>Who could resist this thread? I was reading a student essay today which
>declared of Chaucer's Parson that he knew no cupidity, but only
>"carritops." I'll have to watch my annunciation in class(!)
>Stephen
Well, folks, if we're into students' dealings with Chaucer, one can easily
collect a host of interesting observations. In the portrait of the friar,
for instance, in the Prologue to the Cant. Tales, I've been told that "he
had great power in confession...even more than a curate, because he was
licentious"; I'm told in the Friar's Tale that Arveragus is a wealthy
knight who has to go about the world on business trips; in the Franklin's
tale I'm told that Dorigen recites a list of 22 wives who have suffered
martial problems. You might also like the variant translations of the
depiction of the poor widow at the start of the Nun's Priest's tale:
By housbondrie of swich as God hire sente
She foond hirself and eek hir doghtren two.
"When she was married and with God's help, she found she was pregnant and
had two daughters";
"As God had sent, she found herself a husband, and also husbands for her
two daughters"
"She found herself and her two dogs with a household which was heaven sent"
In other things I've taught, American and Canadian subscribers might be
interested to know that (in The Journey of the Magi) there is a reference
to the three crosses that stood on top of Calgary, and that Aurelius and
his brother (Franklin's tale again) were on their way to New Orleans.
Enough for the moment! I have still more; maybe I can bring them out to
view some time.
Cheers,
Brian Donaghey
Brian Donaghey - Dept of English Language & Linguistics, University of
Sheffield - Tel. 0114 22 20213
...nec bibliothecae potius comptos ebore ac vitro parietes quam tuae mentis
sedem requiro, in qua non libros, sed id quod libris pretium facit,
librorum quondam meorum sententias, collocavi.--Boethius I pr.5
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