THE MIDDLE AGES: THE SECRET OF CHAUCERS CANTERBURY PILGRIMS. EVERYMAN

Feudal system: king, lords, yeomen, serfs, the sheriff represented the king

Split between Anglo-Saxons and Normans

Loyalty of the knights to the lord and the lords to the king; 40 days of army service, later shield money to pay professional mercenaries

Education improved in schools, abbeys. 12^th -13^th centuries Oxford and Cambridge. Inns of Courts for lawyers

Changes in the language: Germanic inflections dropped, new French words, London dialect becomes the basis for Modern English

Religious works, non-religious poems (The Cuckoo Song, The Fox and the Wolf), romances (tales of heroic deeds of knights: King Arthur in The Matter of Britain, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)

A successful London gentleman, prisoner of war in France in 1359, diplomatic missions in Italy, where he became familiar with Dantes work, and may have met Petrarch and Boccaccio.

- period of French influence (1359-1372), works written in octosyllabic couplets: The Romaunt of the Rose, The Book of the Duchess

period of Italian influence (1372-1386), works written in heroic couplet: The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowles, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women.

- - the English period (1386-1400): The Canterbury Tales. Twenty-nine pilgrims, including the author himself, meet at Tabard Inn in Southwark on their way to the shrine of Thomas aBecket in Canterbury. They are supposed to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two stories on their way back. The best story will be rewarded with a free supper. Chaucer wrote only twenty-two stories, and fragments of two more. The majority are written in heroic couplets.

framed narrative

collection of portraits from knight to ploughman different categories ( monk, nun, miller, merchant, physician, etc.)

personality carefully revealed

detailed descriptions

archetypal characters

humour, tolerance, love

holiday spirit, April

Alistair Fowler: encyclopedic diversity of genres, skepticism, contemptus mundi, interchange of divine and human standards

THE PROLOGUE to the CANTERBURY TALES

INTRODUCTION

When in April the sweet showers fall

That pierce March's drought to the root and all

And bathed every vein in liquor that has power

To generate therein and sire the flower;

When Zephyr also has with his sweet breath,

Filled again, in every holt and heath,

The tender shoots and leaves, and the young sun

His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,

And many little birds make melody

That sleep through all the night with open eye

(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)

Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,

And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,

To distant shrines well known in distant lands.

And specially from every shire's end

Of England they to Canterbury went,

The holy blessed martyr there to seek

Who helped them when they lay so ill and weak

It happened that, in that season, on a day

In Southwark, at the Tabard, as I lay

Ready to go on pilgrimage and start

To Canterbury, full devout at heart,

There came at nightfall to that hostelry

Some nine and twenty in a company

Of sundry persons who had chanced to fall

In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all

That toward Canterbury town would ride.

The rooms and stables spacious were and wide,

And well we there were eased, and of the best.

And briefly, when the sun had gone to rest,

So had I spoken with them, every one,

That I was of their fellowship anon,

And made agreement that we'd early rise

To take the road, as I will to you apprise.

But none the less, whilst I have time and space,

Before yet further in this tale I pace,

It seems to me in accord with reason

To describe to you the state of every one

Of each of them, as it appeared to me,

And who they were, and what was their degree,

And even what clothes they were dressed in;

And with a knight thus will I first begin.

At table she had been well taught withal,

And never from her lips let morsels fall,

Nor dipped her fingers deep in sauce, but ate

With so much care the food upon her plate

That never driblet fell upon her breast.

In courtesy she had delight and zest.

Her upper lip was always wiped so clean

That in her cup was no iota seen

Of grease, when she had drunk her draught of wine.

Becomingly she reached for meat to dine.

And certainly delighting in good sport,

She was right pleasant, amiable- in short.

She was at pains to counterfeit the look

Of courtliness, and stately manners took,

And would be held worthy of reverence.

But, to say something of her moral sense,

She was so charitable and piteous

That she would weep if she but saw a mouse
Caught in a trap, though it were dead or bled.
She had some little dogs, too, that she fed
On roasted flesh, or milk and fine white bread.
But sore she'd weep if one of them were dead
Or if men smote it with a rod to smart:
For pity ruled her, and her tender heart.
Right decorous her pleated wimple was;
Her nose was fine; her eyes were blue as glass;
Her mouth was small and therewith soft and red;
But certainly she had a fair forehead;
It was almost a full span broad, I own,
For, truth to tell, she was not undergrown.
Neat was her cloak, as I was well aware.
Of coral small about her arm she'd bear
A string of beads and gauded all with green
And therefrom hung a brooch of golden sheen
Whereon there was first written a crowned 'A,'
And under, Amor vincit omnia.

THE WIFE OF BATH

There was a housewife come from Bath, or near
Who- sad to say- was deaf in either ear.
At making cloth she had so great a bent
She bettered those of Ypres and even of Ghent.
In all the parish there was no goodwife
Should offering make before her, on my life;
And if one did, indeed, so wroth was she
It put her out of all her charity.
Her kerchiefs were of finest weave and ground
I dare swear that they weighed a full ten pound
Which, of a Sunday, she wore on her head.
Her hose were of the choicest scarlet red
Close gartered, and her shoes were soft and new.
Bold was her face, and fair, and red of hue.
She'd been respectable throughout her life
With five churched husbands bringing joy and strife,
Not counting other company in youth;
But thereof there's no need to speak, in truth.
Three times she'd journeyed to Jerusalem
And many a foreign stream she'd had to stem;
At Rome she'd been, and she'd been in Boulogne,
In Spain at Santiago, and at Cologne.
She could tell much of wandering by the way
Gap-toothed was she, it is no lie to say.
Upon an ambler easily she sat
Well wimpled, aye, and over all a hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe;
A rug was tucked around her buttocks large,
And on her feet a pair of sharpened spurs.
In company well could she laugh her slurs.
The remedies of love she knew, perchance
For of that art she'd learned the old, old dance.

THE PHYSICIAN

He watched his patients favourable star

And, by his Natural Magic, knew what are

The lucky hours and planetary degrees

For making charms and magic effigies.

THE MILLER

Upon the coping of his nose he had

A wart, and thereon stood a tuft of hairs,

Red as the bristles in an old sows ears.

His nostrils they were black and very wide.

THE SUMMONER

With black and scabby brows and scanty beard;

He had a face that little children feared.

There was no mercury, sulphur, or litharge,

No borax, ceruse, tartar, could discharge,

Nor ointment that could cleanse enough, or bite,

To free him of his boils and pimple white.

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Origins

Liturgical service in Latin, chanted tropes: Quem Quaeritis

1210, Pope Innocent III outside the church

1264, Pope Urban IV inaugurated the Corpus Christi Festival

English popular shows: spectaculum or ludus ( clowning, miming, fire-eating, dumb-shows, jugglery, procession, tournaments)

Classical drama: Plautus, Terence, Seneca

French and Dutch influence

Mystery / Miracle Plays 13^th 16^th centuries

Based on the Bible or the life of saints

Imagistic illustration of the Bible

Latin replaced by vernacular English outside the church

180 to 700-800 lines

Performed on pageants or wagons moving around; fixed audience

Supervised by guilds

Cycles: York, Chester, Coventry, Wakefield

Morality Plays 15^th - ^th centuries

Dramatization of a sermon

Abstract allegorical characters such as Truth, Justice, Peace, Vice, Death

Characters grouped around Virtue and Vice in their contest for the human soul

Everyman, Mankind: homo philosophicus

Pride of Life, The Castle of Perseverance, Respublica, Skelton, Magnificence, Peter Dorlandus, Everyman, 1495

Interludes 15^th - ^th centuries

Shorter indoor performances for entertainment, dancing, singing, disguising

Theatre as a game: desacralized semiotic contract, iconic vs. verbal effects

Henry Medwall, Nature (1486), Fulgens and Lucres ( 1497), John Rastell, The Nature of the Four  Elements (1517), John Bale, King Johan (1538)

Characteristics of Medieval Drama

Nonverbal elements predominate

Flexibility, spontaneity, constant rewriting

Showy costumes, bombastic interpretation

Long performances, usually during festivals or holidays (Corpus Christi Festival, Christmas, Easter plays)

Performed in churches, inn yards, streets, college halls, private houses, moving or fixed stages, outdoors and indoors

Active participation of the audience, tourist attraction

Audience prepared to listen to sermons

Functions: drama of devotion and ritual, of salvation, of pastime

EVERYMAN

Everyman: Gramercy, Good-Deeds, now I my true friends see;

They have forsaken me everyone;

I loved them better than my Good-Deeds alon,

Knowledge, will you forsake me also?

Knowledge: Yea, Everyman, when ye to death shall go;

But not yte for no manner of danger.

Everyman: Gramercy, Knowledge, with all my heart.

Knowledge: Nay, yet I will not from hence depart,

Till I see where ye shall be  come.

Everyman: Methink, alas, that I must be gone,

To make my reckoning and my debts pay,

For I see my time is nigh spent away.

Take example, all ye that this do hear or see,

How they that I love best do forsake me,

Except my Good-Deeds that bideth truly.

Good-Deeds: All earthly things is but vanity:

Beauty, strength, and discretion, do man forsake,

Foolish friends and kinsmen that fair spake,

All fleeth save Good-Deeds, and that am I.

Text and comments available at https://www.luminarium.org/medlit/everyman.htm, https://www.enotes.com/everyman