Disseminal Chaucer

Peter W. Travis

Description

Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale is one of the most popular of The Canterbury Tales. It is only 646 lines long, yet it contains elements of a beast fable, an exemplum, a satire, and other genres. There have been countless attempts to articulate the "real" meaning of the tale, but it has confounded the critics. Peter Travis contends that part of the fun and part of the frustration of trying to interpret the tale has to do with Chaucer's use of the tale to demonstrate the resistance of all literature to traditional critical practices. But the world of The Nun's Priest's Tale is so creative and so quintessentially Chaucerian that critics persist in writing about it.

No one has followed the critical fortunes of Chauntecleer and his companions more closely over time than Peter Travis. One of the most important contributions of this book is his assessment of the tale's reception. Travis also provides an admirable discussion of genre: his analysis of parody and Menippean satire clarify how to approach works such as this tale that take pleasure in resisting traditional generic classifications. Travis also demonstrates that the tale deliberately invoked its readers' memories of specific grammar school literary assignments, and the tale thus becomes a miniaturized synopticon of western learning. Building on these analyses and insights, Travis's final argument is that The Nun's Priest's Tale is Chaucer's premier work of self-parody, an ironic apologia pro sua arte. The most profound matters foregrounded in the tale are not advertisements of the poet's achievements. Rather, they are poetic problems that Chaucer wrestled with from the beginning of his career and, at the end of that career, wanted to address in a concentrated, experimental, and parapoetic way.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Medieval
• Idioma inglés
• Idioma galés
• Edad Media
• Menippean satire
• General officer
• Middle Ages
• Irish
• English
• The Canterbury Tales
• General
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Musique irlandaise
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268093723
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

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Disseminal Chaucer
Disseminal Chaucer
ReReading The un’s PRiesT ’s Tale
Peter W. travis Disseminal Chaucer
“Peter Travis opens the Pandora’s box that is Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale by
asking a disarmingly simple question about its genre. He proceeds to detail, brilliantly, the ReReaDing The nun’s PRiesT’s Tale
narrative’s status as a multiplex parody, a medieval Ulysses. By refusing to reduce the
tale to a singular meaning, and by maintaining that its proliferative ardors are part of
its formal structure, Travis provides a tour de force analysis not only of the work but
of Chaucer’s ambitions throughout The Canterbury Tales. Lucid, engaging, and great
fun to read, Dissemimal Chaucer provides a compelling model for doing theory-savvy
work that is scrupulously attentive to medieval textuality.”
—Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington University
“Travis performs the diffcult feat of remaining continually aware of Chaucer’s com -
edy, while taking seriously the pedagogical system Chaucer is parodying. His rich book
provides a genuine and valuable introduction to medieval practices of reading and
writing, and at the same time takes us deep into Chaucer’s thinking about poetry.”
—Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University
“Peter Travis’s long-awaited study of The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is without a doubt the
most comprehensive and thorough treatment of the tale that we have or are ever likely
to have. It is a bravura performance, an extremely well argued study that marks it as a
signifcant contribution to Chaucer studies, one that will be closely read and consulted
by both students and scholars of Chaucer alike.”
—Jim Rhodes, Southern Connecticut State University
“Disseminal Chaucer is an original work of criticism that breaks
new ground in its treatment of The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, both in its
approach to the tale and in its perspective on Chaucer’s poetry as a
whole. It is historicist based, which places it in the mainstream of
current medieval practices, but its background material and authoritative
reading will make it fresh and current for a very long time.”
—Larry Scanlon, Rutgers University
PETER W. TRAVIS is Henry Winkley Professor of Anglo-Saxon and
English Language and Literature at Dartmouth College. He is the author of many
infuential articles and Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle.
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame IN 46556 Peter W. travisundpress.nd.edu
Cover art: Chauntecleer by Doug Henry. Courtesy of the author.
Cover design: Margaret Gloster
TravisDesigns.indd 1 10/6/09 2:40:17 PMDISSEMINAL
CHAUCERDisseminal
CHAUCER
Rereading The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
PETER W. TRAVIS
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, IndianaCopyright © 2009 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Travis, Peter W.
Disseminal Chaucer : rereading The nun’s priest’s tale / Peter W. Travis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-268-04235-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-268-04235-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400. Nun’s priest’s tale. 2. English poetry—
Middle English, 1100–1500—History and criticism. I. Title.
PR1868.N63T73 2010
821.1—dc22
2009038253
∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.For my sons— Sean, Jared, MatthewContents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
O N E
The Nun’s Priest’s Body, or Chaucer’s Sexual Genius 29
T W O
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale as Grammar School Primer, Menippean
Parody, and Ars Poetica 51
T H R E E
Close Reading: Beginnings and Endings 119
F O U R
Chaucer’s Heliotropes and the Poetics of Metaphor 169
F I V E
The Noise of History 201viii Contents
S I X
Chaucerian Horologics and the Confounded Reader 267
S E V E N
The Parodistic Episteme: Learning to Behold the Fox 303
E I G H T
Moralitas 335
Notes 351
Works Cited 392
Index 416Acknowledgments
Many of us who love Chaucer can trace the trajectory of our careers
back to a few powerful mentors. My own fascination began in a year-long
Chau cer course taught at Bowdoin College by William S. Williams. At the
University of Chicago, I reread all of Chaucer’s works in graduate courses
taught by Jerome Taylor. And in my first few years at Dartmouth College,
I had the good fortune to team-teach The Canterbury Tales with Alan Gay -
lord, from whom I learned most of what I know about the craft of
teaching. I am deeply indebted to these extremely inspiring role models. I am
also very indebted to two younger medievalists in my home department:
George Edmondson, whose love of all thing theoretical has rejuvenated my
readiness to pursue some of my riskier scholarly adventures, and Monika
Otter, who has read the entirety of this book with caring critic al attention
and who has been a most generous and inspiring colleague. Searching for
my critical voice over the past thirty-some years has led me into
invigorating exchanges with many others. At MLA conventions, meetings of the
Medieval Academy, the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University,
New Chaucer Society conferences, as well as more specialized conferences,
I have had the privilege of joining a community of thinkers whose various
ways of reading Chaucer have brought the field to a extraordinarily high
level of sophistication. For sharing their ideas and listening to my own, I
want especially to thank Kathleen Ashley, Theresa Coletti, Sarah Stanbury,
ixx Acknowledgments
Lee Patterson, Jim Rhodes, James Goldstein, Ross Arthur, Sylvia Tomasch,
Robert Hanning, Sealy Gilles, Robert Stein, Dan Rubey, Joel Kaye, Rich -
ard Neuse, Thomas Hahn, Paul Strohm, Lisa Kiser, Steven Kruger, Caro -
lyn Collette, Chris Baswell, Warren Ginsberg, Frank Grady, Robert Myles,
and Bill Askins. Other individuals whose scholarly work has been
profoundly significant remain so numerous that I’ll try to recognize them at
appropriate points in the book itself. Yet here I want to acknowledge Derek
Pearsall, whose magisterial Variorum edition of The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
remains the most important resource and appraisal of its kind.
I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for
their extremely generous support, and above all to Dartmouth College,
whose sabbatical schedule and senior faculty fellowship program have
provided me with more than ample time to finally bring this project to
completion. I have been privileged at Dartmouth to teach courses on The
Canterbury Tales and on Chaucer’s other works to students of the
highest caliber; were it not for their intelligence and critical energy, I am
certain I would have pursued my scholarly interests with diminished
enthusiasm. I have conducted most of my research in Dartmouth’s Baker/
Berry Library, whose first-rate staff, especially Laura Braunstein, have
provided expert professional assistance. I want to thank Darsie Riccio for her
collegiality, and my conscientious undergraduate research assistants—
Cordelia Ross, Emma Palley, Fruzsina Molnar, and Lauren Indvik. Finally,
Carol Westberg has been a most generous companion, whose love of
poetry and of all things wise and beautiful has encouraged me to try to
capture in analytic prose some of the pleasures of Chaucer’s verse.
I am grateful for permission to reprint in revised form previously
published works: to the University of Eichstätt for “Learning to Behold
the Fox: Poetics and Epistemology in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” in
Poetry and Epistemology: Turning Points in the History of Poetic Knowledge,
ed. Roland Hagenbuchle and Laura Skandera (1986); to the New Chaucer
Society for “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale as Grammar-School Primer,” Studies
in the Age of Chaucer: Proceedings 1 (1986); to the Journal of Medieval and
Renaissance Studies for “Chaucer’s Trivial Fox Chase and the Peasants’
Revolt of 1381,” Journal of Medieval and Re naissance Studies 18 (1988);
to the Medieval Academy for “Chaucer’s Hel iotropes and the Poetics of
Metaphor,” Speculum 72 (1997); to the University of Northern IllinoisAcknowledgments xi
for “Chaucer’s Chronographiae, the Confounded Reader, and
FourteenthCentury Measurements of Time,” Disputatio 2: Constructions of Time in
the Late Middle Ages (1997); to Boydell and Brewer, Ltd., for “Reading
Chaucer Ab Ovo: Mock-Exemplum in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” in The
Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama,
ed. James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clop per, and Sylvia Tomasch (1998); to
the University of Florida for “Thirteen Ways of Listening to a Fart: Noise
in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale,” Exemplaria 16 (2004); and to the
University of Notre Dame Press for “The Body of the Nun’s Priest, or, Chau -
cer’s Disseminal Genius,” in Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of
Robert W. Hanning, ed. Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior (2005).
Finally, I want to commemorate Chauntecleer and his twelve wives,
each named Alice. For a brief time they roamed freely in my barnyard.
One spring day—it was May 3—I looked up from my rototiller and
beheld Reynard loping in from the woods, followed by his attractive vixen.
Chickens elevated in various directions, my family implored me to do
something heroic, I vainly arced one arrow from a bow I had fashioned
in summer camp years ago: “It semed as that hevene sholde falle.” Heaven
did not then fall. But a few nights later the fox returned, and for a long
time we grieved the loss of those beautiful, self-involved, and so-human
critters. It was then I decided I might write a book about chickens.Introduction
Most readers agree that The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is one of Chaucer’s finest
poetic achievements. Critics have judged it to be a “virtuoso
perform1 2ance,” “the most consciously aesthetic of Chaucer’s productions,” “a
3summa of Chaucerian artistry,” illustrating “in par