An Honest Liar

I found the Pardoner to be first and foremost one of the sleaziest characters I’ve encountered in literature. After reading his prologue, I felt like I needed to wash the sliminess of his conman ways from my hands and my brain. It was pretty gross. Then, I got to his tale.

His tale is intriguing. He is definitely an immoral man, but this is a pretty straightforward and moral tale. If someone like the parson, or even the knight, had told this tale, I would have had a different perception of it.

While I’ve encountered “do as I say, not as I do” people, I can’t say that I have ever met one who so readily and calmly admits it. Most of the people who are like this go out of their way to ensure that no one figures out this flaw in their character. The Pardoner doesn’t care whether or not people know. He’s okay with what he does, even if it is wrong.

Reading his prologue did strike up a thought about what a hypocrite really is. A hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another. Interesting…I don’t know of anyone who isn’t a hypocrite in some way. They aren’t an uncommon figure. They’re all over the place, yet we as the readers are automatically compelled to point fingers and be angry at this one guy who is honest about his hypocrisy. In pointing out the Pardoner’s hypocritical speeches and saying “See? See how awful this guy is? What a slime ball!”, are we worried that someone will point out the hypocrite in us? I’m a hypocrite. Let’s face it, you probably have been, too. In looking at the Pardoner, I found that my finger was pointing right back at me. Go figure.

On another note, the role of the old man in the Pardoner’s tale was really intriguing. I think he’s Death. My reasoning for this mostly comes from the fact that in many stories that I’ve read, Death doesn’t usually ignore threats directed at him. If the three guys in the bar we ranting and raving about how they were going to kill Death (which is a funny enough phrase by itself), I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility for Death himself to show up to prove a point. In this case, he took the form of an old man. Death usually isn’t stupid in stories. He is pretty clever and not above trickery. The three guys are drunk.  They’re not exactly thinking clearly. Why wouldn’t they believe that some random old guy they’ve never seen before is telling the truth? He had an easy answer, and all they had to do was stumble over to the tree. It wasn’t like they had to go on this long journey. And hey, they did find Death.

I pledge I have neither given nor recieved any unauthorized aid on this assignment.

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.

Yo I'll tell ya what I want, what I really really want!!

You can say one thing about the Pardoner: the man knows what he wants. And what does he want? Money! He should keep half an eye out for dragons.

It’s interesting (and very telling)  that, immediately before reciting his story, the Pardoner admits that he would “telle an hundred false japes more” (394) in order “to winne” (403), and that he has told this specific tale often for that purpose. I completely expected the sales pitch at the end of the tale, and I don’t begrudge the Host for unmercifully humiliating the Pardoner or, rather creatively, threatening to cut off the his “collions” (952) and to enshrine them in “an hogges tord” (955).

However, greed isn’t the Pardoner’s only vice, although it’s definitely his greatest. He explains that he often preaches against his own misconducts, and then spends over a hundred lines of his tale rambling about how terrible drunkenness is, and he is sure to spend some time decrying other related kinds of sin and debauchery, such as gluttony, gambling, and prostitution. We know that he admits that he “wol drink licour of the vyne, and have a joly wenche in every toun” (452-453), plus he has a “draughte of corny ale” (456) before he even starts his story. An alcoholic con man. What a charmer.

Scotty is too good to be compared the Pardoner, but he'd be a great drinking buddy, so here he is. Hopefully he won't commit any murders. 

It’s pretty funny, if more than a bit rude, that the Pardoner says that he chooses to recite fables to the masses because he believes that simple stories are the only thing that unlearned people can “wel reporte and holde” (438). I think it’s ironic that he looks down his nose at uneducated people that share his vices, when he himself admits that he’s not actually not as well-educated as other, more powerful, churchmen; after all, he can only “speke a wordes few” (344) of Latin, which was the main liturgical language in Medieval Europe. Moreover, he purposefully preaches with fables that advise against his own vices. It’s a very “do as I say, not as I do” setup, although I think the addendum “but pay me first” should be added to it.

Bathing in Marriage

The Wife of Bath is a character that plays to and simultaneously questions our 21st century feminist sensibilities. While the Wife does undermine some patriarchal traditions and values with one hand, she is constantly helping to reaffirm them with her other. As a result, it is difficult to discern whether she is supposed to be a heroic figure of liberation or merely a hyperbolic caricature of over sexualized women.

In her prelude, the Wife of Bath tells the story of a knight who came across a beautiful young maid, and he was so stricken that he just had to rape her. This detail of the story indicates that our dear Wife believes men are primarily driven by their sexual urges, and cannot control them.

King Arthur, who rules Britain at the time of the story, sentences the knight to death. However, the queen and her ladies decide to save the knight, if he can return to the court with the answer to a difficult question: what do women want most in the world? Because the queen takes authority over the king, the Wife is demonstrating the power of women can have over their husbands.

This theme recurs when the knight arrives again with a hideous old hag, who promised the knight that, in return for his devotion, she will give him the answer. He agrees, and tells the court that what women want most in the world is to control their husbands. The queen and her ladies accept the answer, sparing the knight's life, However, when the old, ugly women strong-arms the knight to marry her, he is distraught. In their wedding bed, the women proposes that she could be beautiful and unfaithful, or loyal and hideous. In the end, he lets her decide, which is all that she wanted, and thus becomes gorgeous and true, and they live happily ever after.

While the Wife demonstrates the power of women, this power is still only qualified by marriage, which is a patriarchal construct. Furthermore, I just want to point out that the knight who lived happily ever after is still a rapist, which I wish was a thing that only happened in King Arthur's day.  

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.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away...

I've always loved stories, particularly fairy tales. When I was little I had dozens of collections of fairy tales, some of which were so big that I had to get an adult to pick it up from the shelf for me. As one may expect, the go-to introduction for all of those stories in all of those books was "Once upon a time." As cliché as that is, it's a pretty-sounding phrase that helps the reader shift into gear and get ready for the story they're about to read. That's a good bit of legwork for four words. Another example is Star Wars' "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...," which does the same amount of work in ten words, which is still rather concise.

Chaucer, on the other hand, does not have any limit on how many words he can use, nor any qualms about using them. He is not concerned with being concise. The very first line of the Canterbury Tales tells us that the story begins in "Aprill," although you might not realize that until you reread that passage and find out that the Ram has "halfe cours y-ronne" (8), and subsequently read the footnote explaining that that means. As Chaucer continues, we find out that our narrator is at an inn in Southwerk while they "redy to wenden on [their] pilgrimage to Caunterbury" (21-22). Nonetheless, this is The Canterbury Tales' version of a "Once upon a time..." or "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." All of these preludes establish a setting and get us, the reader, buckled up for the ride we're about to go on. Simple! Easy! Totally understandable!

In any case, there's more to an introduction than founding a setting that the story can build off of. They need to extend a bit further, introducing the characters that will be featured in the narrative, as well as any significant backstory for those characters. True to his form, Chaucer does this with a litany of lavishly lyrical poetry, which is my poetic way of saying the most verbose way possible. After taking seven lines to decide to tell us about how he's gonna tell us about the other pilgrims, Chaucer spends another fifty-seven lines describing two people. Two. Out of how many total characters?

(It's a trick question. We don't know how many because our author just spent 100 lines setting up the story and telling us about two people.)

As much as I rag on him, I actually really enjoy reading Chaucer, although I've always read translations of his work or just unabashedly bastardized the original Middle English. I'm still dipping my toes into the phonetics of Chaucer's day, but I like those so far too.

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.

What I Noticed in the First 100 Lines of the Caterbury Tales

	I’ll be honest; I really love the sound of Middle English. Although it is difficult to understand what Chaucer is saying most of the time, you have to admit that hearing it spoken is really beautiful. As I was listening to the audio recording Dr. MB provided for us, I noticed how familiar it sounded. It sounded very similar to German, and other European languages as well. I realized that the vowels of Middle English are pretty much the same as the vowels for German. Here is a little chart I found of German vowel pronunciation along with Middle English vowel pronunciation.   Not so different after all. If you want some sound comparison, here is the audio Dr. MB provided, https://archive.org/details/P_CHA_GEO_01 , as well as a lovely poem in German, https://youtu.be/PIM15F_nF20 . Something I find really funny about the first 100 lines of the Canterbury tales is how little it describes in so much text. On the first page alone he describes is that it rains in the spring (lines 1-10), that lots of people go on these spiritual “pilgrimages” (lines 12-15), and he meets 29 pilgrims at an inn who are also on their way to Caunterbury (lines 16-27). Chaucer talks about three things in the first 30 lines. He could have said, “It rains a lot in the spring when all of these people go to seek God. I meet 29 while on my way to Caunterbury.” But it sounds a lot better written out as it is. While at the inn, Chaucer takes note of the “pilgrims” and describes two of them; a knight and his squire. The knight is a worthy man from the time he first began “to ryden out” (line 45), and is a man who loves honor, freedom and courtesy. Chaucer then says some of the great deeds the knight has done, but he says that even though he’s done all this awesome stuff, this knight guy is modest about himself. He’s wearing a rough, cloth tunic that is stained by his chain mail because he had just come from an expedition. Looking back to what we talked about in Beowulf, this knight is the polar opposite of Beowulf. Sure, knight guy did lots of amazing stuff, just like Beowulf, but it doesn't sound like he lets it get to his head/ego. Chaucer also describes the Knights son as a squire. He talks about how awesome the son is; strong, handsome, well written, musical, a jouster, and he has curly hair. The squire wants to impress “his lady grace” (Line 87). Who wouldn't want to date a dude who has curly hair and can joust?             That's pretty much all I have to say about the first 100 lines of The Canterbury Tales.

The Canterbury Tales: Poetic Exposition is Poetic

As I read the beginning of the prologue, I began to think of a line in Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Even if you don't who the guy is (I didn't until I looked it up), you'll recognize this phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night". Bulwer-Lytton then proceeds to add to this sentence and explain just how dark and stormy the night is, kind of like Chaucer does with this part of the prologue.

So, in our reading, our narrator is off on a journey to Canterbury. He stops at an inn, where he meets a group of 29 people who just happen to be going there, too. He then tells the reader that he is going to give a rundown of who these people were, what position they held, and what they were wearing.

Twenty. Nine. People. Oh boy...

We start with a knight, who is naturally brave, courageous, noble, etc. All qualties we associate with a knight. One that I did found interesting was he isn't described as wearing armor. "Of fustian he wered a gipoun" (75) translates as, when aided by the notations in the book, "He wore a tunic made of rough cloth." That's not the image of a knight I've always held in my head. My knight usually looks a little like this:

Doesn't seem to match what Chaucer describes. It even sounds like his horses are better dressed than he is, which conjours up another weird thought:

Again, probably not what Chaucer had in mind.

We move on to our second person of intrique, "a young squyer" (79). When I got to line 92 "He was as fresh as is the month of May," I was instantly reminded of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. This lovely, flowery description of the squyer is rather similar. This guy sounds like somebody I would like to be friends with, or at least be an acquaintance.

Further examination shows similarities to Beowulf. Both the knight and the squyer perform manly deeds of courage to earn respect and honor. So far both of them seem to be less arrogant and obnoxious than Beowulf could get, but of course, this is only the prologue.

I am curious about the identity of our narrator. Who is he? Why is he going on a pilgrimage? Why Canterbury? Is he a knight, too? All of these questions make me sound like an announcer in a soap opera.

As far as the language itself goes, I'm finding that when I read it, I can understand fairly well. There are words that we don't use anymore, which has made it awkward at points. Speaking it is an entirely different story. It's so strange to look at Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, and the text I sent my mom and see how much the English language has evolved and changed. It's not a bad thing by any means. But it's making me think.

I pledge that I have not given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment.