Room 272

We come to the second half of this debate between these two shady characters. Topics for response papers are open as usual. As in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, “glossing” is a central theme here: the friar in the tale (as opposed to the pilgrim) exclaims that “Glosinge is a glorious thing, certeyn.” You might consider the different kinds of glossing that we find in the tale. If intention is the key to The Friar’s Tale, then interpretation, or more specifically manipulation, is the key here.

By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, Chaucer himself has commented on our little discussion here. Remember, his blog is linked under the blogroll on the right-hand side of the page.

As we approach the end of our discussion on LOTR, we should address directly a matter that we have touched on already: how do we read race in Tolkien?

From his letters, we know that he strongly objected to what he called “racialism,” but what sorts of racial assumptions are implicit in the world that he has built? Some critics have given him credit for creating a “multi-cultural” alliance, but what of those orcs (an irredeemable race), the “squint-eyed and sallow-faced” ruffians, the swarthy southerners and easterlings who serve Mordor, and the inherent virtue of the bloodlines of Westernesse?

Yes, I know that he was working from medieval sources that do not treat questions of race as we do, but can we really let him off the hook for this when we are ready to accept the anachronistically bourgeois and English hobbits, the soldier-speech of the orcs, and the fascist undertones of Saruman’s discourse? Can he have it both ways? And can we really accept this world as an allegorization of good vs. evil when Tolkien himself so strenuously objected to allegory? And even if accept the presence of allegory, are we really so ready to accept a racial typology for good and evil?

The point here is not to condemn or redeem Tolkien, but rather to contemplate seriously the racial paradigm that we accept if we read this book uncritically.

The chaos of the web, while attractive in some ways, can be irritating, as it continues to reflect a deteriorating respect for intellectual property and the ethics of discourse. These things matter to those of us who write and teach for a living. Within 48 hours of my post on annotated bibliographies, I find the entire post cut and pasted—without attribution—here.

(Irony alert: note that the item immediately above my unattributed post is “A choice-of-law rule for conflicts involving stolen cultural property.”)

Paul is our winner, as you can see here. A noble poem in his honor:

Our Paul is a gem of a man,
The Miller’s rude verses he scanned.
He’s proved he does know
This wild fabliau,
Which would in some classes be banned.

Just to clarify, the Friar tells a tale about a Summoner, and the Summoner tells a tale about a Friar. If you remember, we have a preface to the “cutting contest” at the end of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue. As always, response topics are open. One thing that you might consider is the way the teller plays this tale for laughs. Devils and damnation are supposed to be serious business, aren’t they? Take a look at the funny moments and consider what they imply not only about summoners, but also about the narrator.

As promised, here is our first practice question. In a few sentences describe the context and significance of the following quotation. (Answers from my Chaucer students only, please. Others will be cast into a flaming pit.)

She was a prymerole, a piggesnye,

For any lord to leggen in his bedde,

Or yet for any good yeman to wedde.

This post is mostly for my Chaucer students, but the basic ideas hold for my EH 490/590 students as well. In the next few days I will be posting on further steps in the process, such as finding the sources, writing the annotations, etc. Here are some general points on choosing topics and evaluating sources:

1. Choosing a topic. You will not be compiling an exhaustive bibliography for this assignment. As you will learn from just a brief perusal of reference sources, there is tremendous amount of Chaucerian scholarship out there. Therefore, you will need to find some way of narrowing your topic so that you are not just choosing eight random articles. There are many ways to do this. One way is to find a recent article on a topic that interests you (say, constructions of gender in The Man of Law’s Tale). It will likely help you to narrow your topic by giving you a sense of the history of the scholarly debate.

For example, right now I am looking at a 2002 essay on The Man of Law’s Tale by Kathy Lavezzo. A couple of page into the article, I find this sentence: “More recently, literary critics such as Susan Schibanoff have linked Custance’s alterity both to her gender and the ethnic difference represented by Syria in the tale” (151, see works cited page). In the corresponding footnote I find reference to articles on the subject by Schibanoff, Christopher Bracken, Nicholas Birns, Kathleen Davis, and Kathryn L. Lynch.

Of course, you will also want to use the search tools that we looked at like the MLA, SAC, and “Essential Chaucer” bibliographies.

There are other ways to narrow your project; for example, you might choose a particular chronological period, a particular theoretical perspective, the works of a major scholar, etc.

2. Evaluating sources. This is a difficult issue these days, because electronic sources are proliferating at an astonishing pace. For the purposes of this project you will want to concentrate on peer-reviewed articles and books. Most major scholarly journals are peer-reviewed, and the journal’s entry in the MLA bibliography will tell you for sure. Why is this important? The peer-review process is a system through which an editor sends an article to a number of experts in the particular field (usually two or three readers in the case of humanities journals), who evaluate, give feedback, and recommend whether or not to publish it. While peer-review is by no means a perfect system, it is meant to provide some sort of assurance that the piece has scholarly value of some kind. You do not have the same kind of assurance when you use most informational or encyclopedic web sites, though some peer-reviewed journals are now online.

. . . by popular request. Here are a few points that might help you to prepare for the next test. In this post I will cover the short answer/identification section. I will cover essays in another post.

1. Note-taking in class. Remember, there will never appear on the test a passage that we did not cover in class. So, think about the way you take notes. There is nothing to stop you from marking passages and noting directly onto your book the context and significance of each passage that we discuss.

2. Textual details. One of the skills that I am testing is your ability to relate textual details to larger thematics. For example, most everyone got correct the “crowned A” on the Prioress’s brooch. This is a textual detail that relates to the larger themes of vocational expectations and caritas vs. cupiditas. So as we discuss passages in class, note the ways in which we relate these details to larger issues.

3. Verse form. Note the verse form of each reading assignment, and this will help you to narrow your options when it comes to identification. For example, if you had noted that The Book of the Duchess is not set in the heroic couplets that we see in the first fragment, then you would have been able to differentiate these passages from the others.

4. Read in Middle English. Translations are helpful sometimes, particularly when you are approaching a text for the first time, but it is absolutely vital that you read the Middle English carefully. Go back and look at our vocabulary lists; use your glossary; write in the margins—anything to help you read Chaucer’s language.

Over the next couple of weeks I will post some practice passages. Post your answers under “comments” if you want to practice. Don’t consult your text. We are on the honor system here. Whoever posts the first “perfect” answer for each passage will receive a prize: I will compose a poem in praise of your name and post it on the blog! (Just what you always wanted . . . )

All semester we have discussed the relationship between landscape and art. As we discussed Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia during our first meeting, many of you said that the music evoked images of fields and forests. In this eloquent excerpt from his forthcoming book, Alex Ross describes the bleak landscape of East Anglia and its powerful presence in the work of another English composer:

Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: Britten excerpt

Here is the much promised update:

Oct. 31st: LOTR, book 6.

November 7th: LOTR appendices (especially A and F); William Morris, The House of the Wolfings (chapters 1-14).

November 14th: The House of the Wolfings (remainder); Kalevala (cantos 1-5).

After this we will continue with the Kalevala and begin the Silmarillion. Remember to email me your project proposal by Oct. 31st. The projects are due on Nov. 21st.

We have much to cover tomorrow evening. Please leave your comments here if you have particular things that you want to discuss concerning tomorrow’s readings (LOTR through book 5 and The Homecoming).