Tuesday, June 30, 2015

The thrill of research

My Chaucer research was a personal endeavor. Professors I knew tried to "dissuade" me from pursuing what I "saw." But that's OK, because nothing, no one, hindered me from following connections I found. One book led me to another as I collected information I needed--and discovered things I'd never seen before.

A charming, recent opinion regarding Professor Stephanie Trigg says, "when she walks around the corridors of the University of Melbourne a golden radiance follows her." I mention this radiant  professor because she did me a great service when she reviewed my second book, Pilgrim Chaucer. I got a quick course in the standard attitude toward producing literary criticism. "Cullen thus makes an interesting discursive intervention into a field that is normally dominated by specialists." True. I might even be considered an unqualified intruder into elitist territory--but I had something I had to say.
     She notes that I "sidestepped" a lot of Chaucer criticism published in the preceding forty years. "In a research paper, this would be woefully inadequate." Yes, but I wasn't writing a "research paper." I wasn't addressing academia. I was telling my reader about my adventure. I did delve into a lot of sources. (Most everyone acknowledges that.) What I chose to include bolstered my ideas--what I saw as Chaucer's ideas.
    Professor  Trigg is surprised that I present the evidence I find "as if they represented novel and fresh primary research." But to me it was! No one gave me a required reading list. Everything--from Augustine to our contemporary V. A. Kolve--proved new, exciting, stimulating.
     I love words. When you're dealing with an allegory, the author is bound to use words with more than one meaning. So when the professor says I depend "a great deal on searches of the Middle English Dictionary . . . for possible alternative meanings for Chaucer's lines." Of course. That's how you discover possibilities. But they have to fit the thought. The most outstanding example is fonde. The seventh definition is "to try, to strive." That's what the notes recommend. But the first definition is "to try the patience of God." What a startling difference, but each does fit--one for the surface plot and the other for the covert storyline.
     Her next comment comes as a real eye opener. "She charts, for example, her own frustrations and successes in her library searches ("I almost cheered"; "my face turned red . . . and I burst out laughing"). Such enthusiasm is normally edited out." What a sad editorial practice. Doesn't it dull down what I'm saying if you don't know how excited I got? Let me tell you the story of my almost cheering.  
     It has to do with the Thopas story, one of Chaucer's own contributions to the Tales. The main character, Thopas, is pricking here and pricking there when he is confronted by an enemy. Pricking can refer to horse riding, but it also means intercourse--as Chaucer makes clear in the Reeve's Tale: John (an opportunist and overnight guest) manages to share a bed with the good wife. "He pricketh her hard and deep"--the best she'd had in a long time!
     I assume the enemy, Sir Elephant, must be a threat to sexual activity. He exclaims "Termagaunt!" a word the Middle Ages took to be of Arabic origin. Chaucer gives us only these two clues to identify this adversary.
     At the library I took down books on the history of diseases. I turned the pages slowly, scanning each description. At last, after several books and many pages, when I turned a page the next caption read Elephantiasis Arabum!--and "Right there in the library, I almost cheered." Wouldn't you?

Upon publication of Pilgrim Chaucer, Judith Wenrick, a reviewer and specialist in guiding young writers, said--"It serves as a teaching model to inspire writing students to view scholarship as an adventurous and creative endeavor." That was precisely my intention.
     To be continued.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful reading about your adventure. It is amazing how everything came together for you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wonderful reading about your adventure. It is amazing how everything came together for you!

    ReplyDelete