1108-41 Flashcards
About
-we find January wandering around the path of the garden with Me and singing love songs
-They get back to the pear tree where Damien is hiding
-May because of her condition she is craving for pears
-That he did not bring a servant to hand who can climb because he’s blind
-She suggests that he embrace the trunk of the tree so that she can climb on his back
-He willingly does this and bends down may climbs into the tree Damien lifts her smock and thrust himself in
“Singeth ful murier than the papejay”
-The association of parrots with tame or pet lovers derives from the erotic poetry of Ovid
-Well known to the middle ages whose lady Karina has a pet parrot
“So longe about the aleyes is he goon” “ Damien siteth”
-The lovers are described as walking amongst the winding pats in the garden before they reach the pear tree
-Chaucer is echoing the great Medieval allegorical love poem ‘ the romance of the rose’
-In which the lover has to wind his way through a maze of paths in his garden in search of his perfect rose
-But this conclusion here is rather different
-damien sits waiting in the pear tree like the serpent in the garden of Eden
-Reminding the reader that this is a tail as much of archetypal betrayal as of love
‘Fresh may”
-may as is customary is described as fresh before she begins to speak
- Again Chaucer parodies the conventions of Courtney Love as may give his voice to a mortal longing
-By this point in the poem fresh connotates sexual readiness rather than innocence
-And mays longing for pears with all the sexual symbolism ironically concealed and evident wanting to have sex with Damien
-mays invocation of the Virgin Mary: queen of heaven, at this point it’s particularly inappropriate, but reminds readers of the comparisons and contrast between the superficially similar Joseph and May and January and May has been threaded throughout the tail
“ a woman in my plit”
- May speak with delightful ambiguity of women in her plit
- All the connotations are sexual and the ambiguity lies in the potential different understandings of where May is at this moment in her cycle of desire of conception, pregnancy, and birth
-How great appetite for fruit in the light of popular comparisons of the pair with Male genitalia needs no further explanation
-The pet imagery is associated with fruit play a major part in the tai
-The tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden is conventionally seen as an apple tree
-Pears have a different and overly sexual range of reference which extends beyond the narrative source of the fabliau
-The power was related to human sexuality because of its physical resemblance to either a female breast or a male genitalia
-Moreover Chaucer here and in the ‘ Parson’s tale’ shows he has knowledge of medieval scientific treatises and new the pear or specifically he root of the pear was valued or is contraceptive propteries
-the suggestion could be may is as eager to avoid conceiving with Damian as she is with January, that the latters longed for child will not be fathered by anyone and his failure to understand the true meaning of mays alleged craving for pears, as a craving for continuing sexual freedom, is yet another dimension of his blindness - A contemporary anonymous erotic lyric, in which the ancient horticultural procedure of grafting different types of fruit on the same tree is used as the focus of an obscene joke and provides a context for the various available layers of innuendo in May’s little speech
“That i ne had here a knave”
Deeply ironic
-He wishes he had a servant to satisfy his wife’s longing
-Again it’s heavily ironic given that Damien is already in the tree
“ so i my foot mighte sette upon you’re back”
-mace solution is that he should embrace the tree so she can put her foot on his back
-This puts January both physically and metaphorically under her foot
-Also given the development of a plethora of sexual images it is frequently suggested that January embracing the tree connotes a grotesque masturbation as may leaves him for her preferred sexual partner
“ gan pullen” ‘throng”
-The final paragraph swiftly narrates the ensuring action as Me climbs into the tree and a sexual union with waiting Damien
-The apparent sudden shock of the single line describing that the union is rhetorical rather than actual is achieved by the plane dictation by the two verbs ‘gan pullen’ and ‘throng’ in a quick succession
-In fact, the action has been prepared for by elaborate metaphorical foreplay which began with maze suggestive signs to Damien and reach their climax in January’s embrace of the tree trunk
-The lifting of the smock contrast shockingly with the most drawing of the bed curtains which proceeded May union with January on their wedding night.
“ I kan not glose”
-The narrator is clean that he cannot go out of the action is deeply cynical and draws immediate attention back to the character of the merchant
-Firstly the claim is patently untrue as this narrator has just demonstrated his ability to handle a true reference but romance depiction with all its elliptical flexibility so the brutally direct line is unpoetic for affect
“ ladies i pray yow”
-The merchant has Heathrow been addressing himself to an audience of men caught their sympathy on the subject of marriage here he addresses ladies
-The only ladies on the pilgrimage to Canterbury or a handful of nuns to whom the tale never mind it’s climax would be shocking
-And the wife of Beth conversely unlikely to be shocked by anything at all
-chaucer some may choose to make his layers of narrative permeable so that the playful apologies is as much to dress to the ladies of the court who are envisaged audience of the country tales as it is too fictional ladies on their way to Canterbury
