Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales Fragment I

As part of my review process, I'll be taking quicker notes of texts I'm more familiar with. For The Canterbury Tales, I'll be keeping myself to a paragraph per prologue/tale for sanity's sake. 

General Prolouge: 

I feel like there's not much I can say about the General Prologue that hasn't already been said six ways to Sunday. The classic approach to this section is all about estates satire, pulling from the three estates model, but several of the texts I've been reading of late comment that Chaucer's pilgrims do not quite fit that model, many of them occupying liminal spaces between two or all three "estates." This section is of course intriguing to read for the descriptions of the pilgrims, and I feel like I notice new things every time I come back to it. This reading, for example, was flavored by recent scholarship I've read, so the Merchant's "Flemish hat" really stood out to me, calling into question whether the Merchant is Flemish, which is possible, or just affecting Flemish behavior. The question, of course, is why in either case? I'm finding the reading from Butterfield appealing, that this putting on of Flemish apparel is affective behavior for mercantilism, but there are several possibilities for reading each pilgrim's description. 

The Knight's Tale:

Good ol' Knight's Tale. Arcite and Palamon are imprisoned together but, upon seeing Emily from their prison cell, both fall in love with her which eventually leads to rivalry. This tale involves a fair amount of romance elements, in particular the "violence" with which seeing the lady strikes each knight. This could tie to medieval medical treatises that suggest that sight works by small particles of what is being seen actually entering the observer's eyes. Regardless, events eventually lead to Arcite and Palamon having an epic battle for Emily's hand, without any consideration of what Emily desires. The conflict really seems to be less about Emily and more as a matter of contention for these two male characters to mediate their homosocial bonds. Regardless, Arcite wins the fight but falls, taking a mortal wound. He tells Emily to marry Palamon, and then dies. It's cool though; every time Palamon kisses Emily he'll have to remember Arcite, which seems to be kind of the point anyway. 

The Miller's Tale:

The Miller's Tale might be the most read of The Canterbury Tales, which I imagine is due to its regular anthologization and the desperation to assign texts that undergrads will actually read. A clever clerk, desiring to sleep with the carpenter's, his landlord, wife, Alisoun, develops a plan to convince said carpenter that a great flood will once again sweep the earth. The carpenter places himself in a boot in the inn's rafters, and while the carpenter thus sleeps the clerk is able to have his way with Alisoun. However, another local, Absolon, also desires Alisoun and comes a wooing while the clerk is still with Alisoun. After much playing of fun with Absolon, resulting in the kissing of an ass while it farts, Absolon returns, furious, with a hot poker from the blacksmith's shop and shoves it on the spot the clerk offers up for kissing. The bawdy and fablieux quality of this tale is heavily entertaining, but it says a great deal about the social cross section of the pilgrims, especially to have this tale immediately follow the Knight's. Also, the specific details about the clerk seem like specific digs at those who've engaged in similar educational pursuits. In sum, fun stuff.

The Reeve's Tale:

The Reeve's Tale comes in direct response to the Miller, as the Reeve takes offense at the depiction of clerk's in The Miller's Tale, and this tale shows a thieving miller getting his comeuppance. It seems somewhat straightforward: two students show up to get their grain milled, and realize they've been hoodwinked. They then set out to repay the crafty miller, by staying the night and having their way with his wife and daughter. With the daughter's help they even manage to leave with a fair amount of grain, thus fully "queting" the miller. This is the first of the pilgrims who reacts to another tale and seems to cater their tale accordingly, which is interesting when considering the frame narrative as a whole. 

The Cook's Tale: 

The Cook's Tale is more interesting for its attempt at one-up-manship than the tale itself. After the Reeve concludes his tale, the Cook basically answers with "you think that miller got off bad? Let me tell you..." The Cook starts up a tale involving a great deal of apparent ribaldry, or at least the potential thereof, but never finishes. There's a fair bit of scholarly contention over whether the tale was intended to end unfinished or not, but this is in the end all we ever get of the Cook; the host calls on him later to tell a tale, but he's too drunk to do so. 

Julian of Norwich, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich. The Shewings of Julian of Norwich. The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. Ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

It's been a while since I've read Julian of Norwich, but again I'm generally convinced that much of this text can be boiled to do this phrase: "Synne is behovabil, but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shal be wele" (938-939). In other words, be cool guys. Julian's text follows many of the characteristics of late medieval mystics, including the personal connection to Christ. This in particular stood out to me in this reading, with Julian's extended description of Christ's suffering and how this ties directly to her personal revelations. Furthermore, the language of love and protection from God and Christ takes on the language of physical proximity. In her metaphor of God's love physically surrounding us, for example, God's love ends up going deeper than clothing, skin, flesh, or even bone. God's love embraces us, Julian included, deeper than any mere physical presence, emphasizing an amazingly close connection to the mystic herself. 

I find Julian, as she depicts herself in this text, to be an interesting figure. Her wish for sickness and wounds in order to better understand Christ are interesting, as is the manner in which she interprets her miraculous recovery. Of course, the bordering universal salvation components here are also intriguing. Julian's metaphor of the hazelnut stood out to me on this read through, as a single item of creation that, while small and seemingly insignificant, holds its own share of God's love. As God loves this hazelnut, according to Julian's logic, so too will he keep and not destroy that nut, suggesting a general sense that regardless of anything else God will look after even the smallest part of his creation, including us. 

Nicole Oresme, Le livre de Yconomique d‘Aristote.

Menut, Albert Douglas. Maistre Nicole Oresme: Le livre de Yconomique d‘Aristote. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1957. Print.

Based on the title of the text, the above image may seem out of place. But having read the pseudo-Aristotelian Economics, or at least the English translation of Oresme's French translation of the Latin and Greek sources, marriage is really what this book is about. A relatively short text, the Economics was assumed by medieval audiences to have been written by Aristotle. The text itself does not immediately belie such a consideration, being structured something like the Nichomachean Ethics, and it sets itself up as a followup to matters left unsaid in the Politics. Specifically, this text opens by discussing how the management of a state and the management of household differ, and that more thorough discussion of a household is required. The very term economics literally refers to just this, coming from the Greek "oikos," or house. Thus once again, economics as a term has a rather different connotation for this text than in its modern context. Interestingly, the lion's share of the text deals with the specifics and necessities of marriage, considering why such unions are virtuous and beneficial, how they benefit the household specifically, and how the manager of the household (i.e. the husband) is best to manage his wife. 

Much of this follows somewhat standard misogynistic rhetoric, but what interests me is the ties to economics (in the modern context). In the first part, the text discusses the role of children in marriage, suggesting that they are an investment towards the future who can care for the household and their parents later in life. Secondly, the text describes the necessity for the husband to carefully choose, nurture, and shape his wife, as she is considered to have been bought at great cost and is directly compared to the arable land for his seed and is thus a natural resource that needs to be properly cultivated. In both of these examples, the specific language used (at least in Oresme's French) utilizes heavy economic metaphor, emphasizing the connection to economic matters. On top of all of this, Oresme himself is of interest for my economic reading, as he wrote De Moneta, a text largely concerned with the economics and currency of late medieval Europe. It is, therefore, of specific relevance to me that Oresme himself provided a translation of the Economics, something that perhaps ties to the larger medieval representation of marriage in economic metaphor which I have been seeing in various instances of Middle English Literature. 

Judith Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender & Household in Brigstock Before the Plague.

Bennett, Judith. Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender & Household in Brigstock Before the Plague. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Print.

Bennett's text aims to complicate assumptions about the state of women in late medieval England. Specifcally, Bennett plots out the narrative, initially established by early feminist scholars of later periods, that suggests women of the countryside enjoyed more pronounced agency and equality than their later, urban, or aristocratic counterparts. This narrative contends that increased urbanized and industrialized England shrunk the agency of women, some studies even going so far as to describe medieval England as a "golden age" for peasant women. Bennett calls out scholars making this claim Bennett's text seeks to complicate this narrative with a case study of Brigstock, a late medieval manor. Bennett employs this focused case study to avoid some of the issues of scholarship that overly privileges urban and aristocratic narratives of women, largely due to the simple existence of larger documentary evidence. Rather than suggesting her single case study can change this narrative wholesale, Bennett adds this as one of many such studies necessary to provide a stronger perspective of the lives of women in the medieval English countryside.

Ultimately, Bennett argues that the narrative of peasant women in this period cannot be boiled down to simple overviews like the "golden age" perspective, even within a set area such as Briggstock. Her research reveals, for example, that the subordination of women could often have more to do with marital status than gender. Married women were often assumed to be legal dependents of their husbands', or the heads of household, and therefore legal matters involving a wife were often delegated through her husband. Yet, Bennett also notes that subordination was less pronounced among widows and maidens; these two groups often held financial assets separate from the household, the widow in the form of inheritance and the maiden in side trade earned towards a future dowry. Despite their lessened subordination, however, Bennett also points to a culture of public subordination, where women in public arenas were culturally subordinated to men, and in the medieval English countryside very little in the way of private life existed. While a bit dated now, Bennett's text is an interesting look at the role of women in medieval England and a model of how to challenge scholarly assumptions.

Ardis Butterfield, The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years War.

Butterfield, Ardis. The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.

Butterfield's monograph pushes back against much of the weight of scholarship on the relationship between the French and English during the Hundred Years War by ultimately arguing that due to a shared language and literary culture these two nations may not have been as antagonistic as is often suggested. Butterfield's preface draws out the narrative on the subject, that tensions rose over the course of the war to generally divide the two nations, even to the extent that French becomes less popular. Instead, Butterfield suggests that French maintains a great deal of its importance in England during this period, and that the peaceful periods during the war were often involved great deals of cultural and economic exchange across the channel. 

Of particular interest to me is Butterfield's sixth chapter, in which she considers the role of "trading tongues" in London. Rather than focusing exclusively on the role of French in the London marketplace, although she does trace this out for the reader, Butterfield plots out how a wide range of languages and cultures intersected and interacted on a regular basis in the international port of London. Flemish, for example, is both a vital language for merchants exchanging with Flemish traders and leads to a particular cultural cache in regards to exchange, which Butterfield reads into Chaucer's Merchant's "Flemish hat." While the multilingual nature of trade in the London marketplace is an interesting perspective and further flavors my reading of trade in late medieval England, the turn of argument made for The Shipman's Tale in this chapter is somewhat odd. Butterfield reads the interplay between the merchant, wife, and friar in the tale as an allegory of the deceptive exchange in place between the French and English, which Butterfield ties together due to the somewhat incestuous metaphor, to borrow her phrase, of "cozyn" between these characters. I find this reading interesting, but it does feel like it needs more parsing out rather than occupying a relatively small section of this chapter. 

As a whole, Butterfield's book is an interesting and important, I think, reconsideration of several scholarly assumptions, suggesting overall that modern critics should rethink how they read Anglo-French relations in late medieval Europe. 

Raymond Williams,“Literature.”

Williams, Raymond. “Literature.” The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. New York, NY: Norton, 2010. Print.

In this selection, which I did not realize was quite so short till I cracked open the text, Williams is predominately concerned with the designation and definition of "Literature," namely in how literature as a genre was constructed and how since it has become a privileged form of media. While a good deal of this section tracks the creation of the concept of literature, what I found rather relevant was Williams careful questioning of literature as a concept. According to Williams, shortly following its inception, literature becomes a concept that is self perpetuating and lauded for being literature. The problem with this approach is that doing so alienates the text from its sociohistoric context, making the text more important than the culture that has spawned it (of course, Williams also has some issues with the concept of culture. 

One reason this stood out to me is due to recent conversations with my adviser on the labeling of ideas and terms. He's been calling me out on what he calls "placeholders," or terms/phrases I'm using to move a point forward that, in the end, do not contain the real meaning I want or need there. One term, for example, is "commodification," a term that featured quite heavily in my MA thesis and found its way into my brief prospectus draft. My adviser pointed out that the ideas at play seem to involve more than simply commodification, and simply using that term was to a certain extent limiting my argument. Furthermore, he advised avoiding placeholders such as this as they appear to make a term more defined and concrete yet, in the end, actually make it more abstract. Reading Williams' section was like hearing this advice in a slightly different form, which makes sense considering my adviser's knowledge and use of Marxist and Hegelian theory, a large part of the reason I wanted him to be my adviser. 

Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History

Patterson, Lee. Chaucer and the Subject of History. U of Wisconson P, 1991. Print.

In many ways, I'm still trying to wrap my head around Patterson's book, and I think there will be a great deal of parsing ahead before I properly discern the arguments therein. In sum, Patterson is interested in Chaucer's use of subjectivity in history, which Patterson uses as a guide for his readings through several of Chaucer's texts. In his chapter on Troilus and Criseyde, for example, Patterson suggests that within the historical setting of Troy Chaucer has formed three characters whose respective subjectivities disallow them to share a proper or realistic understanding of their situation or the possibilities before them. In the chapter on the Wife of Bath, Patterson suggests that the Wife is her own subjective identity, defying authority by her very presence even while validating that which she defies. What was most interesting for me, however, was Patterson's chapter on the Man of Law's Tale and the Shipman's Tale.

In his chapter on the Man of Law's Tale and the Shipman's Tale, Patterson considers the role of commerce within Chaucer's work. Specifically, Patterson suggests that the world of commerce hangs over the bourgeois identities of these two figures and their tales. For the Shipman's Tale in particular, Patterson argues that the concern of money and exchange features explicitly in the narrative. For Patterson, the "magical" production of profit from the exchange of the same amount of currency, that eventually makes it back to its original owner, reflects a general mystery about the nature of market exchanges. Patterson teases this argument out further to suggest that this reflects a larger concern with the process of commodification that market transactions inevitably seem to lead to. To read this back into the Shipman's Tale, the merchant's wife has sold her own sexual goods at a set amount, thus making her body an exchangeable commodity. This, according to Patterson, leads to an ideological concern that commodification removes any value but exchange value, reducing people to the same worth as expensive (or inexpensive) objects. Patterson also traces the economic aspects of the marital markets in this tale, making the suggestion that the merchant accepts his wife's word as credit and, from this point, that Chaucer constructs a mercantile identity that, aware of the necessary contingent nature of market exchanges, constructs a "reliance upon goodwill" (358). 

In general I found the above chapter interesting, but I would perhaps like to see some of these puts put in conversation with more current scholarship (an inevitably unfair request for reading any source from the past). For example, Patterson's discussion of the "private lives" that women lead in the introduction would, I think, be largely challenged by more recent work on the role of women in public marketplaces and trades. Furthermore, while Patterson's unpacking of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is good, this section of the argument at large would perhaps be informed by more recent work on medieval economic thought. It is not that Patterson's points have been outright countered, but he at times presents a monochromatic perception of the economic state of late medieval England rather than, as work such as Diana Wood's has shown, a spectrum of opinion and perception of money and merchants.