So what happened?

The New Chaucer Society conference, in London in July 2000, would be the extent of the British celebration of Chaucer's 600th anniversary. Recalling Dr. Barnes' concern about the cooling trend toward the age of Chaucer, I found the whole thing alarming. If the rest of the world seemed ready to bypass the red-letter day, those of us in Claremont would need to manage our own celebration. But what to do? Where to begin?
     My friend Barbara remarked that Chaucer's last sentiment was a request for prayer. It's true. The closing of the Canterbury Tales says: "All who hear or read this, I beseech you to pray for me." Among Catholics, it is customary to have a Mass said on the anniversary of a death. That would also have been true when Chaucer lived. A small, private Mass at my home seemed appropriate, with eight or ten Chaucer-lovers attending. So, early in September 2000, I spoke with the secretary at our parish office to arrange for a home Mass on the evening of October 25. When the pastor, Father  (now Monsignor) Tom Welbers, got word that a Mass would commemorate the date of Chaucer's death, the event suddenly went public. With unexpected, but gratifying enthusiasm, Father Tom urged, "It's a celebration that needs to be publicized." The Mass would be celebrated in church; invitations would go out to all the English Departments in our area; local newspapers would be notified. Now, to picture many people attending a Mass in church required a whole new plan. Where do we begin? Publicity, music, and food were starters.
    A special Mass needed special music. Shirley Robbins directed medieval instrumental ensembles,  and trained vocalists in the techniques of "early music." When I asked her to help, I got a warm reception, "I'd be delighted to take part," she said.
     With the music arranged for, food came next because such a Mass would have to be followed by a reception. And the menu had to be medieval. The book Pleyn Delit by Constance Hieatt had medieval recipes adjusted for modern cooks, with modern substitutes for 14th-century ingredients. We planned a sit-down dinner of selected recipes the likes of which folks may never have tasted  before.
     Dinner would begin with a salad of greens. (Tomatoes were unknown to Chaucer.) Vinegar and oil added to a combination of minced fresh parsley, sage, mint, fennel, dill and savory can create a palate-pleasing dressing. The greens would be creative--borage, spinach, and whatever else was available, along with thinly sliced small leeks and scallions. Hieatt's one caution for authenticity: avoid iceberg lettuce. Besides the salad, we would make cheese-mushroom pasties, and pork tarts flavored with nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, pepper, and saffron. Dessert would be apple-almond pudding.
     What to drink? Mead for the toast to Chaucer must be found, but what to serve as a dinner beverage? The fourteenth century had no coffee, tea, or chocolate. An email to Professor Hieatt brought a ready answer--apple cider.
     Cider, in October, could be found at any grocery store. Mead, on the other hand, presented a challenge--with a happy ending. While buying 10 pounds of mushrooms at a local store, I talked with the cashier about the dinner. A woman standing behind me interjected, "You'll have mead, of course." I said we hadn't been able to find any. Smiling like a fairy godmother, she offered, "Just give me your phone number. I'll call you when I get home and tell you the number for my regular supplier." Good at her word, I called the number and ordered a case of, wouldn't you know, Chaucer's Mead!
     I had been scheduled to give a talk about Chaucer at the city library a week before our medieval extravaganza. (That's a story of its own.) At the very end of my presentation, I invited everyone to the Chaucer Mass and reception the following week. Perfect timing.
    The week was dominated by preparation for the event. I told the writers' group I would not be attending during that week because of all the baking. Someone offered sympathy saying, "What a lot of work for you!" I smiled and said I didn't consider it "work." It was a celebration I'd been hoping for for 30 years!
     Judy Wenrick and her husband Jon had often provided a helping Chaucer hand; they agreed to oversee the dining activities in the hall. Judy had the last word about serving the food, and the seating arrangements. Jon would open and pour the mead--and propose the toast to Chaucer.

With the Mass about to begin, I welcomed the guests seated in the church with Chaucer's prayer request read in Middle English--followed by the same words in today's English. That signaled the recorder players and the percussionist, with his little drum, to lead the altar servers and Father Tom down the aisle. From the first thump on the drum, a medieval atmosphere filled the church. Shirley had assembled a small consort of instruments and a vocalist. When the Mass ended, many of those in attendance lingered to hear the musicians' final offering.
     Then the crowd headed for the long tables set up in the parish hall. Close to 100 attended. The food was unusual but delicious. The salad was superb. The mead was exquisite. When a guest asked if we would be doing this again next year, the answer was "Yes!" What a great way to give life to Chaucer's name. We had started something.

Special birthday edition

Jolinda, a lovely young lady, takes my German Shepherd for a walk twice a week. My dog is nuts about her. Last week the young lady mentioned her birthday was coming up.  hmmm  She has gotten a kick out of the dolls I make, so . . .  Why not  a miniature Jolinda?
     There is one outstanding feature about Jolinda--her hair! So here she is as a 5 inch replica.

Jolinda, a grown up young lady, does not tie bows in her hair,  but otherwise this is her hair style. It's long enough to sit on! My dog and I hope she has a very happy birthday.

And the winner is . . .

Virginia's inspiration of a Chaucer contest to stimulate interest in the first great poet of the English language had a successful conclusion. The New Chaucer Society (NCS) spring newsletter announced the competition. Both scholars and students submitted entries limited to one page (500 words). Submissions answered the question, "Why, after 600 years, are we still studying the works of Chaucer?" The entry of Robert Meyer-Lee, a graduate student at Yale, won the prize. Based on two lines from "Pilgrim" Chaucer's intro to the Tale of Thopas, here is what he wrote:

"The Allure of the Phantom Popet"

This were a popet in an arm t'embrace

For any womman, smal and fair of face.

This couplet, spoken by the redoubtable host of the Canterbury Tales about the poet's own pilgrim alter-ego, is, in the fullest sense of the word, charming. Endearingly elusive, it captures in its thematic play and formal sprezzatura [studied nonchalance] the essential reason why, after 600 years, we are still so interested in--and so mystified by--Chaucer's poetry. The lines are at once self-deprecating, self-aggrandizing, and self-effacing. Apparently submitting himself to the mockery of the host, the poet is in fact ostentatiously making his own person the topic of his verse--only to leave us with both a remarkably concrete image and an utter befuddlement as to what the image ultimately suggests. Does he intend it to be a faithful self-depiction, or merely another example of the host's crude and sometimes cruel jocularity? Is his affection a reinforcement of gender stereotypes, or, by placing both himself and woman in opposition to the voice of the host, an ironized subversion of these stereotypes? These and countless other questions exist, however, only in the readerly aftermath of the couplet. Initially, we seem to gain such an intimacy with the author that we, too, wish to embrace him. Only upon reflection may we feel completely hoodwinked into this desire. Once again we have been nudged into mistaking fiction for presence, and, despairing of discovering the latter, we interrogate the former. We unearth dramatic complexity. We notice that underneath the apparently natural, colloquial speech of these lines is a virtually flawless iambic pentameter. And yet, finally, what we most relish is the initial trickery, and behind this we imagine once more an authorial presence--precisely that "elvysh" personality that forms the other half of the host's characterization of the narrator. Like the prodigal son, we return, wiser and wizened, to the scene of our former interpretive innocence. I may be accused in this appreciation of focusing too narrowly on the immanent qualities of Chaucer's verse, failing to call attention, for example, to the immense cultural importance of his work as revealed by not only the texts themselves but also by the institutions that perpetuate their canonicity. Certainly, we continue to study Chaucer's works because we believe we may understand better the anglophone cultures which they both represent and have helped to produce, and--just as certainly if more cynically--because we have already invested so much in this study. Yet I believe that the fundamental reason we remain drawn to Chaucer is the magnetic sense of authorial presence that lurks around the corners of the verse. Over and over this presence reveals itself to be an illusion, yet we cannot make it go away, and the more we pursue it the more it eludes our grasp.

The prize was awarded in London, the site of the NCS conference in 2000.

A few years later, when the NCS met at the University of Boulder in Colorado, Meyer-Lee and I, as members, both attended their annual conference. He was a young professor by then. In reflecting on the essay, he said how much he enjoyed thinking about it. "It brought me the greatest financial compensation per word than anything else I've written!"

Here is a personal recollection of mine from the Boulder conference. I found myself in a room full of professors and graduate students, and took the opportunity to ask a question about the Thopas story. "Why, in these days when obscenity is accepted and even encouraged, why, when Chaucer says 'pricking' do the notes continue to advise, as they have for generations, that he means galloping or spurring?" (Pricking is the main activity in the story. Everyone in the room knew that.) One older gentleman allowed that the word may not have been a sexual referent when Chaucer lived. (The MED, however, offers intercourse as a possibility.) Galloping surely dulls down the flavor of the potentially spicy Tale. And, oddly enough, the horse and horse riding are a sexual convention dating back to biblical times. Pilgrim Chaucer does not tell an exceedingly foolish story, as is generally maintained. Instead, he tells the raciest story in the collection. Beyond the gentleman's comment, no one had any more to say. How status quo.

So where is Meyer-Lee now?  This year Robert Meyer-Lee is the Margaret W. Pepperdene Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at Agnes Scott College, a women's college in Decatur, GA near Atlanta.  He is on leave from his usual campus, Indiana University at South Bend, where he is an Associate Professor of English listed as Bobby Meyer Lee.

He is academically well prepared.

B. A., Williams College

M. A. New York University

Ph.D., Yale University

His "Teaching and Scholarly Interests" are described on the Indiana University website as specializing in early English literature, especially the literature of the late medieval period, from about 1350 through the early 1500s. In his teaching, he seeks to foster students' appreciation of both the familiarity and strangeness of these early texts, and how their very distance from us fruitfully complicates such basic questions about the literary enterprise as: what is literature, what do we claim to be its value and function, and how well, in practice, it lives up to these ideals. Such questions also lurk within his scholarly interest with his published work addressing topics ranging from the relations of poetry and political power in the 1400s to the theoretical and practical implications of the way modern editors have put together Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

     You can find Meyer-Lee's name on Amazon as author of Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt, published by Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. It appears he continues to be a "winner" to this day.

Introducing Grandma

Here is Grandma. She's President of the Ladies Library League. She got all dressed up for their monthly tea. The bun in the back of her hair got special attention. And you know she feels this is an important occasion because she's wearing her fancy undies!  (titter)

The 600th year

It was October 1999. The manuscript for my third Chaucer book had been sent off to the publisher. As we approached the year 2000--Chaucer's 600th anniversary--I decided to gather my courage to talk to professors. I'd always felt put off, but things change. After all, I had published two books!
     The place to start would be "square one," my original Chaucer professor, Dr. Elliott, who dismissed my ideas because "Chaucer didn't write allegories." I called the English Department at Cal-Poly, Pomona to inquire about Dr. Elliott's office hours. I chose a convenient time in the early afternoon and took a bus to the campus. I sat waiting outside his office, gathering my confidence. He recognized me even with my gray hair. "I'll be happy to chat for a while," he said, "but there are things I planned to do before my next class, an hour from now."
     I assured him I would stay only a short time. For my first such venture, I planned to be there just long enough to offer him my books and wish him well. (I had heard that he'd been ill. I didn't want to cause him stress.) He accepted my books and set them aside. Chaucer, he said, would not be on the class schedule for the year. What an unhappy revelation!
     We spoke of the whereabouts of other Cal-Poly teachers I had known. We talked on and on, as if time were of no importance. At last he looked at the clock and said his class started in ten minutes. We stood up to leave his office, but our conversation had not ended! We continued to chat as we walked to the adjoining building. When we reached the doorway, I extended my hand. He took it for a moment and said, "Maybe I was wrong."
     With those words, he turned and entered the building. As I strolled across the campus, heading toward the bus for home, I mulled over the meaning of his parting words. Could he be questioning his attitude toward my ideas? I couldn't be sure. Perhaps he felt that, thirty years before, he should have encouraged me. [He retired from teaching soon after. I never saw him again.]
     That first interview had turned out very differently from what I'd imagined. A few days later, for my second venture, I called the English Departments at both Scripps College and Pomona College here in Claremont. I asked the department secretaries the name of the professor who taught Chaucer. Each secretary hesitated. Rephrasing my question, I asked who taught "medieval literature." That gave me the necessary information, names and office hours.
     Each professor received me pleasantly and accepted the books I offered. One professor, when the subject turned to Chaucer, said he covered Chaucer in the first week of a survey course. The second man explained that his course, called "Chaucer and Medieval London," had a sociological as well as an historical emphasis. Both professors claimed that, if a course consisting only of Chaucer's writings were offered, no one would sign up. I expressed amazement, saying, "I thought Chaucer would be required!"  Both professors insisted their college programs were more flexible. "Flexibility" indicated to me that the wishes of students, not the greater knowledge of professors, decided the curriculum.
     The time had come to report the up-to-date picture of local Chaucer studies to Virginia, my friend and mentor. I told her that not one course completely dedicated to Chaucer could be found in our area, not even at the colleges of "high reputation."
     "What is happening to the teaching of literature?" Virginia fumed. With instant self-assurance and certainty she announced, "We must organize a Chaucer contest to stimulate interest."
     I thought a contest was a good idea, but the 600th anniversary year would begin in just a few weeks and I knew nothing about organizing a competition. Virginia suggested I get in touch with a couple of organizations or publications concerned with Chaucer, so I searched reference books at Honnold Library. When I discovered the New Chaucer Society (NCS), my search ended. Virginia and I would offer them the idea, propose the question to be used, and donate the prize.
     That all sounded doable but composing the question brought the two of us to our one and only point of disagreement. I suggested, "Why, after 600 years, is it still important to study Chaucer?" Virginia considered that question trivial. She believed a scholarly comparison, or the analysis of a particular work should be the aim. I could not agree. I saw my question, rather than trivial, as dealing with fundamentals. The answer could be influential, thought-provoking. Considering that we recommended a 500 word limit, she finally granted my question to be more practical.
     I sent the Society a letter about the proposed contest. The holidays and December school break delayed our receiving a much-looked-for response. It arrived in mid-January 2000. The Secretary of the Society said they would sponsor the competition, dependent upon the approval of their Board of Trustees; that approval followed in early February. Virginia and I sent them our agreed upon question and we asked that both faculty and students be allowed to compete. NCS would announce the competition to their worldwide membership, receive the entries, judge them, and award the prize at their annual meeting.
     As for the prize, Virginia and I each contributed half the money, appropriately $600 in this 600th anniversary year. You may recall that Virginia was blind. She lived at Pilgrim Place, a lovely retirement facility here in Claremont. Helen, a woman on the staff, kept track of Virginia's finances. When I came by to pick up Virginia's check she called Helen. Instructed to write out a check for $300 and hand it to me, the woman stared hard at me. I'm sure she suspected that this was a scam. She did, however, do as Virginia instructed.
     The competition made the front page of the NCS spring newsletter. Submissions must answer the question, "Why, after 600 years, are we still studying the works of Chaucer?" and be limited to one page (500 words). Both scholars and students were encouraged to participate as Virginia and I had wished. I read the entire article to Virginia. We were confident that good would come from our plan.
     At the July meeting, it was announced that "The Allure of the Phantom Popet," the entry of Robert Meyer-Lee, a Yale graduate student, had won the prize. Virginia and I were very pleased.
     To be continued . . .
    

A passel of pups

With the computer on the fritz, I had time to fill. Dug out a favorite simple stuffed animal pattern and the piece of plaid I bought a while back especially for making Scotties. Found a couple of other bits of fabric for smaller versions. Here's the litter that resulted.

And when you sew you wind up with scraps of fabric. My collection of scraps needed to be dealt with, so I made patchwork "lap robes." Of course they can have other uses. Each is approximately 24x28 inches. That's the size of my old worktable. (I have a new worktable!)

They are not works of art, but now the heap of scraps has become something useful. A friend has offered to take them to the Christmas collection for the county hospital.

Professor Dick Barnes

In my reading I often encountered a book called Cursor Mundi--the history of the world from creation to the world's end. Never seeing it on the library shelf, I finally asked a librarian about its due date. She said a professor checked it out and could keep it indefinitely. She left him a phone message indicating a "student" had asked about the book. We'd wait to see if he chose to return it.
     Next afternoon my doorbell rang. A tall man with glasses stood at the door, a large book in his hand. He asked my name. When I identified myself as Dolores Cullen, he handed me the book--Cursor Mundi. He explained, "I wanted to see for myself the one other person in Claremont who is interested in this book."
     I thanked him for his kind gesture, and asked his name--Dick Barnes. He taught Chaucer at  Pomona College. Generous Dick Barnes would play a part--sometimes minimal, sometimes disruptive, all unintended--in the three Chaucer books I'd write.
     When the first book (about the Host) neared completion, it needed to be read by someone well-acquainted with medieval literature. I managed to overcome my initial timidness and visit Professor Barnes' office on campus to ask if he'd be willing, and he agreed. When I asked the cost, he smiled and said, "You couldn't afford me, but I'll be glad to do it as a favor." I had packed proof upon proof into one-hundred-eighty pages of text, and another seventy-five pages of notes and bibliography. Though ultimately not enthusiastic, he did call it "a good read." It was two more years before I had a publishing contract.
     In mid-December 1997, a bulging envelope from the publisher contained many items including a copy of Professor Barnes' blurb for the back of the book.
     The following year my project would be book two, Pilgrim Chaucer, about Chaucer himself. Eric, the book designer, settled the question of the cover design for Pilgrim Chaucer when he found a polite, slightly suggestive, little grotesque to greet the reader. And he recommended hunter green for the color, our "in" joke. Chaucer's name is related to the French word chausseur, which means hunter. That volume is dedicated to Professor Dick Barnes.
     Book three (1999), about all the other pilgrims, was coming along when a serious problem arose where none had been anticipated. The problem had to do with helpful Professor Barnes. Though retired in 1998, as a professor at Pomona College, he maintained an office near the campus. In spring of 1999, I chanced to meet him in town. When he asked about Chaucer, I told him of Pilgrim Chaucer on the verge of publication, and about book three now in progress. He said he'd enjoy  seeing book three. So, in June, when a good portion of the text (sans footnotes) looked passable, I dropped off 200 pages for him to read. Though I gladly gave him the manuscript, I didn't count on his being able to review it because he was seriously ill.
     As the year 2000 drew near, I turned my attention to Chaucer's 600th anniversary. I wrote to five well-known journals and scholarly groups to ask about their intentions for commemorating the auspicious occasion. They had no plans! Even the Early English Text Society had not scheduled publication of a volume of Chaucer for this once in a century opportunity!
     I could hardly believe the lack of interest. I emailed Professor Derek Brewer, a British Chaucer scholar, to say, "It is beyond my belief that England would fail to find Chaucer's anniversary significant. I am at a loss to understand."
     His response lamented at length the British disinterest: "There is at present a dominant anti-historic and anti-literary element in our culture," he states, which contrasts with a "rage for the contemporary." I found the indifference to Chaucer alarming.
     With my mind occupied with book three and the disregard for the Chaucer anniversary, I gave little thought to Dr. Barnes and the book three manuscript. But, early in December 1999, a phone call from him surprised me. "I've had your manuscript quite a while, but I have finished looking it over. Would you like to pick it up at my home?" Recovering from my surprise, I said I'd be there Saturday afternoon.
     Dr. Barnes answered the door. We talked for a short time while he sat in an easy chair. It pleased him that someone (meaning me) would actively be working with the Canterbury Tales. "A strong force in academia," he confided, "is attempting to have all literature before Shakespeare removed from the standard curriculum." It worried him that appreciation of early literature had diminished. And what a sad revelation for me! His statement echoed what I had recently learned.
     When I got home I examined the pages he had read. Most were unmarked. Here and there he recommended a better or additional word--specify "temple" instead of "structure," for instance. Two of my examples, he felt, were weak; the evidence given, inadequate. Concrete statements would have to be composed and inserted.
     I had received the second galley pages. Changes now would inevitably create that situation for Eric which I had been so carefully instructed to avoid. You may recall: "At this stage, corrections could be made, but no revisions, no moving text, no changes of any kind are allowed. Content and pagination are set. Even small changes could have a domino effect where succeeding pages, perhaps many of them, would need to be modified. In a word, alterations are verboten."
     I weighed each of Dr. Barnes' criticisms. Substitutions for three words appeared necessary. The paragraphs involved would probably maintain their contours. One or two sentences had to be added to several pages. Those additions would, without doubt, cause the text to need adjustment--and also the subsequent pages.
     I gave scrupulous attention to printing out the proposed insertions, attached them to the pages involved, and highlighted where revisions were to be entered. That process, along with proofing the 425 pages I had received, took many days.
     I mailed back the pages, including the formidable changes, the first week of January 2000--then braced myself for Eric's reaction. On January 18, his reply arrived. It had taken him several days to absorb the shock. The protest I expected was there, but tempered with understanding of my position.

          I've received your page proofs of Chaucer's Pilgrims. To tell you the truth, I received them a week ago, but was so horrified I waited until now to write. . . . Let me say, for the record: Bad, bad, bad author! As you know, this is exactly the kind of thing I hoped to avoid when we discussed it some months ago. . . .  I do understand, however, how important Dr. Barnes's comments are to you, and that we must consider them. It would be a big mistake not to.
     I should tell you that there will probably be some charge to you for revision, after I've made these changes. It may also force us to set the schedule back a few weeks, but not enough to make a big difference.

The situation I had caused would be manageable. The letter ended on a positive note. "The way you've indicated the changes is fine, and I'll have no trouble following it." What a relief to have it settled.
    I wrote a note of acceptance and appreciation.

         Scolding acknowledged. I'm sure you realize the "Barnes" changes were not made to aggravate you, nor were they made because I didn't understand our "little talk." After due consideration, I felt that if I'm not going to make the best presentation I can, what's the point of what I'm doing?

With the give-and-take accomplished, Eric and I returned to our easy-going relationship.
     Professor Barnes died in May 2000, before the book was published, but his contribution will forever benefit the world of Chaucer studies. And I am eternally grateful.

* * *

Dick Barnes was born in San Bernardino, California, in 1932, and grew up in Barstow. He died in 2000, at the age of sixty-eight. Professor Barnes taught medieval literature and creative writing at Pomona College, and was an outstanding poet besides. A critic recently said of his poetry: "I'm convinced that, in the future, any anthology of twentieth-century American poetry which neglects Dick Barnes will seem ridiculous."