Inspiration

When I organized my "Chaucer Room," I reserved the wall above my desk for sources of inspiration. I knew I would need encouragement for the road ahead. I posted helpful, inspiring quotes there.
      One of the first little items was my favorite Bible verse: This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. I'd found a charming Middle English version--with the thorn (Þ) that became th.

Þis ys  Þe day

           Þat our lord made;

                             be we glad and ioyfull in hure! 

Soon after came a quote from Venerable Bede. It expressed precisely how I felt about studying Chaucer. I knew many students who were content to scan the Tales in Middle English--or even to read Modern English versions instead! I already recognized what they were missing.

Bede, addressing a medieval audience, said, Reading should be slow and attentive, laborious, intent on the reward contained in the underlying meaning. This is my work-style in a nutshell, taking each word as important, with the Middle English Dictionary at my side.  Bede's recommendation  naturally became the perfect epigram for my first book-- Chaucer's Host.

     Of course inspiration can come from less-than-serious sources. I used to refer to myself as an "intellectual bottleneck." This cartoon doesn't exactly reflect that, but it always made me laugh and renew my determination to say what needed to be said. 

Peter Elbow helped me overcome the bottleneck. We'll get to him soon.

 

The hazard of the spoken word

My son lives in Houston. (I'm near LA.) He is an avid reader and often recommends books to me. When he said the book he had just read was unusual and captivating, upon hanging up my landline, I connected to Amazon. What's quicker, easier and more addictive than one-click? Anyway, I ordered the book--Bell Weather.

It arrived in a couple of days. The endpapers show a map with islands and oceans as a fictional region of the earth. The story had that touch of magical realism I'd found in Xavier Garcia Márquez. It surely was odd and entertaining, but I had to admit to my son, "I've never figured out what the title means."
     He was visiting California at the time. His brows furrowed as he responded, "But it explains the meaning when the sheep arrive."
     My wide-eyed reaction: "The sheep?"
     He asked to see the book, leafed through a few pages, then whipped out his smartphone to order a "replacement" for me. The mysterious confusion I felt was relieved as soon as the book arrived.

Moral: Don't have complete faith when you hear the title; get the author's name as well.

What can we learn from a hollyhock?

Here's a "volunteer." A seed fell at the edge of my sidewalk and decided to "bloom where it was planted" as the wise saying goes. This is Southern California.  We haven't had any rain to encourage it--but that didn't stop it.  It's only six inches tall but blooming as if it was six feet tall.

 

That's Courage and Determination. 

The Cook, my very favorite

I was going to write about all the pilgrims, but when a friend got me talking about the Cook, writing about him was irresistible. No Canterbury Pilgrim is more creative. What fun the poet must have had! We'll ignore editors "improvements" that actually distort Chaucer's own words.
     First we'll talk about the introduction of the Cook and his companions in the General Prologue. Then we'll look at the Cook's Tale. The Cook is the astrological sign of Cancer. This is clear from Chaucer's description of the "mormal," the oozing, incurable sore on the Cook's leg. That's about as close as you can get to simply using the word cancer.
     This sign has no prominent stars, so the poet mainly concentrates on the figure of a crab. The one visual heavenly endowment, however, is a modest star cluster called Praesepe which has two meanings: Manger and Beehive. Chaucer capitalizes on both these images.
     At the end of this pilgrim's description, when the mormal is announced, the Cook's expertise in making a fish pudding immediately follows. The dish is called Blank Manger. Such close association is unsavory! The unsavoriness is meant to be noticed. And the chosen recipe is an opportunity to mention the star cluster.
     If these lines indicate the sign's identity, then who are the Guildsmen and why are they necessary? I think they are "necessary" mainly because of Chaucer's wit. A Biblical tradition says, "The body is one, and hath many members." And an Aesop fable popular in the Middle Ages is called, "The Belly and Its Members." This is the picture Chaucer brings to life. One of Chaucer's contemporaries even refers to the belly (stomach) as the "cook" for the entire body.
     Now, if the Cook is the belly, the five Guildsmen must be its members. A group of five--5 pairs of legs--is, again, a "necessity."
                              And they were clothed all in one livery
                              Of a solemn and a great fraternity.
When we are told that these five men are clothed all in one livery, Chaucer means exactly that: five men inside one suit. This is another line meant to get our attention. "Clothed" can mean covered, as incarnation expressed as "to clothe in flesh." And Chaucer's use of livery can be seen as ambiguous where the 14th-century "livery" can refer to a living being. Then the line can be understood to say, "the Guildsmen were enveloped as one living being" in the great fraternity of Crustaceans.
     Although confident that I had properly recognized the sign of Cancer the crab, the remainder of the introduction of the Guildsmen confused me. Why did Chaucer say their "wives" have cloaks "carried royally"? That is, their garments had trains. The answer to the question, thank goodness, came from a picture of a doorjamb at Notre Dame in Paris. The twelve signs of the zodiac are carved there as heavenly bodies created by God. Surprisingly, Cancer is not a crab but a lobster, a figure with a substantial part trailing behind. Why? Because in Latin, which was common knowledge among the educated, both crab and lobster are expressed by the word cancer.

There is an abiding problem regarding pilgrims who tell no tale, the five Guildsmen, for example. Here's the answer to that problem: It's not Chaucer's failure. Their only function is to complete the picture of the sign! During the pilgrimage, the five men never utter a word. They are never spoken to or about. The Cook and his companions function as one. The Cook alone represents Cancer throughout the Tales.

To amuse his fellow Canterbury Pilgrims, the Cook tells a "litel jape," a little joke. Remember the star cluster Praesepe that means Manger also means Beehive. That's what the joke is about. The humor relies on the fun of a beast fable, in which correspondences are found between the behavior of animals and behavior or men. Clues abound. The Cook speaks not of an apprentice cook but of a victualler, a gatherer of foodstuffs. The apprentice is brown as a berry, a proper short fellow who is like a hive full of honey and merry as a bird in the woods. That's a great description of a medieval English brown bee. But he's not just any bee--he's a good-for-nothing drone. He's called "Perkyn Revelour" (Perkin Reveler) because he enjoys reveling with his kin; the story bears this out. (Picture a swarm.)
     How appropriate for a cook to joke about a bee! Honey was a coveted cooking ingredient in Chaucer's day. Everyone knew about industrious worker bees, worthless drones, the normal--but sometimes temperamental--movements of swarms. Lazy drones and robber-bees consume disproportionate amounts of honey and spend their days in carefree living and thievery. Chaucer doesn't hesitate to describe actual bee activity when he says Perkyn and his accomplice suck whatever they could steal or borrow!
     The story ends abruptly with the introduction of the accomplice's wife who had a shop and "swyved" for her sustenance. Her "swyving" identifies her as a prostitute. An alternate 14th-century term would be quene. That's a strong clue for a "queen" bee and is enough to give away the point of the joke.
     All that's lacking is the reaction, the laughter, of another pilgrim who has caught on to the joke.

Fabric windfall!

I'm here to explain my recent absence. About a month ago a ladies group at church received a donation of fabric. That really doesn't say it adequately. The "donation" needed 2 SUVs to transport it! I got involved in sorting it all out, box after box of it. Very little of it was more than 1 yard long. Many "projects" had been started and left unfinished.  hmmmm  It took a bit of ingenuity to figure the most efficient way to use it all.
     So, fast forward a week or so, after the rest was distributed to willing workers, I inherited the  swatches of fabric that were less than 1/2 hard. What do you do with many, MANY pieces of fabric less than 1/2 a hard long? Well, I make quilts. That's where I've been spending my time--in my workshop making quilts. They'll be donated to a charity to be given to those in need. I'm in my element and enjoying myself.
     But I promise I'll soon continue examining the "details" that show the journeyers to be--as Donald Howard says-- "individuals, but never Pilgrims".

Let's ALL squint

Let's pursue Howard's fascinating conclusion we dealt with last time: "The pilgrimage is eerily symbolic when you squint and see the whole." Let's see how much my vision of the tales agrees with Howard's symbolic "idea."
     Scholars generally take bits and pieces of the Tales to present their opinions--you get the feeling that it's just a bunch of fragments strung together. And there is disagreement about the order in which they are strung! It's almost unique for Howard to "see" Chaucer's idea as one unit--an oddly designed unit, but a unit, nevertheless.

Howard insists that Chaucer "had a far more complex idea." (The Idea of the Canterbury Tales)
     Instead of seeing the Tales as a collection Chaucer put together from various sources as just an entertainment, Howard feels a complicated structure behind the surface. This, of course, if you've been reading earlier entries in this blog, is precisely what I see--a splendid, complex creation on two levels.

The "initially announced plan" of two tales going and two on the return did not happen. It was a revelation to be told by Howard to "consider this failure of the plan a feature of the story, not a fact about the author's life"!
     Many theories have been offered to justify the deviation: Chaucer changed his mind, thought better of it, died, etc. Yet Howard's remarkable "idea" says abandoning the plan was intended as part of the creative scheme!

With this "idea" in mind, we can read the book "as it is, not as we think it might have been." Howard proposes--"It is unfinished but complete."
     Fragmented criticisms and "corrective" measures taken by editors leave us with a feeling that the  Tales is a work-in-progress needing improvement.  Howard, instead, claims the "apparent" mistakes are intended. If we do not understand what is given us, it is not Chaucer's "fault." It is our erroneous expectation.

Howard's startling assertion says the details that describe the pilgrim's clothing "characterize them as individuals [but], never as pilgrims."
     This recognition clears the way for the alternate identities I see. Creative details are clues to the hidden personalities--a "man" with wide black nostrils! (Miller 557); a nun whose motto is "Love conquers all"! (Prioress 162) These are some of the features that point to traditional images of celestial figures. Other clues identify dominant stars of zodiac depictions. A favorite of mine is the character whose eyes twinkled in his head as do the stars in the frosty night (Friar 226-27). (See my blog series of entries "Written in the Stars.")

"Not a word is said of any religious observation . . . shrines along the way are never mentioned."
     Again, Howard draws attention to a significant omission.  Not only were shrines not mentioned, but there is not a word of road conditions or weather, and no glimpses of the countryside. This lack allows the covert journey to be celestial rather than earthbound.
     Modern scholars have calculated realistically how long the journey to Canterbury would take. But calculating time spent on the road is contrary to Chaucer's cover scheme that has, by the evidence, no road at all.

Again, Howard guides our thinking. The Canterbury Tales "was experienced differently in the fourteenth century from the way it is experienced now." For example, Chaucer's "visual images would spring naturally from the surfaces of the narratives creating associations and meanings at the deepest level of consciousness"--associations modern readers may not recognize at all. Picture this--As the pilgrims set out, the Host "gathered them as a flock." Were you aware of the shepherd image there?
     Another area of fourteenth-century difference immediately comes to mind: the medieval concept of Time. The Middle Ages saw Time as a circle. Anticipating the closure of the circle--the end of Time--is detailed in the prologue to the final tale. (These details are generally assumed to be an astrological error, but see my blog entries for July 2013.)

We thank Howard for an important medieval mindset: "Life as a pilgrimage, was a commonplace"--a metaphor of life as a one-way journey to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
     A religious tone naturally permeates a pilgrimage. The final tale, the Parson's Tale, is a recognized examination of conscience. To paraphrase the Parson's introduction, "I will tell a tale to knit up this feast and make an end . . .  to this glorious pilgrimage to celestial Jerusalem (46-51).

Howard emphasizes that with "all the talk just outside Canterbury about knitting things up and making an end, one assumes the work is over." How can we ignore that Chaucer intends this to be the end of the journey? Howard boldly asserts that Chaucer, "far from having 'changed his mind,' never had any idea of depicting the return journey. The one-way 'pilgrimage of human life' was a conventional metaphor, and would have been an effective frame for the work."
     In truth, the unit of the Tales is an efficient one-day, one-way journey beginning when the sun rose and ending when the gathering darkness signaled the end of the life of man.

Though Howard recognizes the presence of a sub-structure--the improper "pilgrims," the cohesion of the presentation, the appropriateness of a one-way journey--he does not cross the line to the "eerily symbolic" journey of the celestial figures. Howard's "idea' was produced in the 1970s. My insight was not published until the 1990s. It is my fond hope that, had Donald Howard compared my idea with his, he would no longer squint at something "eerily symbolic" but--with eyes wide-open--could see the splendid allegory that had come into focus.

[The book that explicates the entire allegory can be found at my website  CelebrateChaucer.com  under "Downloads."]

Donald R. Howard: the "idea" man

Scholars so often assume that the plan for the Canterbury Tales is the Host's proposal in the General Prologue--two stories going and two stories on the return--and that Chaucer did not complete it for want of time or interest or because he changed his mind. Howard's thesis, instead, is that "he had a far more complex idea and he did in large measure execute it." (The Idea of the Canterbury Tales)
     It was a revelation to be told to "consider this failure of the plan a feature of the story, not a fact about the author's life"! Then we can read the book "as it is, not as we think it might have been." Howard proposes--"It is unfinished but complete." After noting a litany of omissions, Howard's conclusion is fascinating: "The pilgrimage is eerily symbolic when you squint and see the whole."
     Critics often see passages difficult to interpret as lines Chaucer must have meant to delete. We need to give the poet his due; we need to leave room for genius. We need to accept that "Chaucer did not need to finish the tales; what he wrote accomplishes what he needed to accomplish."
     Howard guides our thinking by indicating that the Canterbury Tales "was experienced differently in the fourteenth century from the way it is experienced now." For example, Chaucer's "visual images would spring naturally from the surfaces of the narratives creating associations and meanings at the deepest level of consciousness"--associations modern readers may not recognize at all. The detailed description of the pilgrim's clothing "characterize them as individuals [but], never as pilgrims." Typical rituals were associated with pilgrimages, but "not a word is said of any religious observation . . . shrines along the way are never mentioned."
     It has been a modern endeavor to calculate realistically how long the journey to Canterbury would take. For centuries, however, the idea of pilgrimage "had the metaphorical significance of a one-way journey to the Heavenly Jerusalem: the actual trip was a symbol of human life, and the corollary, that life is a pilgrimage, was a commonplace." This pilgrim journey takes place unrealistically in one day: beginning when the sun rose and ending as the gathering darkness signals the end of the life of man.
     The stories are not what makes the Canterbury Tales so remarkable. It is Chaucer's genius for creating the world of the pilgrimage that is unique and captivating. The poet "adds complexity by having his alter ego perform as the actual teller of all the tales."
     Rather than fragmenting the author's role, as many scholars do, Donald Howard accepts all possibilities regarding Chaucer the narrator as "the man, the pilgrim, or the poet, we never know positively which we are hearing and are not meant to know."
     The Canterbury Tales were not finished at the time of Chaucer's death. It is often assumed he would have changed or added much. Why has the Canterbury Tales been approached this way? "Because of the statement in the General Prologue that each pilgrim is to tell two tales on either leg of the journey. And yet this is not Chaucer's statement; it is the Host's, as reported by the narrator."
     As we arrive at the intro to the final Tale, it should be difficult to ignore "all the talk just outside Canterbury about knitting things up and making an end, one assumes the work is over." It appears that Chaucer, "far from having 'changed his mind,' never had any idea of depicting the return journey. The one-way 'pilgrimage of human life' was a conventional metaphor, and would have been an effective frame for the work."

Thanks to Donald Howard's "idea" we can read through the Tales without the distraction of nagging questions about its oddities. We can simply see many as the yet unrevealed genius of Geoffrey Chaucer.