Put on your imperial-colored glasses...

…because that’s how we are gonna see this story.

Imperial-colored glasses give me a bit of a headache, sort of similar to the headaches that 3D glasses give some people. It’s just the way they saw things back then, Miranda. They don’t realize how stupid they sound right now for idealizing the natives in such ways. I find it especially interesting that the text praises the natives’ morals over the systems familiar to the Europeans:

• On the Surinam natives: “And these people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin. . . . Religion would here but destroy the tranquility they possess by ignorance, and laws would teach ‘em to know offense, of which now they have no notion” (Behn 2184-2185).
• On West Africa: “. . . and especially in that country, where men take to themselves as many as they can maintain, and where the only crime and sin with woman is to turn her off, to abandon her to want, shame, and misery. Such ill morals are only practiced in Christian countries, where they prefer the bare name of religion, and, without virtue or morality, think that’s sufficient” (Behn 2188).

Frankly, I’m surprised. I would have thought that any European narrator would have dismissed and belittled every non-Christian culture.

No, White Person, you are a credit to your race.

Now, the several pages dedicated to describing the natives of Surinam, only to jump settings across the Atlantic and describe two people there, seem excessive at best and unnecessary at worst. Is it not enough to say that the story will arrive at Surinam, but begins in West Africa? Will the native cultures of Surinam become relevant later in the story?

Speaking of West Africa, I think I will look into whether any of the names are real, or if Behn just made up some names that sounded “vaguely African.” I actually kind of hope that the former is true.

Side note: I’m going to guess that we will not see Imoinda for the rest of this story. It would be way too convenient to have Oroonoko somehow encounter her again in slavery, when there are so many different faraway places they might have sent her. I get the impression this is not the kind of story in which those kinds of ridiculous coincidences happen. What do you think?

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Hold the Social Contract, Keep a Shred of Humanity?

Have you ever heard of a social contract? Simply put, a social contract is an agreement among people who live together in a society (that’s what makes it a social contract). Social contracts usually involve people giving up a little bit of the great freedom, power, and independence they would have in nature in order to be safer, more fruitful, more productive, and more efficient. For instance, a king’s subjects can’t just do whatever they want—they must obey the king’s laws—but the king works to keep his subjects safe.

At least, that’s how it ought to be. Several testimonies on Macbeth’s leadership in Act V, Scene 2 reveal Macbeth’s failure to care for his subjects as a good king should:
• Menteith refers to him as “the tyrant” (V.2.13).
• “Those he commands move only in command, / Nothing in love: Now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief” (V.2.22-25). –Angus
• “Well, march we on, / To give obedience where ‘tis truly owed” (V.2.30-31). –Caithness

In other words, Macbeth, like any leader, ought to be obeyed due to his position of leadership; a good leader, however, would have earned that obedience by loving and caring for his subjects. Instead, Macbeth treats everyone poorly and in some cases is needlessly cruel. (Give me one good reason for Macbeth’s verbal abuse of the servant in lines 11-22 of Scene 3!) He is suspicious of everyone, paranoid that any of them could harm him as he has harmed so many others.

You could say that he is only looking out for his own interests, but that is not true either. He is looking out for himself, yes, but he is also looking out for his queen. He pesters the doctor in Scene 3 as any ordinary spouse might (except, of course, the addition of veiled threats). Such a scene makes me wonder what it was like when Lady Macbeth birthed that child to whom she has “given suck” . . .

Nervous new dad Macbeth. If you can picture it, that might be as disturbing as anything actually in the play.

Upon Lady Macbeth’s death, Macbeth is distraught. His famous lines (V.5.20-31) are mournful and human. Macbeth’s love of Lady Macbeth is the only sign of humanity in him. The very person who, in the first act of the play, wished for inhumane cruelty for herself and her husband is now the indicator that he has any humanity left in him. And yet Macbeth has committed murder several times over. He has become a monster and a tyrant, but he is still like a human in a few small ways. If he is capable of these things, could you be as well? Could I?

And that just might be the most terrifying thing of all.

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How about this time, you don't do the thing?

This is not the first time I am reading Macbeth, but what I am experiencing the first time in reading it is a desire for the story to go differently. In this first act alone, three, maybe four, of my margin notes amount to “No. Don’t do the thing. Stop what you’re doing.”

But I can only wish so much. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are going to do the things. All of the things. (Centuries-old spoilers; I still won’t spoil them if you don’t know.)

Only in this reading have I realized how quickly the Macbeths consider killing King Duncan an option. Macbeth is ambitious, to be sure: the witches speak Macbeth’s desires for power. (So there’s your answer, Banquo: Macbeth starts “and seems to fear / Things that do sound so fair” (I.3.52-53) because he is surprised to hear his desires spoken aloud. He probably hasn’t even thought about these desires in actual words.) But think about it! As soon as Macbeth internalizes that he is thane of Cawdor as well as thane of Glamis, he thinks something very troubling. He asks himself, “Why do I yield to that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair / And make my seated heart doth knock at my ribs / Against the use of nature?” (I.3.138-141) I don’t know, Macbeth. Why do you jump so quickly to the idea that you might have to kill someone, despite your visceral regrets? Who thinks of such a thing so quickly? Who considers it a viable option?!

You’re not a disturbingly romanticized anime trope, Macbeth, so there’s no excuse. (Not pictured: the girl who was with the boy before the other girl killed her.)

At least Macbeth has regrets and reservations about it. At least he has more than a mere semblance of humanity. His wife, on the other hand, is eager to give up her humanity to get what she wants. “Fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty” (I.5.32-33)? If Lady Macbeth has any shred of humanity left in her, she wants it gone, wiped clean from her. It is a disturbing and yet fascinating depiction of someone willingly giving up her humanity to do evil. The disturbing aspects make me want to tell Lady Macbeth to stop as soon as she is done reading her husband’s letter, but the fascinating aspects are what make reading her lines so fun. Why, the moment she finishes reading the letter, she laments about the “milk of human kindness” holding her husband back (I.5.4). Goodness, who raised this woman? She considers violence even more quickly than he does, and chooses it! Well, if both think so similarly, perhaps they are well matched. If nothing else, they are a strong power couple. Would that they’d turn their efforts to pretty much anything else. . . .

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: basically Bonnie and Clyde.

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Pardoner or Hypocrite??

I just want to start by pointing our that the Pardoner is so gross and crude that people tell him that they'll only listen to his story if it's one with moral...
     
        But right anon thise gentils gonne to crye,
        "Nay! lat him telle us of no ribaudye;
        Tel us som moral thing, that we may lere
        Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly here."

And then, on top of his grossness, hypocrisy seems to be his way of life! "My thee is alwey oon, and evere was- / Radix malorum est Cupiditas" (333). Which means that the love of money is the root to all evil, and yet...he's a pardoner!! He literally forgives the sins of others in exchange for money! And call me crazy, but if he was truly a God-fearing man, he would pardon people out of the kindness of his heart, not out of a desire for a heavier purse.

Not to mention, he preaches about the sin of covetousness and avarice, but he practices both himself. If fact, helping and pushing people to repent these sins is the very way that he feeds into his own vices (which he admits to around lines 424-434). And it would also appear to me that he targets those who are of less intelligence than him, because he believes that they are easier to trick because of their love of tales
    
        "For lewed peple loven tales olde;
        Swich thinges can they wel reporte and holde.
        What, trowe ye, the whyles I may preche
        And winne gold and silver for I teche
        That I wol live in poverty wilfully?

And to make me dislike him even more, he tells in his tale of people that drink and gamble and make false oaths, and says that all of those things are sins and whatnot. And yet again, he showcases his hypocrisy by the very fact that while he tells the tale, he himself is drunk. LOL he's so annoying...

I dislike the Pardoner.

Can I trim the sermon? Yes. Will I? No.

We’ve all heard fables and parables. They start out as simple stories, but then it becomes clear by the end that they have lessons. Usually, the storyteller does not drop the lesson until the end, and manages to reduce that lesson to a pithy sentence or two.

Not so with the Pardoner. Shamelessly, almost directly after introducing the three “ryotoures,” the Pardoner goes on for 175 lines (bless line numbers, bless them!) about the dangers of gluttony, gambling, swearing, and greed. Then, eventually, he gets back to the story, and his characters die. Afterward, he repeats his warnings and asks his fellow pilgrims and their host for money as penance. It seems redundant to give the moral up-front and then repeat it later. Were the Pardoner more laconic, it might make more sense for him to remind his audience, but like I said… 175 lines.

But perhaps this is just the Pardoner’s style of storytelling. It is not as pleasantly poetic as Chaucer’s way of not getting to the point (sorry not sorry, Chaucer), but it is a way of not getting to the point all the same. Perhaps the Pardoner thinks he will get the message across better if he goes on for longer. Not for the sake of others, I remind you; he says so himself: “But though myself be gilty in that sinne, / Yet can I maken other folk to twinne / From avarice, and sore to repente. / But that is nat my principal entente: / I preche nothing but for coveityse” (429-433). Maybe he has found in his line of work that speaking at length about sin riles up the most guilt and shame in the public, and thus brings him the most profit.

 Living the dream

Though the story and sermon stir discomfort in the host, and perhaps in the reader as well (advice: do not read this during a meal; at best, the references to burps, farts, and the half-digested muck in one’s stomach will induce a loss of appetite), there is also something a little humorous about the whole thing. The Pardoner is a hypocrite and he knows it. He knows it and he does not care. After drinking a good deal (one of the many things he warns against), he concludes his prologue with, “For though myself be a ful vicious man, / A moral tale yet I yow telle can, / Which I am wont to preche for to winne” (459-461). I don't know about you, but to me, there's something amusing in the repulsive shamelessness of the Pardoner's hypocrisy.

Narrator, how do you know these things?!

I read the general prologue of The Canterbury Tales back in 7^th grade, but I never thought about how much the characters actually spoke to one another. The narrator says that he—I assume he because the author is also a he, which is not the best reason but it’s all I got—spoke with each of the twenty-nine pilgrims he met at the inn (24-31). He establishes that he arranged to depart with them early the next morning (33-34), but he does not say whether he asked about each person’s background. He describes “al the condicioun / Of ech of hem, so as it semed me” (emphasis added) (38-39), so he is describing the impression each person left on him.

Some of the information the narrator gives on the knight and the squire could be chalked up to an impression. Appearance is an easy one to pick up on: the knight’s plain-colored tunic of rough cloth, and the squire’s youth, average height, and curly hair. Also, if the knight is as noble and as well-mannered as the narrator claims, perhaps he would give a good impression of his virtuous traits in a single conversation.

That being said, appearance and general impression of character are such small parts of meeting a person and of what the narrator tells us. There is no way the narrator knows about the knight’s and squire’s pasts, hobbies, and relation to each other unless he asked them. The knight would have to tell him about all the places he has been, from Prussia to Algeria to Turkey, and all the battles he has fought in. I don’t think the knight would volunteer the information too easily, since in this Christian society he would not want to boast his accomplishments (unlike a certain Geatish warrior we all know). Instead, I imagine the narrator kept asking for more tales of far-away lands, high-stakes tournaments, and noble battles with heathens.

Similarly, the narrator probably had to ask the squire about his relation to the knight and about his hobbies. However, he apparently forgot to ask the squire his age: “Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse” (emphasis added) (82). He’s about twenty. Wow. That seemed so much older back when I was in 7^th grade, but now that’s exactly my age.

As for the guy's skills and hobbies, I hope the squire’s singing, dancing, drawing, or writing becomes relevant later in the story, just because that appeals to me.

Now the narrator probably did ask the knight and the squire about these things, but decided not to mention that he did so . . . for some reason. Though the text gives the impression that the characters gave very brief introductions to each other and then made plans for the pilgrimage, what actually happened (probably) was that the narrator went and spoke to each of the pilgrims for a decent amount of time. He probably asked about their backgrounds and previous travel experiences. The pilgrims were probably happy to share this information with him.

A Knight in Training that is into Music?! Um Yes Please!!

I'm not going to lie. Even though we read this in Dr. MB's Medieval Romance class, I forgot most of what was in the prologue. I can tell you, however, that the The Wife of Bath's Tale is a story to look forward to! I also really want to mention how much I love the sound and flow of Middle English. It really captures my attention not only because I need to work a little harder to understand what is being said but also because it has an appealing and rhythmic sound. It just makes me want to go back and time and watch them tell the story because surely there is some kind of physical movement to it!

As I'm sure many people have noticed, Chaucer is very descriptive. While half of me wants him to get to the point, the other half of me loves how much detail he is giving me to create an image in my mind because sadly I can't go back in time and see the world through their eyes.

Chaucer also mentions a knight. He's great and all but personally I want to talk about his son, the Squyer. Let's just lay out what we are told about him:
- 20 years old
- average height (so compared to me that's tall!)
- strong
- (and let's face it, probably dreamy)
- whistles and SINGS
I don't know about you guys but as I said in my title.....UM YES PLEASE!!! I'm imagining he's kind of a mix of Prince Henry from Ever After, Westley from The Princess Bride, and William frommA Knight's Tale (which is VERY different from the version in this book).

Ah, poetry...so melodic, but also so wordy! I can already tell that it's going to take a lot more concentration and time for me to read this oh so lovely tale. I'm diving into this world of middle English and I'm not necessarily hating it, but I don't exactly love it; I find that medieval English is actually a little bit fun to read (even if it takes me 4 times to understand what the words are actually saying), the words just flow so nicely together...plus the pronunciation of every single letter
makes it more fun (I guess)!

Anyways, to begin with, Chaucer's elaboration on the details kind of reminds me of my experience with George Orwell's 1984 rambling, except this is more pleasing. I like that the elaboration by Chaucer is used to create an image of the scene that he's setting; he talks for 18 lines about the setting before he actually introduces his own character. With these descriptions of singing birds and the sprouting plants, he successfully paints a lovely picture of spring and how it fosters opportunity.

This is an actual gif of Chaucer himself splashing in the puddles made from the "shoures sote"

Once the scene/mood is set, Chaucer now proceeds to elaborate on the people that he is introducing, starting generally with the fellow people that also want to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, and then zooming in on them each (beginning with a knight). And considering that Chaucer had just met the guy, he sure seemed to know a heck of a lot about his character and how he held himself. Which leads me to believe that Chaucer was a great listener if he had to sit and hear all about this special knight...although, being a poet, he probably greatly enjoyed listening to everything everyone had to say. His description of the squyer had me all over the place though, I was imaging multiple different characters from the movie Ever After (which is a totally fluffy chick flick, but so good too).

Basically, I'm entertained by middle English and its strange musical flow. Plus Chaucer seems cool too.

Beowulf and that Time He Boasted...a Lot

I read the story of Beowulf way back in 8th grade, so my memory of the story is pretty much that Grendel killed lots of people and Beowulf came to save everyone else. I don't remember enjoying the experience of reading it, but we shall see how round two goes. So far, meh... I forgot how hard some of these names are to pronounce! Other than my struggle to say some of the names, I found reading aloud is pretty helpful!

Moving forward into my thoughts thus far, I kept thinking about how it seems Beowulf is boasting and bragging about himself but I think he's under the impression that he's humble... Kind of...? Maybe I'm just interpreting it wrong, but it just seems to me that he really likes to go on and on about his accomplishments. I mean come on dude! Did you not have any help (because if you truly did all you say did on your own, then DAMN good for you bro)?! I'd like other people's thoughts on his self confidence and ego! Do you really think he is all that?

I also would like to hear other opinions about Grendel. I'm kind of confused as to what he is exactly. For some very strange reason I've always imagined Jabba the Hutt when I hear Grendel's name (even in 8th grade), and I'm not really sure why...? Also I know he's mad about everything and eats people (because wouldn't you do that if you were shunned and mad? Maybe he's just really hangry?!), but I'm not entirely clear as to what the situation is there and why the Scyldings didn't bother asking for some help.

Beowulf: Guiding New Christians?

Before we started reading Beowulf, I thought the story would be more or less a Nordic/Anglo-Saxon version of a Greek epic poem, like the Odyssey. It would center on Beowulf, an epic hero who fights a monster named Grendel and probably does other things. There might be mythical creatures other than Grendel (and his mother, whom I heard shows up at some point later). There might be polytheistic gods. Would they be Norse? Celtic? Otherwise?

Very otherwise. Pagan gods get a few mentions—not by name, but as if gesturing vaguely to a category—but the god Beowulf worships is one god. The Christian god, who hereafter will be capitalized for clarity’s sake.

If God is to be involved in this epic poem, will He take the role that other gods have in other epics, or that He has in Bible stories? Yes and no. Let’s examine two passages. The first is in lines 175-181, at the end of chapter II:

“At times they offered honor to idols

at pagan temples, prayed aloud

that the soul-slayer might offer assistance

in the country’s distress. Such was their custom,

the hope of heathens—they remembered hell

in their minds, they did not know the Maker,

the Judge of deeds, they did not know the Lord God” (175-181).

If this were a tale in the Old Testament, this would be the part when God would pick one human to tell all the other humans that God is furious at them for worshipping other gods, that they are a bunch of idolatrous whores, that He refuses to hear them, and that He is abandoning them forever . . . for real this time! (He would then be back by the next book, if not the very next chapter. He always comes back.)

In Beowulf, however, God does not take the role of intervening deity. What follows this passage and concludes the chapter is a sermon on the importance of seeking the Lord. Uh, okay. Was this small dose of evangelism to remind the original audiences of their new Christian faith? Perhaps.

The second passage concerns specifically the faith of the story’s hero. Beowulf chooses to fight Grendel—a giant, human-eating fiend of a monster—barehanded because Grendel “does not care for weapons” (434). Also, Beowulf says of his upcoming fight, “Let him put his faith / in the Lord’s judgment, whom death takes” (440-441). Among our hero’s qualities, then, is his faith. His own mortal strength can take him only so far; God takes him farther. This indirect divine influence reminded me of a specific Bible story: David and Goliath. Goliath, like Grendel, is a giant who attacks a human community until a hero defeats him. David and Beowulf are noticeably different: David is “little more than a boy” ( 1 Sam 17:42), has no previous combat experience, and overall looks neither formidable nor intimidating. Beowulf, on the other hand, is recognizably an adult. He is a seafarer, a warrior, and a leader. He already has a reputation in the surrounding communities. What’s the connection, then? The heroes’ faith. “David said to [Goliath], ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty. . . . This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands’” (1 Sam 17:45-46).  Both David and Beowulf, regardless of their natural abilities and resources, ensure victory by their faith in God. Since Beowulf’s original audiences would have held the hero in high esteem, his faith would be a model for them to follow.

Given the hero's Christian faith and a brief sermon within the text, perhaps the poem functioned in part as a reminder to a community new to the religion.

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