Canterbury Tales

Continuing in my review of the 24 books I have planned to read in 2009, the second category I planned to read from was Medieval Literature. For this category, I read Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales".

First off, I would like to say that I eschewed reading them in their original Middle English, as in 2008 I took a graduate class where there was far too much reading in Middle English.

Chaucer seems to be almost universally lauded as a genius. It seems to me, though, that almost every particular type of critic and reader likes to imagine Chaucer as someone who is exactly like themselves. Secular humanists like to see him as a proto-humanist, with his religious tales being mainly satirical. The religious crowd likes to imagine Chaucer as being devout, although most would be happy to somehow bury the anti-semitism of the Prioress' tale. I prefer to leave Chaucer's slippery personality in the Canterbury Tales to be uninterpreted. It's more a mess of the diversity of points of view and experiences in human life, a mass of stories. It is a text easy to read from a post-modern perspective.

I must say that I much prefer "Troilus and Criseyde" or many other medieval romances to the individual Canterbury Tales, but that's just me. The potty humour is not generally enough to leave me entertained, nor do I have a great desire to use Chaucer to press my critical agenda (see above). Some tales have some good entertainment value (see the Knight's Tale or the Wife of Bath's Tale). Some, such as the disturbing Prioress' Tale, in which a kabal of Jews slaughters a young Christian boy, are interpretatively knotty, and can sustain lengthy analysis. Some are just downright boring. There. I said it.

The form itself is interesting, although the versification can make extended reading quite tiring. The very framed narrative structure, with the quarrelling, worldly characters taking turns telling their tales along the way to Canterbury is the most truly noteworthy and ingenious part of Chaucer's work, though. If you wish to get a taste for this work without reading the entirety of it, as I did, may I suggest you read the General Introduction and the Wife of Bath's Tale?

Where There's Smoke...

Today, as I was walking home from a refreshing time in the woods of a local ravine, I saw the flash of emergency lights. Coming closer, I realized there were not just a few emergency vehicles, but, indeed, the police had cordoned off the entire block where I lived. Police cars, paramedic vehicles, fire trucks. Especially fire trucks.

I asked some of the local firemen if my place was OK. After I told them where I lived, he said the people above me had had a fire and the firemen had to punch out the locks from my door to get in my apartment. I secretly thought that the second part was pretty cool.

I spent the next few hours leading firemen and electric inspectors through my apartment, taking care of my neighbours, and doing things that needed to happen like sorting things out with my landlord and getting new deadbolts put on the door. Fortunately, there was no water or smoke damage to my apartment, but the neighbours upstairs have an apartment that looks like a small bomb went off in it.

In other news, we found out that my landlord has not had functional smoke alarms or carbon monoxide detectors in our place, and, according to the fire department, that's a big deal. Charges shall be pressed. The worst part of it is my neighbours' two year old girl is still in the hospital being checked out.

I am thankful it happened in the day, though, as the firemen says that if it were night, they'd have to be carrying people out. I may try and sleep somewhere else tonight.

Upon Reading Fagles' Iliad

Last December, in a move which must have been subconsciously aimed at cementing "nerdy" status, I made a list of 24 categories from which I wanted to read one book each in 2009. I'm sure there will be a post on "Stuff White People Like" on something like this sometime soon. So far, I'm pretty close to being on pace.

One of the categories which I put down I wanted to read a book out of was "Ancient and Classical Literature". So, since I had never actually read the "Iliad" and I was going on a long trip to North Africa, I decided to pick up a translation -- Robert Fagles'.

It's a long book.

My non-professional thoughts?

I honestly preferred the "Odyssey" to the "Iliad", but there is much to be said about the "Iliad". The long-churning battle scenes, with extended, gory descriptions of death -- "Person X hacked Person Y with Weapon Z and Body Organ Q was visible" -- almost seemed to produce an imitation of the battle weariness of the Greeks and Trojans after nine years of combat in the reader himself. I could not bring myself to enjoy the extended battle in a straightforward way after the eleventh such 20 page battle, so I'll chalk Homer's technique up to some sort of mimesis. This view could be supported by Homer's tendency to describe the life of a promising young youth -- his parentage and upbringing -- only to have him die savagely at the hand of Hector or Achilles, a seeming nod to the wastefulness of war. I say this even though I am not a strict pacifist myself.

Likewise, although I expected myself to be rooting for the Greeks the entire time, Homer seemed to make it impossible to side entirely with the Greeks or the Trojans.

Surprisingly, my favourite character in the "Iliad" would have to be Hector. The image of a man who is chiefly dedicated to caring for his family, yet is willing to face his duty in war courageously and with deadly capability is very appealing to the Renaissance Man in me. Most noteworthy in the "Iliad", to me, is the scene in which he tenderly bids his wife goodbye before he faces the battlefield, and when his toddler son sees him in his horsehair helmet, his son cries, scared of his father. The couple laugh at the son, and Hector takes his son in his arms and prays that the son might grow to be a better man than the father. That is better than a rom-com for men. It is little wonder that the Medieval Europeans counted him as one of the four Pagan Worthy Knights

Out of all the Greeks, Odysseus, the crafty and diplomatic one, seems to be the most likeable. Compare his tact and wisdom against the infantile power-plays of Agamemnon and the selfish, childish sulking of Achilles, and he stacks up quite well.

A good friend of mine considers Achilles to be his favourite character in the book, but I would dissent. Achilles is undoubtably unmatched on the field of conflict, almost godlike in his powers. But Hector's strength is a well-tempered strength; his character is well-rounded. And until the Styx-dipped Achilles shows up, Hector is well-nigh unstoppable. His death, like an animal put to flight around the walls of Troy, was, to say the obvious, lamentable.

The translation itself, by Robert Fagles, leaves me nothing to complain about. It is terse and highly readable.

Refreshment

I have a mixed relationship with summer. Don't get me wrong, I love the season itself. The lush green of verdant forests, running in the muggy heat until the sweat pours down your skin and you plunge into a cold lake, and the magic of late summer evenings are all things that I enjoy. The world is alive in summer. Heck, I even like the idea of summer, as Northrop Frye expresses it. Summer, Frye suggests, is the representation of Romance, the perfect world, Heaven. The typology is there.

The reality of summer doesn't alway measure up, though. For me, growing up, summer was when the students left my college town, making it feel empty. I remember summers working questionably legal jobs in Owen Sound, like moving bricks up uneven scaffolding without safety equipment (I never was paid for that). Summers could be great, but sometimes they could be slow, in all the bad senses of the word.

This summer has been refreshing in so many ways. Along with all the physical refreshments of summer, which I first alluded to, this summer has had deeper, more subtle, but more exquisite pleasures of refreshment, suggesting a shadow of Frye's Summer. Reunification with people you have not seen in years, with all the laughter that brings. Meeting new people who may become old friends. The delicious ache which comes through getting back into running. The soul-restoring quiet of a cottage from childhood memory, reading books which restore my spirit. Words of Truth at Grace Toronto. Remembering things which were forgotten. Becoming re-newed.

Sometimes, "thank you" doesn't seem enough.