Pardoner's Tale

We have a lot of complex issues to discuss for the Pardoner's Tale. In case we don't get to them all, or you'd like to have a list for your notes, I'm going to put my lesson plan up on the blog. I'll try to do that more often.

Bookland in the Middlesboro Mall has an Oxford Classics edition and translation of the Canterbury Tales. If you're struggling, I recommend that you get a copy. This should augment your reading and help you keep up. It is not a substitute for reading in Middle English, though!

Class discussion outline:

I. Small Group work:

• Again, I’d like you to come up with several topics for discussion. List them on board.
• Several critics have claimed that the Pardoner is the most morally corrupt pilgrim. Does the text suggest this? What about him makes him worse than even the sommoner or Friar?
• Unlike the other “bad” pilgrims, the Pardoner doesn’t tell a “churl’s tale.” Does this make him better or worse than them?

II. Pardoner, Physician, Host—ask someone to summarize this scene

• how does the Host interact with the Physician? What sorts of questions does this raise when he turns to the Pardoner?
• The other Pilgrims object to his telling a Tale. Why? What does this suggest about him?
• What’s the significance of the Pardoner needing cakes and ale before he can “preach”?

III. Pardoner’s Prologue

• What sorts of things does the Pardoner say he does?
• This is a type of “confessional prologue,” like the Wife of Bath’s—and the Pardoner interrupts her during her Prologue. How and why are these two characters linked thematically, with respect to their descriptions in GP, the Prologues, and their Tales?
• How does the Pardoner view his own authorial position? Why?

IV. Pardoner’s Tale

• The tale begins with a mini-sermon on the tavern sins—swearing, gambling, and gluttony. Some of it is a little doctrinally unorthodox (pride was the official cause of Adam’s fall, not gluttony) but it would all be quite common.
• The Pardoner’s ideas about consumption might strike us as proto-Marxist, even. His expose of illicit practices concerning wine-mixing, and his warnings, based on history, about gambling and swearing are all highly conventional.
• The sermon is followed by a short narrative demonstrating the problems of these sins. What did you make of this as a story? What surprised you about it? Did you have any questions?
• Who is the old man? IS he evil? Good? Why is the tale ambiguous about this, when it’s not ambiguous about much of anything else?

V. Pardoner’s Conclusion?

• Why does the Host react with such violence? How do you read his threat?
• Why is the Knight the one to stop it? What does he signify by doing so?

Man of Law notes

Hello,
Some things that we discussed in the Man of Law's Tale:

Foil characters--why the replicating mothers-in-law? How do the Syrian sections of the Tale compare with the Northumbrian ones?

Law: pay attention to the legal scene. What does this suggest about the characters in Northumbria? Why is it in this tale?

Custance: Is she too passive, or is she just saintly?

Please comment and add anything in your class notes that I've missed.

Exam Review post

Ask any exam review questions below

Wife of Bath

Hello, all,

I did not put the Wife of Bath's Prologue on the day after Valentine's Day on purpose! This so-called "confessional prologue" presents us with a host of critical problems. The best basic explanation of the issues many critics have discussed is in Mary Carruther's "The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions." Good news--it's now available on-line. If you think you want to write about this Prologue or Tale, you should give this article a look.

See you all tomorrow.

**Breaking News**

(Well, "breaking" in the sense of scholarship, which means all this was publicized in a conference a few years ago, published last year, and I just now got caught up with the latest.)

The scribe of the Ellesmere Chaucer and the Hengwrt Manuscript has been identified as Adam Pinkhurst, a member of the Scrivener's Company in London as of 1392 (although he had been working as a scribe before that). If he is indeed the "Adam Scriveyn" of Chaucer's earlier poem, it means that he worked with Chaucer from the 1380s up until Chaucer's death in 1400, and perhaps knew more about Chaucer's writings than anyone else.

Linne Mooney is the handwriting expert who gets credit for the discovery. An interview with her tells how she found Adam out.

Middle English Resources

Hello, and welcome to the ENGL 433 course blog. I'll post helpful links here as I run across them. I will also post lecture notes here for those (rare) classes when I talk more than you do.

For a start, I want to point you to to the Middle English Compendium. This contains a link to the Middle English dictionary, which is the premier lexicographical resource for studying Chaucer's English words. Feel free to poke around the page and look at some of their other resources. I suggest you bookmark this one in your browser. You may even want to create a "Middle English" folder in your bookmarks so you can organize things easily.

For some fun, check out the Chaucer blog--someone is blogging in "Middle English" as if he (or she; the author's identity is a closely-guarded secret) is Chaucer. The blog has some good links in the sidebar for learning Middle English, and I'd bookmark it, too. If you can't quite read the posts yet, don't worry--it will be very readable (and funny) by the end of the semester.

Finally, an excellent resource for pronouncing Middle English is here. You'll want to spend some time on this site listening the sounds being pronounced.