Hood College Chaucerians

Why does Chaucer choose to tell this tale as a fable? How does it benefit the story/moral/intention for the tale?

This tale perplexed me to a certain extent, because I couldn't figure out the monk's motive. I was confused as to why he would promise the wife money, borrow it from her husband, and then get her caught. The wife is an imperfect character; she loses virtue by sleeping with the monk, and he still stings her by telling her husband he gave her the money, forcing her to confess to spending it on lavish things. It's like she's trying to be the trickster but ends up being tricked. But is she really tricked if her husband isn't even that mad? He seems to accept her offer of sexual favors as repayment. Here lies the confusion: who is the "winner"??? This story also seems to reinforce a consistent theme among some of these tales, of money and sex. We've seen this in a few stories now, and "The Shipman's Tale" seems to only perpetuate the question asked pertaining to money and sex and what effect they have on power in relationships. In the end, I w...

Why does the Pardoner, who deals with tricking people to make more money, tell a story that condemns such an act? This is an anti-greed tale, but the Pardoner is the greediest guy on the journey.

I thoroughly enjoyed this tale. I have heard of a "January-May" wedding before, and when put in the context of this story (literally), it makes me laugh. Chaucer puts a lot of meaning into the names of these characters, and I found it really amusing that May takes the "forbidden fruit" from Damien. The involvement of Pluto and Proserpina was another interesting aspect of this story, because it takes some level of decision away from the characters: when it comes down to the big reveal of January catching May in the act, the characters' lives are heavily influenced by the gods when they intervene, both in allowing January to catch May, and in giving May a "believable" excuse. I really liked reading this tale, but I couldn't quite decipher the moral of the story. Adultery is bad, but May seemingly gets away with it. Jealousy is bad, but it appears like it works out for January in the end...Ah well, an enjoyable story nonetheless.

Why does the Summoner decide to roast the Friar rather than stick up for summoners? Why does he tell the story about friars in the devil's "tail" in his prologue in addition to telling a demeaning story about friars?

Having read and blogged about this woman before, I had a prior understanding on her liberal beliefs. 5 husbands sounds like a lot, but the Wife of Bath (Alison) is certain to justify herself and spends a lot of her introduction explaining and defending her choices, as well as delving into her marriages: good, bad, and ugly. She resents the idea that people accuse her of bigamy because her marriages are sequential and not simultaneous. I think Chaucer was probably making fun of the "gold-digger" or "black widow" tropes, but it doesn't quite work like that for me. To quote an idea I mentioned about the WoB in the aforementioned previous blog post, she gestures to the idea of not "following a rubric, and following her own path" which I still find empowering especially at a time where women weren't generally thinking like that/acting on it.

" Our old-style position that objectivist neutrality is where medievalists should be no longer works, because it facilitates white supremacists/white nationalists/KKK/Nazis and their horrific deployment of the Middle Ages"  -Dorothy Kim "Teaching Medieval Studies in a Time of White Supremacy"  " The tale, like other crusading romances, demands to be understood through the lens of a medieval notion of racial identity that is characterized by religious and political difference." -Cord Whitaker "Race and Racism: The Man of Law's Tale" 

The quote that I've chosen comes early on in this section of reading. In the "persoun's" section, the line reads on page 21, "That if gold ruste, what sholde iren do?" (500). This line made me pause because I had never heard this saying before and I had to do some thinking to figure it out. The next two lines read "For if a preest be foule, on whom we truste/ No wonder is a lewed man to ruste!" (501-502). This quote was interesting to me simply because it made me think and has a nice ring to it. Now that I understand it, the message is pretty cool, too. me, contemplating this quote *quick edit: I just read something that said this quote may have been from "the gospel" and Chaucer just used it--either way it's super interesting to me!!