Hi everyone! If you'd like to comment this week, feel free to post on Brad's thoughts (below) or in response to any of the following prompts.
* "Litel" is a frequently (almost obsessively) repeated word in the "Prioress's Tale." What are the meanings and effects of "litelnes" in the poem?
* Discuss the "justice" that is meted out to the Jews. What do you make of the verdict of the provost? What is the significance of the community that is reconstituted at the tale's end? How could we productively compare it with either The Siege of Jerusalem or The Croxton Play of the Sacrament?
* What is the significance of song, or music, in the "Prioress's Tale"? How is song defined in relation to language or to poetry or to prayer? What are the specific powers of song in the tale?
* Look over Fradenburg's close reading of the "Prioress's Tale" (pp 91-108 of her essay). Disagree with, or qualify, or expand upon one of her specific interpretive claims about the poem. Ground your point in textual evidence.
There’s a St. Francis quote I remember from forever ago that goes something like, “Singing is like praying twice.” The songs within the song of the “Prioress’s Tale” make it more obvious that the Tale itself is (kind of) a hymn to Mary. The prologue includes the invocation, “O mooder Mayde, O mayde Mooder free!” (467). The chiasmus here brings underlines the poem’s focus on Mary as the speaker literally hails her. When the poem explains that the widow taught her little boy the Ave Maria, it draws attention to the question of language but it also creates a parallel mother/son relationship. Chaucer writes, “The swetnesse his herte perced so/ Of Cristes mooder that, to hire to preye,/ He kan nat stynte of syngyng by the weye” (555-557). Once the boy starts singing Alma Mater Redemptoris, the image of Mary’s pierced heart emphasizes the parallel between the boy as an extension of Jesus. The title of the song becomes a literal plot device and character trait of Mary in the poem. Despite the language barrier between her and the little boy, Mary demonstrates her power by allowing the boy to continue singing her praises when he should be dead. Because it’s a song within a song, the Tale continues (presumably through the grace of Mary) even after the boy stops singing.
ReplyDeleteThis tale flies in the face of the Croxton Play. The Croxton play was all about welcoming outsiders into the flock and the forgiveness of Christianity, but the Prioress’s tale…well, it isn’t. As the Provost puts it, “Yvele shal have that yvele wol deserve” (632). Very similar to Hamurabi’s code, Eye for an Eye. For their crimes, the Jews are torn apart by horses, a horrible fate, but the thing is, the writer is able to make the punishment sound reasonable to the reader, Chaucer or the Prioress, whoever, makes the Jews’ crime so unforgiveable that they must all be destroyed. They don’t just kill anyone, they murder a child, the child of a widow, a child who was so pure and diligent and intelligent and talented that he could sing the Alma redemptoris. Of course, this child is a parallel to Jesus Christ, a child with a mother but no father, who is destroyed by the Jews, which in turn brings the people of the city together. In his death only, is the community united, mourning over his body, which really sums up this class as a whole. In the Middle Ages, Violence brought people together as much as it tore them apart.
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