Dangerous Acquaintances

The first time I attempted Chaucer it didn't last long. Unfortunately, at that time I drew one of the worst teachers in the history of inept and incompetent teaching, someone (I now realize) who was struggling with alcohol. I ended up dropping the class after the drop deadline and taking an "F," and that was all the time I gave to Mr. Chaucer till now.

46 Years later, I have a much better teacher (in fact, he wrote the book -- the translation of the book I mean) and adequate time for the subject, since I'm taking only two classes right now. Okay, "Canterbury Tales" isn't actually a class, but it is a serious and demanding, if enjoyable study.

I took my teacher Pete's advice, started with the Miller's tale, and immediately recalled that anyone who wants to read Chaucer in the original has to read very, very slowly, sounding out each word carefully and leaning heavily on the modern English translation for meaning. This is labor-intensive and time consuming. I wonder if modern Dutch speakers can read it more easily than modern English speakers. It sounds sort of like Dutch.

The Miller's tale concerns an old fool and his way-too-young and way-too-sexy wife, and two of her admirers among the medieval townies who populate these down-to-earth narratives. The characters in the one story I've read so far and in the one I'm reading currently (The Reeve's Tale) seem strangely modern, almost as if they were people I know. They're mostly the kind who would do anything for money and a good screw.

"Thus swyved was the carpenteres wyf" says Chaucer, by way of saying she got screwed by one of her admirers and fooled the other into kissing her bum. Actually, he was probably kissing a great deal more than just her butt, judging from Chaucer's blunt and earthy Anglo-Saxonisms.

But for all the low high-jinks in these two stories, a discerning ear immediately hears Chaucer's high art in these musical-sounding rhymed couplets. Once able to sound them out a little more accurately than a rank beginner, I found meanings where before there was only gibberish, and soon was reading about half the lines without having to translate. As Lewis Carroll said, "Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself."*

The Reeve's tale begins with a long, off-topic prologue in which the speaker, a skinny, sour old guy, moans about the frustration and unhappiness attending an old man's waning sexuality, which he describes so accurately as to break your heart -- if you happen to be an old man. For some reason, though, it made me laugh.

The story that follows is full of the stuff you'll find in most any good literature, from the Old Testament to "Of Mice and Men" -- duplicity, betrayal, sex, and violence. I'll finish it tonight.

*Carroll was playing with the words of a proverb: "Take care of the pounds and the pence will take care of themselves."