c/d: chaucer

Also, having attempted to write poetry in the past, I can barely string together three lines, much less twentysome odd tales with such rhythmic punch. He definitely gets points for that.

Compared to later-day English poets and literary works, though, I'd say not-so-classic; he did, of course, put vernacular English on the map, but I don't think worthy English poets came about until the time of Donne and Milton.

I'd agree with your assessment -- alright, but no real love. Certainly, however, not dud -- and classic because of his influences, and the Wife of Bath character.

But, yeah, reading it in Middle English is pretty cool -- Whan that Aprile with his showres soote/The droughte of March hath perced to the roote....

And more importantly, can I come?

i found this far too amusing

xpost i appreciate the literary references and the ekphrasis and occupatio and all that good stuff chaucer's got going on. then i read the miller's tale and all the scatological fart-in-face humor and i laugh, and i'm skeptical of chaucer-as-literary-genius. and i read it in middle english and sometimes even read it aloud (self-call) and still am not crazy about him. but hey, different strokes for different folks.

But at the risk of sounding like the kind of snob I detest, he *has* to be read in the original. Less of what makes him worth reading seems to survive in translation than any writer I can think of. Be in no doubt, Chaucer translations are unreadable, pointless rubbish. You can read them 'til you are blue in the face without having read any Chaucer.

Shakespeare apart he has as much claim as anyone to be considered the greatest English poet - although my tastes in this are pretty canonical/conservative (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth).

The Knight's Tale is my favourite Chaucer poem. I can't share Milton's enthusiasm for Troilus, not least because Henryson's near contemporaneous Testament of Cresseid is so very much finer.

!!!

(at least one of those of exclamation marks is bcz fm is prolly the ilb poster i agree with most often!)

CT I can kinda take or leave.

(erm oops "character" = "characters" in my last post)

Re the leprosy: to make sense of Henryson you need to understand his religious beliefs, more clearly expressed in his version of Aesop, for example, than in TOC. Although he was a sensual poet with a terrific sense of humour he is also good evidence that the Scottish psyche was primed for Calvinism centuries before Calvin. He implicitly believes in eternal damnation for sinners. An orthodox belief, but Henryson follows through to its logical conclusion in a way that few Christian poets do: this is the central truth for human beings; ultimately nothing else matters; worldly pleasures and beauty are fascinating but terrifying because they they are lures on the path to the destruction of the soul. He is also bleakly pessimistic about the likelihood of the sinner ever achieving repentance and saving his/her soul.

The leprosy is a merciful affliction that allows Cresseid to understand the transience of worldly pleasure, beauty and sensuality at a deep enough level to find genuine repentance. She finally repudiates everything associated with the wilful self, recognises the primacy of love and obtains spiritual salvation. Henryson's means of getting her to this point may strike the modern reader as repugnant but he genuinely believes that nothing less will work.

If that was all there was to it this could be a bleak, ugly even inhumane poem. But Henryson's judgement of Cresseid is not God's: treatment is always pointing to a generosity of feeling at odds with the relentless morality of the tale.

The gods and men may condemn her, but Henryson's (and the reader's) sympathy for Cresseid is unwavering, despite the horrors he puts her through. For all the rigour of his religious beliefs he is a more intensely lyrical and sensuous poet than Chaucer and that lyricism is also at odds with the poems message (in fact my simple and real reason for preferring this poems to Chaucers is that it is just more beautiful, for all its horror).

Henryson's poem also seems to me more modern: in its complexity of tone (despite the austerity of its moral message the poem is full of jokes); its early use of unreliable narrator; in its ratio of image to narrative (how can you not love the descriptions of the of the asrological gods?). The intense lyricism even extends to descriptions of ugliness, like a flashy cinematographer photographing a horror film.

I'll stop here because I suspect I've no chance of winning any converts, but Cresseid v Cressida: for me there is a clear and obvious winner. YMMV.

I also recommend reading the dream visions and smaller, lyric poetry; House of Fame is a really fantastic poem. That one, in particular, describes the dilemma of the poet in the sense of why would he/she even want to write to begin with, illustrates the fickleness of fame, and features explicit self-reference. The Book of the Duchess is a most moving lament of John of Gaunt's dead wife.

He really is much more interesting in Middle English, too. It loses all of the humor, buffoonery, and scatological/sexual insinuations in the modernizations.

Just putting this here:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/346200

This is the mashup the Internet was made for.

"I'm on a pilgrimage!"

going to start finally reading chaucer next week i think

feels about time

Skip the Knight's Tale. Go from GP to Miller's Tale and go back to the KT after you've read everything through the Monk's Tale.

I hardly know Chaucer, but I love this fluent recitation of the GP:

http://archive.org/details/P_CHA_GEO_01