Labour and Time

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-80
Author(s):  
Kellie Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Intimate Connection ◽  
Phenomenological Aspect ◽  
Critical Perspectives ◽  
Employment Histories

Chaucer’s depictions of work in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales have been considered from a variety of critical perspectives: as a parade of fourteenth-century London professions; as part of the long and ultimately conventional tradition of estates satire; and even as the deconstruction of the very idea of psychological self-revelation itself. Yet there is a phenomenological aspect to these representations that can be recovered as well: the pilgrims are creatures in time, their ‘selves’ the product not just of heterogeneous employment histories and professionalized jargon but also of changing cultural assumptions about how labouring bodies were defined with respect to naturalized regimes of time. This chapter explores the ways in which Chaucer exploits the intimate connection between work and time, between the labouring past and the perceiving present. His polytemporal depictions of manual, artisan, and religious livelihoods in the General Prologue suggest that his purpose was less to pass judgement on an individual pilgrim’s work than to reveal how his society’s expectations about labour were based on idealizing, aspirational, or outright fictionalized accounts of past labour practices.

Chaucer the Pilgrim

PMLA ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 69 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 928-936
Author(s):  
E. Talbot Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Geoffrey Chaucer ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Close Resemblance

Verisimilitude in a work of fiction is not without its attendant dangers, the chief of which is that the responses it stimulates in the reader may be those appropriate not so much to an imaginative production as to an historical one or to a piece of reporting. History and reporting are, of course, honorable in themselves, but if we react to a poet as though he were an historian or a reporter, we do him somewhat less than justice. I am under the impression that many readers, too much influenced by Chaucer's brilliant verisimilitude, tend to regard his famous pilgrimage to Canterbury as significant not because it is a great fiction, but because it seems to be a remarkable record of a fourteenth-century pilgrimage. A remarkable record it may be, but if we treat it too narrowly as such there are going to be certain casualties among the elements that make up the fiction. Perhaps first among these elements is the fictional reporter, Chaucer the pilgrim, and the role he plays in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and in the links between them. I think it time that he was rescued from the comparatively dull record of history and put back into his poem. He is not really Chaucer the poet—nor, for that matter, is either the poet, or the poem's protagonist, that Geoffrey Chaucer frequently mentioned in contemporary historical records as a distinguished civil servant, but never as a poet. The fact that these are three separate entities does not, naturally, exclude the probability—or rather the certainty—that they bore a close resemblance to one another, and that, indeed, they frequently got together in the same body. But that does not excuse us from keeping them distinct from one another, difficult as their close resemblance makes our task.

Authorial Work

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kellie Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Labor Laws ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Medieval Literature

Michel Foucault declared that authors became subject to punishment and discourse became transgressive. In the late fourteenth century, both “discourse” and the very act of writing itself were perceived as transgressive, a notion that resulted in a new kind of authorial self-representation in England. By the late fourteenth century, writing had assumed an ambiguous role: while it was the means by which social norms regarding labor were communicated and enforced, it could also be the object of such enforcement. This article explores how late medieval literature came to have authors by looking at literary production in the context of contemporary discourses about daily work. It considers how post-plague labor laws forced authors to situate their work not just between the venerable poles of imitatio and inventio but also between the social polarities of idleness and industry, and how post-plague writers meditated on the value of literary work in the marketplace of work more generally. Using Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales as a lens, it discusses the strategies employed by late medieval writers in positioning their work in a literary landscape characterized by explicit understandings of the material value of labor.

scholarly journals Chaucer and Crusader Ethics: Youth, Love, and the Material World

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (296) ◽  
pp. 618-639
Author(s):  
Marcel Elias
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Material World ◽  
The World ◽  
Ideological Differences ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Knight's Tale ◽  
The Canterbury Tales

Abstract In this essay, I argue that the Squire’s portrait in the Canterbury Tales is indebted to fourteenth-century crusade discourse, and that the ideological differences between the Knight and the Squire are well understood in relation to contemporary debates on the ethics of crusaders. Drawing upon diverse literary and historical sources, I focus on three rhetorical juxtapositions, which, I argue, Chaucer appropriated from contemporary critics of the morals and conduct of crusaders: between aged wisdom and youthful passion to admonish their military intemperance; between love of God and love of the world, often couched in terms of chivalric love-service, to decry their vainglorious motives; and between humble and ostentatious attire to denounce their excessive attachment to the material world. The evaluative relation between the two pilgrims, established in the General Prologue, is developed in the Knight’s Tale and the Squire’s Tale. Within the Squire’s scope of experience, key episodes of the Knight’s Tale fulfil the role of cautionary exempla in a vein similar to those extensively deployed in writings on and by crusaders to illustrate the benefits and dangers of specific attitudes and behaviours. The Squire’s Tale, drawing upon the motif of the ‘noble infidel’, further exposes the deficiencies of the crusading philosophy of which its teller is a symbol.

The Royal Stanza in Early English Literature

PMLA ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Equal Length ◽  
James I ◽  
James I Of Scotland ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early English

The traditional history of the rhyme royal stanza in early English literature, including its earliest attribution to James I of Scotland, needs reexamination. The name was apparently first recorded by Gascoigne in 1575, and, while no evidence exists to connect it with James I, the stanza itself was used in fourteenth-century poetic contests to address real or imaginary royalty. It appears in royal entry ceremonies, as illustrated by a text surviving from York in 1486. Chaucer employed the stanza first for royal address, as in the Parlement and the Troilus, but later, in the Canterbury Tales, as a characterizing device. The word “prose,” which he uses to describe the verse of the Man of Law's Tale, has been universally misread. It actually refers here to formal stanzas of equal length, and it must be read as the first attempt to create a poetic high style in English literature.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Samantha Katz Seal
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
House Of Fame ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Canterbury Tales ◽  
Literary Fame

This Introduction provides an overview of the pressures that late-fourteenth-century England placed upon traditional models of obtaining human posterity from the achievements of paternity. The introduction sets out the book’s argument that Chaucer himself was deeply concerned with questions of human authority in the face of man’s mortality, providing both biographical detail and a close reading of Chaucer’s discussions of literary fame within his early poem, The House of Fame. This introduction also sets up the book’s methodological priorities, introduces the book’s structure and chapter divisions, and argues in favor of addressing The Canterbury Tales in a fluid, non-traditional order.

Fund-Raising in a Fourteenth-Century Province

1999 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Rosalind M. T. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

In addition to dealing with its income from tithes and property, the Church in the Middle Ages, as today, recognized its responsibility for raising money for good causes by urging upon the faithful the need for charity. The collectors of such contributions, or pardoners (as they were known from the inducements which they were able to offer to pious donors) sometimes earned for themselves a bad name for rapacity and fraud, as a study of the Pardoner with his ‘pigges bones’ in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales will show. But the process of collection seems generally to have been carefully organized and supervised, as a study of the system in the province of York under Archbishop Melton indicates. A good bishop clearly regarded the supervision of fund-raising as an integral part of his responsibilities. He worked not only through his archdeacons and clergy, with a final right of citation before himself in person, but also through trustworthy laymen with experience in business.

scholarly journals Pagans, Tartars, Moslems, and Jews in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 129-132
Author(s):  
Gretcheo Iman Meyer-Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Social World ◽  
Ethical Attitudes ◽  
The Canterbury Tales

Brenda Deen Schildgen's analysis of the Canterbury Tales explores thecontemporary worldviews of medieval Europeans. Chaucer, an Englishcourt poet, wrote probably his greatest work- the Canterbury Tales - at theend of the fourteenth century. It is a collection of 24 tales told by pilgrimsas they make their way to Canterbury cathedral. Chaucer frames the taleswith a prologue and dialogue between the tales.Schildgen's book examines the eight tales set outside Christian Europe.Much of the book discusses the medieval view of paganism and the continuinginfluence of pagan philosophy on medieval intellectual thought.She analyses the "Man of Law's Tale," whose story takes place in bothpagan and Muslim lands. (It is worth pointing out here that, although by thefourteenth century the Mongols increasingly were becoming Muslims, theTartars in the "Squire's Tale" are associated with paganism.) In addition todiscussing the tales involving pagans and Muslims, Schildgen analyzes theanti-Semitic "Prioress' Tale."Drawing on Habermas's theory of practical discourse (in which discussantsengage in a discourse where each is aware of and open to the other'sperspectives and interpretations), Schildgen argues that the Canterbu,yTales is an excellent example of what Habermas has in mind. Traditionalanalysis states that Chaucer does not favor one pilgrim over the others, andSchildgen takes this a step further by arguing that the Canterbury Talesincorporates "a range of intellectual and ethical attitudes that thrived inChaucer's pan-European contemporary cultural and social world." She ...

Celtic influence in English? Yes and No

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
THEO VENNEMANN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Standard English ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Short Sentence ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
English Usage ◽  
Modern Standard

Compared to German Ja and Nein, English Yes and No are used less frequently, and often in combination with short sentences consisting of a pronoun and an auxiliary or modal verb: Yes I will; No I won't. When such a short sentence is used, Yes and No may be omitted: I will; I won't; I do; I don't; He can; They certainly won't. This difference in usage is established (1) by comparing the marriage vow in German and English, where the officiant's question is answered by Ja in German but by I will or I do in English; (2) by citing material from a practical grammar for German students of English; and (3) by studying the way Shakespeare has his figures answer decision questions, or Yes/No-questions, in comparison with Schlegel's way of rendering their answers in his German translation. Next it is shown that Shakespeare's way, which is essentially the same as modern usage, differs radically from earlier English usage up to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1388–1400) and Troilus and Cresseide (1382–6) and the anonymous York Plays (fourteenth century) and Towneley Plays (late fourteenth century), which all reflect the Germanic usage, essentially the same as in German. It is concluded that the modern English usage arose during the two centuries between Chaucer and Shakespeare, as a Late Middle English and Early Modern English innovation. As for the reason why English developed this un-Germanic way of answering decision questions, reference is made to Insular Celtic: decision questions are answered with short sentences in both Irish and Welsh, and this usage is old in both languages. The viability of this contact explanation is underlined by Irish English, where Yes and No are used even less frequently than in Modern Standard English, and short sentences are the normal way of answering decision questions.

Herry Lovelich's Merlin

PMLA ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-484
Author(s):  
Robert W. Ackerman
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Prose Romances

Recent studies have demonstrated the existence in fifteenth and even fourteenth-century England of “bookshops” to which scriveners, limners, and perhaps members of the bookbinders' craft were attached in a sort of lay scriptorium for the purpose of producing books as they were ordered by patrons. Out of such shops, located, it would seem, principally in London, rather than out of monastic scriptoria, came the bulk of English secular literature. Many of the MSS. of the Canterbury Tales are authoritatively said to be “shop-made,” and the same claim is made about the mid-fourteenth-century Auchinleck MS. Mrs. Loomis, moreover, argues convincingly that the shops of the early stationers sometimes included translator-versifiers whose routine task it was to turn French prose romances into English verse, generally into highly conventional and pedestrian couplets.

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