panders Flashcards
what genres or previous chaucer works does he hark at
the amateur lover/narrator of the dream visions. (HF)
some of the bawdier characters of the fabliu genre such as the miller’s tale. like Nicholas, he constructs fictions to accommodate his actions
In Romance, there is often a romantic sympathiser who aids the union of the lover. we recall, for example, 13 c prose lancelot, lancelot faints into the arms of his mate Galehot. or the figure of Guenivere etc.
P is a dubious combination of all of these
how he reads
his character has scholarly interests. consumes literary texts “and ek, as writ Zanus, that was ful wus, / the neve love out chaceth ofte the old’ (iv. 414) . this line is actually taken from ovid and mediated through the Filostrato. And so, just like the narrator fabricating an authroity of Lollius, so does pandarus as authro within the narrative fabricate his own auctour with regards to love.
love
the affair, propelled by P like an ‘old romaunce’ (iii. 980)
barry
partial projection or self-portrait of chaucer himself’. (think about how P thinks in terms of fictions)
- Through the proverbs of P the lovers are offered distinctly practical and realistic advice which seeks to find the norm and mean, avoiding extremes, favouring survival, taking advantage of opportunity while not forsaking prudence. He is all for accepting time and change, and for him all behaviour can be explained through truisms that assume a common pattern in life. Everything has happened and been noticed before; the present is always a repetition, confirming by conforming to an established patterns of commonplaces.
poetic artificer
akin to the poet in his role of artificer. deliberates on best way to approach C like an architect of a house (1. 1065-71). in Geoffrey of Vinsauf this image describes the poetic, not the amatory art; its source, moreover, is boethius’s portrayal of Deus Artifice. there are the making here, in other words, of a comparison between the divine creator. his flawed artifices of go between becomes more significant in this light.
history and pandarus
Barry TO ARGUE AGAINST: p offers ‘practical and realistic advice which he seeks to find the norm and mean, avoiding extremes’ - but he is also idealistic?
he uses events of war to stage props for his private drama. quotes lines from oenons letter etc. yet the events of war frustrates this. reality takes over. cannot seperate the two. the sweep of history takes events beyond the power of Pandarus’s control.
for chaucer this is significant as it provides him with a platform to provide dramatic irony through P fictions, which become in part prophetic. ironic. same for nicholas who becomes too clever for his own good. fictional flood brings about his painfully real need for ‘water!’. like N, P takes too much delight in his on ingenuity as he savours the process of artifice.
pandarus and speech
he often adopts the authorial stance, using language to assume an agency in shaping the plot.
the end ‘if i dide ought that mighte lyken thee/ it is me leef’ - opening the possibility that subsequent speech acts might transform the deterministic narrative? conditional nature of the ‘if’.
failures of language at the end of the poem. as well as the failures of love.
pandarus and boethius
he offers a partial voice of rationality against T boethian chat about cruel fortune. he consistently advocates an understanding of Fortunes commonality to human experience as he comforts t ‘IV, 389-42)
his arguament as one which relenquishes ‘this world’ and its submission to the transient nature of fortune: simular to lady P teachings that humans should deny material pleasures.
in the face of fortune’s omnipotence, p asserts his own human view: ‘forthi i thus diffyne’. ‘forthi’ and ‘thus’ are used tautologically to suggest a defiant mode of reasoning. offers a kind of humanistic affirmation of agency in contrast to T acceptance of destiny. P says T must not feel a victim to it. harks at book 2 of consolation where lady says humans hust not claim ownership of anything effected by fortune.
yet his cultural intervation falls short due to difference of pagan christian world. P cannot comfort T about the stability of God’s infinitude that awaits in the afterlife (like lady p)
p and style
like narrator, he can slip into different styles.
calls T by ‘yow’ and ye but when alone ‘thow fol’ etc.
manner of epic style he adopts when telling C of T in battle. attempt at epic style. possible comic overstatement?
also the style of oath he gives her is a bit ott. signs of bravura performance. to his neice he imploys often a too highly rhetorical style.
also language like gossip sometimes.
sometimes he matches the lover seriousness, and sometimes he comically deflates the moment. (oxymoron jokes like ‘i have a joly wo, a lusty sorwe’ (ii. 1099)
