Chaucer
Some
Lecture Notes
A framework
narrative is a story (the frame story) that contains another story (the framed
story. Usually, the storyteller of
the framed story is a character in the frame narrative.
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BoccaccioÕs
Decameron is an
Italian framework narrative set during the plague. A group of aristocrats have shut themselves up to avoid the
plague and tell stories to pass the time. This work probably influenced
Chaucer; it may have given him the idea for a framework narrative.
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A Thousand
and One Nights is
made up of tales from Persia, India, Egypt, and France. Shahrazad tells stories to forestall
her impending execution and heal a hurt king.
According to the sociolinguist William Labov, effective storytellers follow a pattern. The pattern is complex and detailed; below is a brief summary.
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Abstract: An abstract provides a brief
overview of the story; it asks permission to preempt the conversation.
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Orientation: The orientation provides the
listener, the audience, with their relationship to the time, place, and actors
of the story.
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Complicating
Action: The events of the story in the
chronological order in which they occurred make up the complicating action.
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Evaluations: The storyteller places value on the vents by juxtaposing,
contrasting, real and potential events.
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Coda: The coda ends the narrative,
returning the conversation to the present. The coda may also contain the theme or purpose of the
narrative.
Profane: Profane does not necessary mean vulgar or obscene. In studies of comparative religions, it
refers to that which is not considered sacred, religious, divine, by the
believers.
Sacred: Sacred refers to that which is
associated, touches on, the divine.
It is other than ordinary.
The sacred is not a part of the every day world; it marks a spot or
point at which the divine is experienced.
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As you
read the Canterbury Tales, note how the storytellers transform the sacred into the
profane and the profane into the sacred (sacralization). The pilgrimage is a holy trip, a
religious act; it is sacred.
However, to some degree, it is profaned by the contest of the
storytelling. Throughout the
story, the two intersect.
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In the
Tales they have
supposedly stepped for a moment out of their lives (the profane): they are not
working; they are worshipping (the pilgrimage is a form of worship). Because the pilgrims are what they do,
they cannot escape their occupations.
Notice the social and economic implications of the pilgrimage; in some
ways, they are reflected in the lives of the religious characters of the tale.
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ÒChaucer
gives us the whole span of existence from Heaven to mud on the roadÓ
(Brewer). The two are distinct but
not separate.
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Ode is a lyric poem, dealing with a
single theme.
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Satire blends humor and wit with censor; a
satirist criticizes through humor, calling indirectly for a reformation.
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In indirect
satire, the
characters actions and speech is the basis of the criticism; they unknowingly
condemn themselves.
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In The
Revolt of 1381 the
British peasants marched on London demanding lower taxes, an abolition of all
aristocracy other than the crown, and more extensive rights.
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The
pilgrims are headed to the tomb of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Becket was a close personal friend and
political counselor of Henry II.
Henry installed Becket as the Archbishop of Canterbury; however, when
Becket refused to acquiesce to HenryÕs demands, he was murdered by a group of
nights. His tomb quickly became a
popular destination for pilgrims.
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The plague hit England from 1348-9.
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The
fundamental distinction in English society was between those who were gentile and those who were not.
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The
pilgrims are made up of three economic classes, the three estates: land, the Church, and trade.
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Estates
literature is made
up of satirical descriptions of various classes and occupations.
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The
tale is a microcosm of society.
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Possibly,
only the knight, the clerk, the parson and the ploughman are represented with
full approval; these three represent the three ancient orders (warriors,
clergy, laborers).
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ChaucerÕs
English is Middle English.
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The
chief difference is pronunciation.
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Syntax
is more flexible (A yeoman had he.)
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Sir
Gawain and the
poems of The Pearl Poet, composed around the same time as Canterbury Tales, were written in a Northwest
Midland Dialect. The Pearl Poet relies on alliteration (repetition of a key consonant); Chaucer
relies on rhyme.
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He
mixes oral and literate styles of composition.
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OralÑrepetition
of Òand.Ó
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The
tales answer one another.
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The narrator
addresses his audience at various points.
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LiterateÑ10
syllable, five-stress couplet