Today’s Agenda:
Geoffrey Chaucer: (1345-1400): The Father of English Poetry (Part 2)
1) Journal:
For the next ten minutes, I want you to journal on the following subject:
By this point in your life, you may have noticed that there are courtship rituals in our culture. Couples meet in a certain way, get to know one another in a certain way, and sometimes even get married in a certain way. In your journal, I want you to describe your culture’s courtship ritual as you understand it. Perhaps use observations you have made of friends as an example. How do people get to know one another? What are the things that couples do to grow or otherwise develop their relationships? What are some things that may throw a relationship “off the tracks?”
2) Group work
For the next 5-7 minutes, I want you to discuss the following, related topic. How do people in our culture get to know one another? What are some of the avenues we use to learn more about each other so that we can live and work together? Come up with a short list of answers, and we will discuss these in class.
3) Class Discussion (5-7minutes)
4) Let’s begin with a consideration of the reading, what stood out to you? What do you remember from the reading, and why do you think you remember it?
5) Mini-Lecture: From Dante To Chaucer (5-10):
As I mentioned in class last time, the concept of the wheel of fortune is central to Chaucer’s work. Chaucer had a lot to say about this idea. We also thought about how it might relate to Dante, and one of the conclusions we came up with was that, for Dante, the Church was no longer a viable means for considering or approaching God. He needed Virgil’s help to “turn away from the accidents of fate” and consider God directly.
Chaucer was not in as precarious a position as Dante, but he was very concerned with how men and women might best live their lives. You may have noticed that in the Prologue all of the characters, even the scholar, are very much “worldly” people. They are all concerned with various material and social aspects of life, over which the wheel of fortune tells us one has no control.
What is not apparent here is how any of these characters may approach God directly, or how they may manage to turn their attention to God directly. The Church does not seem to be a viable option for these people, in fact the representatives of the Church generally come off as fools in this piece of writing.
However, and what we are about to see, is Chaucer’s radical and awesome solution to the problem – which was surely revolutionary at the time this document was published. Chaucer’s Host invites his guests to tell stories on the way to Canterbury. It is significant that the object they are going to see in Canterbury is a tomb — that is, they are going to look at something that is dead. What we are going to see is that, for Chaucer, and for many of the authors we are going to read this semester, one comes to learn about Truth and God through a consideration and observation of other people not through reflection on a holy text, or by living in a holy order. The notion here is that not just people, but COMMON PEOPLE know enough about the world through their own experience to explain the basic Truths about humanity that, when understood, have the power to save each of us from our own versions of hell.
This brings us to our second major idea in this course. The first was the Wheel of Fortune, and the second is the concept of Humanism. Humanism is a very generally notion I will be talking a lot more about this semester, but can be summed up now as a general belief that human’s can become Spiritual, Emotionally, and even Geographically “found” – as opposed to “lost” – by considering not only their own lives, but also the lives of others.
You may now be wondering how one can reconcile the ideas of the Wheel of Fortune and the Humanism, as they appear to be contradictory – one supposed that you have no control over your own life, and the other supposes you can come to salvation though a attention to that same life. It is certainly true that these ideas are contradictory – but that does not mean the Chaucer could not have believed BOTH. Many of us believe many contradictory things, with little or no difficulty. Can you think of some examples?
Okay, so now we are going to begin our own little humanist enterprise and consider the courtship rituals of our culture.
Class Discussion
Reading: For Friday, I want you to read and annotate the Knight’s tale. It is a little longer (though not as long as it looks), so I will not be giving you a specific writing assignment, but you are expected to annotate consistently throughout the document. Be looking for the truths you think Chaucer may be trying to communicate through this story.
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