The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer

Note: this only deals with a handful of the stories, not the full work.


I think that I read some of the Canterbury Tales while in high school, but that was some time ago.  I'm sure we focused on the Middle English and how close it is to the modern stuff.  (I went with a translation and peeked at the original language from time to time.)  I doubt that we focused on the quality of the story telling.  I don't remember if we talked about the window that Chaucer presented of his times.
Chaucer opens with a prologue in which he introduces all of the party.  They are on a pilgrimage to Canterbury.  A holy pilgrimage.  He writes some lines about each, that makes each one a specific person.  They come from different levels of society and with many kinds of jobs (some that are virtually unknown today). 
Their host suggests that they pass the time by telling stories.  They agree and draw lots to see who will go first.  The Knight does and he tells a story of courtly love.  It's a story of two brothers who fall in love with the same woman.  There is conflict and death and a certain beauty to it.
This is followed by the Miller who tells one of the dirtiest stories that I've ever read.  Probably the only thing to challenge it in all of the Great Books is certain parts of Rabelais.  I won't relate it here, but seek it out if you're curious.  I literally laughed out loud.
The other sections I read (Reeve, Wife of Bath, Friar, Summoner and Pardoner) were all very good.  Very interesting.  Very earthy.  Chaucer presents very real people, for good or ill.  His 'holy' people are not necessarily holy, for instance.  In fact, it's hard not to think that this caused him some trouble.  Chaucer did not finish the work but he did add an apology at the end of what he did finish.


Years ago, way back in Year One, I hypothesized that one of the strongest strands of Western Philosophy is the willingness to call out the powers that be.  Chaucer does just that.  He must have been unpopular amongst the powerful, especially the church powerful, of his time.  Well, probably publicly unpopular.  I bet that the bishops all had private copies of the Canterbury tales that they would read when they wanted a chuckle...

Upcoming

Next up is selections from Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'.  The suggested readings are:


Prologue
Knight's Tale
Miller's Prologue and Tale
Reeve's Prologue and Tale
Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
Friar's Prologue and Tale
Summoner's Prologue and Tale
Pardoner's Prologue and Tale


I think that I read a bit of the Canterbury Tales back in high school, but if so I don't remember any of it.  This will all be new to me.  I'll be reading a translation.  (Feel free to use the comments to tell me why I shouldn't.  I'd rather enjoy the story rather than puzzle out the meanings.)


I meant to have a post up this weekend that would have gathered the various Shakespeare things I read for the Great Books program, but that didn't happen.  Look for it later.  After that, I'm only one play behind in actually writing about what I've read.  (For the first time in 2016, I took last week off from reading a new one.) 
I also need to write about Epictetus and St Augustine.  Expect those later in the week or in the next few weeks.  Short review, I found them both worthwhile but with caveats on each.


More to come!

The Trojan War in Literature

I mentioned that the Trojan War has been active in Western Literature.  Here is a good list from Wikipedia to show that.  It begins with Homer, of course, then mentions several poems by Saphho and others.  It lists no less than 17 different plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and others.  And that's just the Greeks!  The Romans talked about it with Virgil and Ovid.  Several medieval authors took a crack at it and the English are represented by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe and others.  This is an amazing amount of writing.  The only rival in terms of quality and quantity in Western literature is the Bible.

What's the intersection for our reading list?

• In Year Two we read The 'Iliad' first and the followed that up with the works of Aeschylus, 'Agamemnon', 'the Libation Bearers' and 'Eumenides'.
• Year Three has brought us Chaucer's tale of lost love, 'Troilus and Cressida'.
• Year Four will start out with Euripides.  Four different plays, among them 'Trojan Women'.
• In Year Five we'll cover Virgil with 'The Aeneid'.
• Next up, Year Six, we'll go back to Homer with 'The Odyssey'.
• And then a break until Year Ten when we open with Sophocles 'Ajax' and 'Electra'.  

That's nine different pieces, or about 5% of the total works in this reading list.  That's a lot.

Troilus and Cressida - Chaucer

The story of Troilus and Cressida comes to us from the Trojan war.  I doubt that any conflict has created more pure literature in Western civilization.  I don't remember either Troilus or Cressida being mentioned by Homer in the Iliad but that fault might be mine.
So what happens?  Our story opens with a priest from Troy named Calchas.  He has forseen that the Greeks will win and Troy will be burned.  He decides to change over to the winning side.  The Trojans are understandably upset by this.  His daughter Cressida was left behind in disgrace.  Hector took her into his house to shield her honor.
Next we meet Troilus, one of the sons of the Trojan king Priam.  He falls for Cressida at a distance.  His love is so strong that instead of asking for her hand, he sulks in agony.  Pandarus, a fellow soldier and Cressida's uncle, finds him and eventually finds out why he is upset.
And then very little happens.  Pandarus tells Cressida about Troilus' love.  She won't commit herself to him because she knows that men are flighty.  Troilus writes a letter.  Pandarus contrives to have them meet.  Cressida falls for him.  Pandarus makes a plan for them to spend a night together.  After much, much hesitation, they do.  (The actions in this paragraph take some 500 stanzas of poetry.)
Then the twists come.  Calchas asks that Cressida be given to the Greeks as part of a prisoner exchange.  Troilus is of course opposed but he can't publicly proclaim it.  He goes to seize Cressida (if she's ok with it).  She declines.  Instead, she'll go to the Greeks but escape ten days later and come back to him.
Alas, she can't escape.  Ten days later, she is convinced by a Greek commander, Diomede, to become his lover.  Eventually Troilus realizes that she isn't coming back.  Later he dies in battle.

Let me start by saying that this wasn't my favorite piece of writing.  Epic poetry isn't quite my taste.  Though, 'Paradise Lost', coming up in August, is quite good.  Maybe I would have enjoyed this more if it was set out in a narrative, though frankly I doubt it.  If it were a modern novel, I'd say that it suffers from serious pacing issues.  The first three books were a slog.
Language barrier?  Some, maybe.  I used the version put out in the Great Books volume 22.  It has the middle English stanzas next to a translation by (I'm not making this up) George Phillip Krapp.  I mostly read the translation but bounced back and forth.  It wasn't too hard to figure out things like this:

But ye loveres, that bathen in gladnesse,
If any drope of pitee in you be,
Remembreth yow on passed hevinesse
That he han felt, and on the adversitee
Of othere folk, and thenketh how that ye
Han felt that Love dorste yow displease;
Or ye han wonne him with to greet an ese.

It may help to try and read it out loud.  (The spell-check in Blogger hates it.)  The translation:

But O ye lovers, bathed in bliss always,
If any drops of pity in you be,
Recall the griefs gone by of other days,
And think sometimes upon the adversity
Of other folk, forgetting not that ye
Have felt yourselves Love's power to displease,
Lest ye might win Love's prize with too great ease.

It's not hard to look back and forth and figure it out.  I did this mostly in seeing how certain phrases would translate out.  The translation seems to be very good in terms of staying right with the story.  This Krapp job wasn't a crap job.

Reading for June

Just one:


June
Chaucer: Troilus and Cressida link

I'm thinking of throwing Shakespeare's version of the story (link) in there for comparison sake.