The Squire and the Yeoman: General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

 I have written about the Knight on a different blog, taking into account the critical view of Terry Jones, and will give the link here (there's a Search button to Knighthood in the Fourteenth Century). 

https://onthebusesm.blogspot.com

Next come the Squire and the Yeoman, short portraits and worth considering together since both accompany the Knight.

The Squire (a "bacheler", which was a rank in knighthood) is the son of the Knight and represents the younger generation. Whichever moral view you take of the Knight, he was somewhat out-of-date, colourless and shabby whereas the Squire is brightly hued and vibrant. Almost the first word used of him is "lover" and we see instantly from his curly hair (which looks as if it has been pressed) that he is a dandy. Yet he is strong and active.

The next detail, not one of observation, is ambiguous. He had taken part in extra expeditions on horseback and acquitted himself well. These could be sanctioned forages but could also be raids, although they might be seen as chivalrous by a lady. A simile comparing him to a meadow evokes his colourful freshness as he sings and plays the flute all day. He is talented in the social graces: he could compose songs, dance, joust, portray and write. As a lover, he is almost absurdly active, never sleeping. At the end is a sudden, rather unexpected touch to the portrait, a change of angle so that we see a different side to him. Carving at table was an honourable service and part of a Squire's duty, yet there is a humility about the act unseen in him as yet.

Summary and method. This is a portrait of the present generation but individualised as colourful youth, active, talented, dandyish yet robust and hearty, slightly artificial, wholesome and yet artistic. It is the contradictions that make him real and not stereotyped. His exterior, his intricate clothing, is a clue to his vanity by a loose form of metonymy. As always, the description is not schematic: hair, habits, experiences, clothing are apparently jumbled but the juxtaposition can be telling. His strength immediately precedes mention of the horseman's sallies into the countryside. 

The Yeoman is the only other companion to the Knight. Chaucer, under his naif persona, accepts the reason given that he preferred it like that. This character is of the outdoors, evoked by the green of his attire and the brown of his face and yet there is brighter colour in the peacock feathers of his arrows. Chaucer seems fascinated by his equipment and accessories, admiring the quality and how well it is all maintained.  There is always a positive note in his writing when a man or woman is skilled at their trade and this forester knows his woodcraft in detail and how to care for his arrow feathers.

The Yeoman is not aristocratic but is an open-air countryman, not polished like the Squire. There is no artificiality about him and his pride is in his equipment and expertise, not himself.

 Summary and method. Whilst it is an attractive presentation, he does seem very heavily armed for his trade: Terry Jones has argued that he would be in place in the company of a mercenary. I find this less persuasive than his hypothesis about the Knight himself as I do his comment on the Squire's fluting and will not repeat them here. Again, the equipment speaks of his character by metonymy: here is a man fastidious about his tools. He does not droop, but is upright and confident like his quality arrows.  Almost all the characters have their own point of vanity but his is not in his person: his close-cropped head contrasts with the Squire's curled locks. 

Trope

 A trope is what can be termed a figure of speech, when language is used not entirely literally.The devices that are normally considered to be tropes are metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, personification, hyperbole and litotes. 

Synecdoche

 Synecdoche is a frequently used trope or figure of speech by which something or someone is referred to by one of its parts. "All hands on deck," calls the sailors, not just their hands to get to work. It is often regarded as a special form of metonymy, which I have defined in a separate post.

The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: an over view

 Chaucer's “The Canterbury Tales” is a fragment of the original proposition of two stories each on the road to Canterbury and two on the way home: only a few pilgrims tell even one tale. It is uncertain why this is but it would seem that the General Prologue is complete. This section should be distinguished from the individual prologues preceding the tales: it sets the scene and describes the pilgrims. Chaucer himself is one of them and he adopts the persona of a naif onlooker, whilst jokingly giving himself the tedious narrative of Sir Topas. In reality, he was a sophisticated and learned man, which we can deduce from his sharp and worldly perceptions as he writes. The central premise is unrealistic: they could not all have heard the narrations as they trooped together (with the clopping of hooves and the jingling of bridle bells) but it is accepted as a method of grouping narratives within a framework.

Chaucer opens with the meme of a description of Spring but adds an almost cinematographic element. His verse details the fresh awakening of nature, the relief that winter is past, a stirring into life mirrored by the restless desire that people have to go on a trip. (A modern equivalent would be a Disney-like film and customers booking their holiday). There are the visuals and sense of the showers, the auditory impact of the sounds of the birds, the feel of the breeze, the warmth of the sun on April 17th*, all giving the sense of vibrant activity and secular fun, as well as a holy intent for a few. Only some of the characters would seem to be there for the good of their souls but, at this stage, Chaucer is apparently uncritical.

When he embarks on the portraits, he varies his tone for each: most are satirised to some degree although, in the case of the ecclesiastics, it is the institution of the church as well as the character that is the target. They are designated by their trade or profession (their "degree" or station in life) whilst remaining highly individualised. I hope to investigate how the portraits are built up, looking at tropes that were recognised as figures of speech or "colours of rhetoric" in Chaucer's day. 

Chaucer's method is always to describe in the order of observation - not of visual memory. Memory tends to schematise whereas, when seeing someone in front of us, we notice details in random order. No two of them are portrayed from head to foot in paradigmatic mode: it is as if Chaucer is looking at each afresh and jotting down what he notices first, last and in between. This adds immediacy and vivaciousness, the lifelike presence of individuals, some of whom resonate down the centuries. Yet Chaucer includes details of their habits and background that could not be seen but only told to him - or even be the privilege of the omniscient narrator (at odds with his mask of innocence).

I now plan to analyse the main characters in future posts but will start with the Squire and the Yeoman together. On another blog, I have addressed the Knight with reference to Terry Jones' book and this can be read by using the Search box for "Knighthood in the Fourteenth Century" on my history blog.

https://onthebusesm.blogspot.com

* The date: Chaucer uses circumlocutio (a recognised rhetorical device which allows controlled long-windedness) to tell us that the date must be past the 11th April because of the position of the sun. In the Man of Law's Prologue, April 18th is given as the second day of the pilgrimage.

John Donne: The Flea

 If you were to ask me which poem by John Donne, most exemplifies his special talents, I would cite "The Flea". Reading it we can appreciate his virtuoso skills, wit, use of a conceit, sense of drama and ability to evoke a situation in all its immediacy. There is eroticism and yet a train of thought and narrative. 

Two lovers are in an intimate position when a flea bites him and then her, thus mingling their bloods. Donne uses this mundane, even distasteful, occurrence to embark on a preposterous analogy, a conceit, between this and the sex that he wants to enjoy with her.

The first stanza sets this scene whilst implying her reasons for denying him: "losse of maidenhood," sin and shame.  With an erotically sly use of language, he points out that the creature is pampered and swollen with blood. 

Between this and the second stanza, the narrative moves forwards and shows that she is unconvinced by his (deliberately?) specious argument. She has raised her hand to squash the intruder as is seen when he begs her to "stay", adding the even more unlikely supposition that the flea now contains both their lives and that killing it would be triple murder. The exaggerated comparison gains pace when he uses metaphor (not simile) to state that this is now their marriage bed and temple. He slips in her further reason why their union cannot be consummated: her parents disapprove also. With virtuoso skill, he now makes the flea seem beautiful as it is "living walls of jet" and holy so that its extinction would be "sacrilege." The verse form has three rhyming lines concluding each stanza to emphasise his pleading although the iambic pentameters are maintained.

That changes to a brusque tetrameter at the start of the final stanza: "Cruell and sodaine, hast thou since.. " She has - dramatically - killed the flea (with her finger nail) which equally suddenly, is a mortal creature once again and, in his view, innocent. Far from being abashed, she is triumphant in her own actions. Although we have only his voice and point of view, she is  clearly realised, through his perspective, in masterly fashion. In the next few words, he would appear to capitulate: "'Tis true" but instantly switches the argument yet again. With Donne, we can never let our brains lie idle: there is always a thread of thought, often twisting, to be followed, closely intertwined with the emotion. Does she surrender? The answer lies in his confident use of "when" not "if" when he assures her there will be no more loss of honour in her yielding to him than there was in her being bitten.

There was a tradition of fleas being used (often jocularly) in erotic Renaissance literature because of the fact they could roam anywhere on the body. Donne turns this popular meme into a fresh and skilled narrative persuasion, using a conceit, drama, evocation of the attitude and actions of his lady and wit (meaning quickness of mind). By the end we know how the two people relate to each other. We can hazard a guess at the outcome since her refusal might have been no more serious than his bizarre reasoning. Perhaps they have both been enjoying the battle of wit and will as foreplay. After all, they were possibly already in bed. 

 

 

Satire

 Satire is a term much misused nowadays. It does not mean mere mockery, poking fun at something or someone, sneering at them or debunking them.

In true satire there is always a positive. By that I mean that the reader or viewer should be able to tell what the satirist does admire, trust or hold as ideal. 

Satire is the undermining of someone or something by humour, wit, irony, caricature, juxtaposition, ridicule or other methods. Yet, we should ask: what would NOT be the target of those arrows? It is an important question because much of English Literature, up to the Romantic period, was satirical and took as topics people and society. There was less emphasis on nature, emotion and the self - more on reason, morality and other human beings. Chaucer, Pope and Dryden wrote about contemporary life with a sceptical eye, so much so that Pope's invective requires extensive footnotes to appreciate exactly what he is saying.

An example of a clear and explicit positive can be found in Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Here he gives portraits of several ecclesiastical characters, mostly satirised except for one. The Prioress, the Monk, the Friar, the Summoner, the Pardoner and even the Clerk are treated with varying degrees of sly or overt criticism - but the Parson is Chaucer's representation of the true religious man. 

I have defined irony on earlier posts (use the Search button) and plan to examine the General Prologue in detail in future. Watch this space!

Iago's true motive in "Othello"

 Coleridge famously described Iago's ruminations as "the motive-hunting of motiveless malignancy". There could be something in that as it is possible that Shakespeare was embodying the stock figure of Vice from the old Morality Plays. Yet it seems an unlikely fit in a drama that is domestically realistic - note Othello's homely list of his wife's accomplishments and pastimes, when he defends her virtue to Iago much later. 

Other reasons given are

being passed over in promotion by Cassio, an "arithmetician" who lacks his own military experience. This is more credible than the others which include:

 a spurious suspicion that Othello has slept with his own wife, Emilia;

an even more dubious one that Cassio has also cuckolded him with her;

racial hatred of Othello - but inexplicable why this should suddenly have surfaced

love of mischief for its own sake, which could be backed by the quotation earlier in the play, after the drunken brawl: "Pleasure and action make the hours seem short". (See the reference to the Auden view at the end of this post).

his own feelings for Desdemona - specious again as he rules out "absolute lust"

I take, as Iago's anchor motive, his saying of Cassio:

"He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly".

Listen to the falling cadence in those words and they come across as the truth. With Shakespeare, who knew living drama on the stage, we must hear the lilt of the iambic pentameters (and Iago here speaks in blank verse) and respond to it. The next lines about being afraid of a reveal have quite a different tone of rationalisation.

Here I will go out on a limb and suggest that Iago, at a profound and unwilling level, also feels that Othello and Desdemona have that "daily beauty" in their lives. This is barely thinkable within his overt view of a man of colour - but Iago has witnessed the reconciliation with Desdemona after the storm.  He has heard and watched the rapturous greetings and the aria-like quality of their speeches, particularly Othello's. He must "set down the pegs that make this music" and create discord instead of harmony, by turning her "virtue into pitch." Meanwhile he resorts to debasing language whilst he plots the destruction of love and beauty.

For further reading and food for thought, I suggest W.H. Auden's essay: "The joker in the pack" in his collection, The Dyer's Hand.