proud ones have fallen,
The warriors by the wall: some war has borne off,
In its bloody embrace; some birds have carried
Over the high seas; to some the hoar wolf
Has dealt their death; some with dreary faces
By earls have been exiled in earth-caves to dwell:
So has wasted this world through the wisdom of God,
Till the proud one’s pleasure has perished utterly,
And the old work of the giants stands worthless and joyless.
He who the waste of this wall-stead wisely considers,
And looks down deep at the darkness of life,
Mournful in mind, remembers of old
Much struggle and spoil and speaks these words:
‘Where are the horses? Where are the heroes?
Where are the high treasure-givers?
Where are the proud pleasure-seekers? Where are the palace and its joys?
Alas the bright wine-cup! Alas the burnie-warriors!
Alas the prince’s pride! How passes the time
Under the shadow of night as it never had been!
Over the trusty troop now towers full high
A wall adorned with wondrous dragons.
The strength of the spear has destroyed the earls,
War-greedy weapons, Fatality inexorable;
And the storms strike down on the stony cliffs;
The snows descend and seize all the earth
In the dread of winter; then darkness comes
And dusky night-shade. Down from the north
The hated hail-storms beat on heroes with fury.
All on earth is irksome to man;
Oft changes the work of the fates, the world under the firmament.
Here treasure is fleeting; here true friends are fleeting;
Here comrades are fleeting; here kinsmen are fleeting.
All idle and empty the earth has become.’

 

So says the sage one in mind, as he sits and secretly ponders.
Good is the man who is true to his trust; never should he betray anger,
Divulge the rage of his heart till the remedy he knows
That quickly will quiet his spirit. The quest of honor is a noble pursuit;
Glory be to God on high, who grants us our salvation!”

"El viajero errante". Un poema anónimo de hace más de mil años, que me gusta incluir en mis clases de literatura anglosajona; esta traducción inglesa viene del Project Gutenberg eBook of Old English Poems, aunque cambio algún detalle. Aquí hay una traducción española. Contiene una de las visiones más memorables del fin del mundo y de la extinción de la raza humana; no tiene nada que envidiar, desde luego, al Last Man de Mary Shelley o a Darkness de Lord Byron—o a La peste escarlata de Jack London. Combina de modo quizá ilógico pero poéticamente efectivo la vejez de un hombre y el fin del mundo; la ruina y muerte de una civilización entera, con el exilio y la nostalgia del último superviviente de un tiempo pasado, que viaja por un mundo inhóspito que ya nada le ofrece, quedando sólo el consuelo del recuerdo y la ilusión del más allá. Aunque no puedo librarme de la sospecha de que el toque de esperanza celestial que cierra el poema es un añadido cristianizante a un poema todavía más pesimista y desengañado, un auténtico viajero de otros tiempos, el poema mismo, que viene realmente de un mundo ya moribundo y sin esperanza de volver a la vida plena. Es especialmente llamativa la manera en que, en un poema dentro del poema, el viajero errante se imagina a sí mismo como everyman, meditando como lo hará todo superviviente sobre la desaparición de todo lo que conocía, y sobre la faz que ahora ve claramente de un mundo hostil a las esperanzas y las empresas humanas.

Wayfaring Stranger

—oOo—

Piers Plowman (In Our Time)

Between the Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt.
Bragg, Melvyn, et al. "Piers Plowman." (In Our Time). BBC 4 29 Oct. 2020.*https://t.co/Wsdayw35Xx
2020

— JoséAngelGarcíaLanda (@JoseAngelGLanda) November 27, 2020

Chaucer (In Our Time) - NIVEL AVANZADO

A Summary of THE CANTERBURY TALES (NIVEL AVANZADO)

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer's most celebrated work probably designed about 1387 and extending to 17,000 lines in prose and verse of various metres (though the predominant form is the rhyming couplet). The General Prologue describes the meeting of 29 pilgrims in the Tabard Inn in Southwark (in fact they add up to 31; it has been suggested that the prioress's 'preestes three' in line 164 may be an error since only one 'Nun's Priest' is mentioned in the body of the work). Detailed pen-pictures are given of 21 of them, vividly described but perhaps corresponding to traditional lists of the orders of society, clerical and lay (see J. Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire, 1973). The host (see BAILLY) proposes that the pilgrims should shorten the road by telling four stories each, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back; he will accompany them and award a free supper on their return to the teller of the best story. The work is incomplete; only 23 pilgrims tell stories, and there are only 24 stories told altogether (Chaucer tells two). In the scheme the stories are linked by narrative exchanges between the pilgrims and by prologues and epilogues to the tales; but this aspect of the work is also very incomplete. It is uncertain even, in what order the stories are meant to come; the evidence of the manuscripts and of geographical references is conflicting, as is the scholarly interpretation of that evidence. The order that follows is that of the Ellesmere manuscipt, followed in the best complete edition of Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, (ed. L. D. Benson et al., 1988).

 

(1) 'The Knight's Tale', a shortened version of the Teseida of Boccaccio, the story of the love of Palamon and Arcite (told again in Shakespeare's The Two Noble Kinsmen), prisoners of Theseus king of Athens, for Emelyie, sister of Hippolyta queen of the Amazons, whom Theseus has married.  The rivals compete for her in a tournament. Palamon is defeated, but Arcite, the favourite of Mars, at the moment of his triumph is thrown and injured by his horse through the intervention of Venus and Saturn, and dies. Palamon and Emelye, after prolonged mourning for Arcite, are united. Riverside follows the Ellesmere division of the tale into four parts, but it is not so divided in all the manuscripts. An interesting interpretation of the tale as ironic is given by Terry Jones in Chaucer's Knight (1978).

(2) 'The Miller's Tale', a ribald story of the deception, first of a husband (a carpenter) through the prediction of a second flood, and secondly of a lover who expects to kiss the lady's lips but kisses instead her 'nether eye'. He avenges himself on her lover for this humiliation with a red-hot ploughshare. The Tale has been said to be a parody of a courtly-love story.

(3) 'The Reeve's Tale' is a fabliau about two clerks who are robbed by a miller of some of the meal which they take to his mill to be ground, and who take their vengeance by sleeping with the miller's wife and daughter. There are two manuscript versions of a French analogue in Bryan and Dempster, Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1941), 126-47, 'Le Meunier et les II clers'. In Chaucer's context, it is an obvious rejoinder to the miller's tale of the duping of a carpenter, the reeve's profession.

(4) 'The Cook's Tale' of Perkyn Revelour only extends to 58 lines before it breaks off. It is another ribald fabliau which ends with the introduction of a prostitute, and it has been suggested that Chaucer may have decided that the occurrence of three indecent tales together was unbalanced. The tale of Gamelyn, not by Chaucer, is introduced for the cook in some manuscripts. The cook himself, Roger (by nickname traditionally Hodge) of Ware (l. 4336), has been identified with an attested cook of that name. See Riverside, p. 814.

(5) 'The Man of Law's Tale' is the story of Constance, daughter of a Christian emperor of Rome, who marries the sultan of Syria on condition that he become a Christian and who is cast adrift on a boat because of the machinations of the sultan's jealous mother. It is a frequently told medieval story, paralleled by the romance Emaré and by Gower's Constance story in Confessio Amantis, ii. 587ff.; there is argument about the priority of Chaucer's and Gower's versions. It is certain, at least, that Chaucer's is based on a passage in the early 14th-cent. Anglo-Norman Chronicle by Trivet. Both Trivet's and Gower's versions are in Bryan and Dempster.

(6) 'The Wife of Bath's Tale' is preceded by an 856-line prologue in which she condemns celibacy by describing her life with her five late husbands, in the course of which Chaucer draws widely on the medieval anti-feminist tradition, especially on Jean de Meun's La Vielle (the Duenna) in the Roman de la Rose. After this vigorous, learned, and colourful narrative, the following tale, though appropriate, seems rather flat. It is the story of 'the loathly lady' (paralleled by Gower's 'Tale of Florent' in Confessio Amantis, i. 1396 ff., and by the romance Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, edited in D. B. Sands, Middle English Verse Romances, 323-47) in which a knight is asked to answer the question, 'what do women most desire?' The correct answer, 'sovereignty', is told him by a hideous old witch on condition that he marry her; when he does she is restored to youth and beauty. Since Kittredge (Chaucer and His Poetry, 1915, 185 ff.) it has generally been thought that this Prologue-Tale sets in motion a discussion of marriage, 'The Marriage Group', which is taken up (after interruptions) by the clerk, the merchant, and the franklin (see 9, 10, 12 below).

(7) 'The Friar's Tale' tells how a summoner meets the devil dressed as a yeoman and they agree to share out what they are given. They come upon a carter who curses his horse, commending it to the devil; the summoner asks the devil why he does not take the horse thus committed to him and the devil replies that it is because the commendation does not come from the heart. Later they visit an old woman from whom the summoner attempts to extort twelve pence, whereupon she commends him to the devil. The devil carries him off to hell because her curse was from the heart. The story is widely attested in popular tradition, and its motif is referred to as ex corde, 'from the heart'. Chaucer's exact source is not known, but it is clear that the friar tells it to enrage the summoner on the pilgrimage, who interrupts the narrative and rejoins with a scurrilous and discreditable story about a friar.

(8) 'The Summoner's Tale' tells of a greedy friar who undertakes to divide a deathbed legacy amongst his community; he receives a fart and has to devise an ingenious stratagem to divide it with perfect justice.

(9) 'The Clerk's Tale', which the poet tells us he took from Petrarch, was translated into Latin by the latter from the Italian version of Boccaccio in The Decameron (Day 10, Tale 10). Boccaccio was the first writer (in 1353) to take the story from popular currency, and there are several versions of the story in Italian, Latin, and French before Chaucer's (indeed it is clear that Chaucer's version is rather more dependent on a French prose version than on Petrarch's Latin). The story tells of patient Griselda and her trials by her husband, the Marquis Walter. Chaucer's version has more hints of criticism in the relentless husband than any of his predecessors (except Boccaccio, whose narrator frowns on Gualtieri's 'strange desire' to try his wife's obedience). Apologists for 'The Marriage Group' (see 6 above) regard the tale as a response to the wife of Bath, partly because the Clerk concludes with an expression of good will towards her (IV. 1170 ff.).

(10) 'The Merchant's Tale', in which the merchant, prompted by the tale of Griselda's extreme obedience, tells his 'Tale' of January and May, the old husband with his young wife, and the problems with obedient fidelity involved in this relationship. After a lengthy review of the pros and cons of taking a young wife, January ignores the good advice of Justinus in favour of the time serving opinion of Placebo and marries May. When he goes blind she makes love to her suitor Damyan in a pear-tree round which January wraps his arms. Pluto mischievously restores January's sight at this point, but Proserpine inspires May to explain that the restoration of his sight was brought about by her activities in the pear-tree and that this had been their purpose. Critics have argued about the relative proportions of mordancy and humour in the tale; see E. Talbot Donaldson in Speaking of Chaucer (1970), 30-45. There are parallels to the various sections of the story in French, Latin, Italian, and German (see D. S. Brewer (ed.), Medieval Comic Tales, 1973, German no. 3 and Latin, (o)).

 

(11) 'The Squire's Tale', of Cambuscan, king of Tartary, to whom on his birthday an envoy from the king of Arabia brings magic gifts, including a ring for the king's daughter Canacee, which enables her to understand the language of birds. A female falcon tells Canacee the story of her own desertion by a tercelet. The tale is incomplete but it seems likely that Chaucer meant to finish it, judging from the fact that there is no suggestion that it is unfinished in the laudatory words of the franklin that follow it (V. 673 ff.). The precise origin of the tale is unknown, but a number of parallels are suggested by H. S. V. Jones in Bryan and Dempster, pp. 357-76.

(12) 'The Franklin's Tale', of Dorigen, wife of Arveragus, who to escape the attentions of her suitor, the squire Aurelius, makes her consent depend upon an impossible condition, that all the rocks on the coast of Brittany be removed. When this condition is realized by the aid of a magician, the suitor, from a generous remorse, releases her from her promise. Chaucer states that the tale is taken from a 'breton lay', but if this is true, the original is lost. There are a number of parallels in medieval literature, of which the closest is Boccaccio's Il filocolo, Question  4. See N. R. Hayely, Chaucer's Boccaccio (1980).

(13) 'The Physician's Tale' tells of Virginia who, at her own request, is killed by her father to escape the designs of the corrupt judge Appius. The original source is Livy's History, and this is what Chaucer cites, though his version seems to rely principally on the Roman de la rose, ll. 5589-658, by Jean de Meun.

(14) 'The Pardoner's Tale' follows a prologue in which he declares his own covetousness, and takes covetousness as its theme, relating it to other sins: drunkenness, gluttony, gambling, and swearing. Three rioters set out to find Death who has killed their companion; a mysterious old man tells them they will find him under a particular tree, but when they get there they find instead a heap of gold. By aiming to cheat each other in possessing the gold they kill each other. The character of the pardoner in the prologue here is related to Faus Semblant (False Seeming) in Jean de Meun's part of the Roman de la Rose, ll. 11065-972 (a section corresponding to the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose, Fragment C, lines 67061 ff.: Robinson, pp. 621 ff.). There are many analogues for the tale, in Latin, Italian, and German, but Chaucer's exact source, if he had one, is not known.

(15) 'The Shipman's Tale.' There is a similar story in The Decameron (Day 8, Tale 1). The wife of a niggardly merchant asks the loan of a hundred francs from a priest to buy finery. The priest borrows the sum from the merchant and hands it to the wife, and the wife grants him her favours. On the merchant's return from a journey the priest tells him that he has repaid the sum to the wife, who cannot deny receiving it.

(16) 'The Prioress's Tale' tells of the murder of a child by Jews because he sings a Marian hymn while passing through their quarter and of the discovery of his body because of its continued singing of the hymn after death. There are a great many parallels for the story. Some critics, perhaps anachronistically, see the bland anti-Semitism of the story as a comment on the uncritical nature of the prioress.

(17) 'Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas' is a witty and elegant parody of the contemporary romance, both in its subject and in the insubstantiality of its tail-rhyme form. Its butts are no doubt general, but it can perhaps be taken to have special reference to the heroes it catalogues (VII. 898-900): Horn Child, the legend of Ypotys, Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, the unidentified Pleyndamour, and Libeaus Desconus. It is closest, it has been argued, to the last of these.

(18) When the Host interrupts the tale of Sir Thopas, Chaucer moves to the opposite extreme with a heavy prose homily, 'The Tale of Melibeus'. This story of the impetuous Melibeus and his wise wife Prudence dates from Italy in the 1240s, when the story was written in Latin prose for his third son by Albertano of Brescia. Chaucer's immediate source was the 1336 version in French prose by Renaud de Louens.

(19) 'The Monk's Tale' is composed of a number of 'tragedies' of persons fallen from high estate, taken from different authors and arranged on the model of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. The tale is in eight-line stanzas.

(20) 'The Nun's Priest's Tale' is related to the French cycle of Renart (see Reynard), telling of a fox that beguiled a cock by praising his father's singing and was in turn beguiled by him into losing him by pausing to boast at his victory. The mock-heroic story is full of rhetoric and exempla, and it is one of the most admired of the Tales, regarded as the most typically 'Chaucerian' in tone and content.  The fable is very familiar, but the parallels to Chaucer's treatment of it are not very close. The famous ending of the tale invites the reader to 'take the morality' of the Tale in spite of its apparent lightness of substance, on the grounds that St Paul says everything has some moral; this invitation has been taken with surprising solemnity by many critics.

(21) 'The Second Nun's Tale', in rhyme-royal, is perhaps translated from the life of St Cecilia in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. It describes the miracles and martyrdom of the noble Roman maiden Cecilia and her husband Valerian.

(22) 'The Canon's Yeoman's Tale' is told by a character who joins the pilgrims at this late stage (VIII. 554 ff.) with his master, the dubious canon whose alchemical skills the yeoman praises. The first 200 lines of the tale tell of the Alchemist's arcane practice and its futility, before proceeding to the tale proper which tales of how an alchemical canon (who is not his master, he protests, perhaps suggesting that it is) tricks a priest out of £40 by pretending to teach him the art of making precious metals. The dishonesty of the alchemists was much discussed and condemned in the 14th cent.; there is a close analogue to Chaucer's story in one of the Novelle of Sercambi (included in Bryan and Dempster, pp. 694-5). The most significant literary parallel, of course, is Jonson's The Alchemist.

(23) 'The Manciple's Tale' is the fable of the tell-tale crow, told by many authors from Ovid in Metamorphoses (2. 531-62) onwards. Phebus (Phoebus) has a crow which is white and can speak. It reveals to Phebus the infidelity of his wife (nameless in Chaucer, but Coronis in Ovid and most of the writers who follow him) and Phebus kills her in a rage. Then, in remorse, he plucks out the crow's white feathers, deprives it of speech and throws it 'unto the devel', which is why crows are now black. A very similar version of the story is told in Gower's Confessio Amantis (iii. 768-835), and there are other examples by Guillaume de Machaut and in the Ovide moralisé (c. 1324). As well as these, J. A. Work in Bryan and Dempster edits as analogues a story from The Seven Sages of Rome which does not name Phebus and which exchanges the fates of wife and bird, as well as some sententious parallels from Boethius and Jean de Meun.

(24) 'The Parson's Tale' which concludes the work (and was, no doubt, meant to, even if the main body of the Tales is incomplete) is a long prose treatise, ostensibly on Penitence but dealing at most length with the Seven Deadly Sins. The two principal sources are Raymund de Pennaforte's Summa (dating from the 1220s) for the sections on Penitence, and Guilielmus Peraldu's Summa Vitiorum (probably from the 1250s) for the Seven Deadly Sins.

Most manuscripts have 'The Parson's Tale' leading straight into Chaucer's closing 'Retracciouns' in which he takes leave of his book. He asks forgiveness of God for his 'translacions and enditynges of worldly vanities', including 'The Tales of Caunterbury, thilke that sownen into [i.e. tend towards] synne'. But this rhetorical conclusion need not be read as a revocation of his work by the poet; following St Augustine's Retractationes, many medieval works end by distancing the writer from the non-spiritual elements in his work: the Author's Epilogue in The Decameron and Chaucer's Troilus are other familiar examples. See N. F. Blake, The Canterbury Tales, Edited from the Hengwrt Manuscript (1980); H. Cooper, The Canterbury Tales (1989). Also an edition by V. A. Kolve and G. Olsen (1989).

The Canterbury Tales (Project Gutenberg)

 

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