Nerding Out

For the past two days or so, I have officially been nerding out with my new buddy, Geoffrey Chaucer. I mean, The Canterbury Tales and I are becoming quite intimate. For the better part of Sunday, I sprawled out on the floor, pouring over introductory material about the life of Chaucer. Evidently, he had a great reputation as a civil servant, managing taxes over wool, and even worked under the king. With all of his diplomatic prowess, it is no wonder he appealed to a very wide audience with such a subversive poem. And trust me, it's subversive! He is writing in the 1300s where heresy is pretty much gauche in all social circles, lest you want to be burned at the stake. Well, Chaucer, with all the wit he can muster, goes so far to give The Pardoner, a representative of the voice of Rome, a voice that sounds like a goat, which is a common sign of the devil. But what really hammers it home, is that the comparison is made using a rhyming couplet. See, I have never studied Chaucer before in his original language, so working with Middle English is helping me see his work in an entirely new light. Keeping with the example of the Pardoner (my favorite character in The C.T.), let's look at what I mean about Chaucer's rhyme scheme. When he describes the Pardoner coming from Rome and having a goat voice , Chaucer writes that the Pardoner has his bag "bretful of pardoun comen from Rome al hoot, / A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot" (687-8). There's just something about religiously subversive couplets written in Middle English that makes my skin tingle! I don't actually start my Medieval tutorial until two weeks from now, but I am so excited to discuss Chaucer. Also, as a change of pace, Hayley and I took our readings down to the remarkably sunny Oxford park today. All in all, the week end has been slow, but productive!