Geoffrey Chaucer

1
Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales

• The Wife of Baths Tale

2
Geoffrey Chaucers Life

• emerging middle class born into mercantile
  family educated served Court as Squire
  traveled as diplomat
• Born in London 1340 died 1400
• Work as a poet more of a sideline / hobby for him
• Patronized by royalty

3
Literary Scene in Europe 1350

• Dante has introduced the idea of poetry in the
  vernacular for serious epics
• Divine Comedy
• Latin still preferred for serious work Virgils
  Aeneid considered best epic Latin for religious
  and diplomatic and scientific writing

4
Italy cultural center of Europe

• In addition of Dantes Divine Comedy
• Petrarchs lyric sonnet sequence and letters in
  Italian
• First writer to make himself his feelings the
  centerpiece of his writing
• Boccacios Decameron
• Collection of 100 popular tales told over ten
  days by ten people trying to while away time in
  quarantine against the plague

5
Literature in verncaulars

• Long tradition of romances poetry written in
  vernaculars about knights and their adventures
• Arthurian adventures
• Celtic tradition focus on Gawain Quenevere
  fairly unsympathetic
• French tradition focus on Launcelot and the
  love triangle
• England has both traditions

6
Popular literature

• Literature in vernacular because consumed by
  ordinary folks
• Ballads and songs
• Religious dramas
• Lyric poems celebrating seasons, religious
  figures, natural world
• Robin Hood tales
• Riddles, animal fables

7
Chaucers innovation

• Attempts serious works in English in a culture
  which
• Still sees French as the language of the
  aristocracy
• Has no tradition of high culture in the English
  language (after the Norman Conquest)
• C tries to do in Londons English what had been
  done in Florentine Italian

8
Canterbury Tales all else

• Today, Canterbury Tales is the masterpiece of
  Chaucers work
• His creation of tales and tellers that seem to
  match/suit the tales seems very modern the idea
  that a persons values predict his literary
  tastes
• Chaucers long narratives are much more like the
  work of other medievals, and were more popular in
  his lifetime
• Chaucer dies before completing Canterbury Tales,
  his last work

9
Premise behind Canterbury Tales

• A crowd of pilgrims meet at the Tabard Inn in
  London all are on their way to Canterbury (not
  far) on horseback to see tomb of St Thomas à
  Becket
• To while away the time, they agree to tell two
  tales on the way there and two on the way back
• The best tale wins a free dinner
• Chaucer doesnt even manage a single tale for
  each of the 28 pilgrims

10
Intellectual Property and 1400

• No concept of intellectual property in the 13th
  Century
• Chaucer adapts stories from many sources for his
  Tales
• He deliberately chooses a series of sub-genres
  known to his audience
• Romances
• Beast fables
• Fairy stories

11
Wife of Bath

• Bath is a small city on the west coast known for
  its cloth industry it is a port city and close
  to Wales and the west of England (sheep country)
  so it supports people who spin and weave wool
  into cloth and sell it to the continent
• Weaving cloth can be a feminine occupation many
  more women engaged in mercantile activities in
  1400 than in later centuries

12
The Wife of Bath is she like or unlike a typical
medieval woman?

• Medievals did not denounce her as unnatural or
  monstrous, but also did not idealize her
• She is conventional in that she tries to use
  religious authorities to justify her belief that
  she should have power over her husbands and in
  that she uses her beauty to gain power
• She is unconventional in that she has married
  five times and in that she seems able to travel
  on her own

13
Power in 1400

• Not what you would expect
• Power tends to go along with wealth and social
  standing rather than gender
• Three factors make for social leveling in 14th
  century
• Bubonic plague
• Peasants revolt (English uprising)
• Wealth derived from mercantile activity rather
  than just form land