Doh! And there I was thinking it was some obscure mediaeval poem
which maybe I had to read in manuscript...
Got some sleep last night (cuddled safely on Chaucer) and am now
doing my best to impersonate a human being.
A
>Oh pShaw, as the wan don said--bet you keep it under your pillow!
>
>Cacklin',
>
>C
>
>
>
>on 12/5/01 3:32 AM, Alison Croggon at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> Candice - Now where would I find The Franklin's Tale? I'm all agog
>> and nowhere near a good library - but gentilesse sounds pretty much
>> the arena I want to play in -
>>
>> Best
>>
>> A
>>
>>> Alison wrote:
>>>
>>>> What is a better word for a
>>>> sense of mutual respect and mutual responsibility, which also implies
>>>> difference? For something which means the enrichment of social
>>>> relationships, in its focussing on individual validities? I do mean
>>>> something quite specific and real, which I know is possible from my
>>>> own personal relationships, but I don't quite know how to describe it.
>>>
>>> Interjecting a response to both here, I'd say read _The Franklin's Tale_,
>>> where the word is _gentilesse_--a nobility of spirit or
>>>sensibility in which
>>> _trouthe_ and _freodom_ combine to yield the notion of integrity.
>>>When their
>>> personal integrity is made the basis of Arveragus and Dorigen's
>>> relationship, it breeds the same in their relations with others: debts are
>>> forgiven precisely because they've been honored, debtors freed by virtue of
>>> the binding words--their troth--to which they remain true. When Aurelius
>>> rises to the gentilesse of Arveragus and Dorigen, he too becomes a freeman
>>> ("franklin"). Resolved to be truthful to the _Maister_ (magician and
>>> philosopher) whom he'd wooed with a fine meal and then promised to pay an
>>> exorbitant sum for a seductive illusion, he is released from his
>>>own debt in
>>> turn with a gesture redolent of Christopher's Prynne-at-the-table: You paid
>>> for my food, says the old master of _moones mansions in minde_--"It is
>>> ynough."
>>>
>>> Here is what poets do and what poets learn how to do from their
>>> predecessors, as Chaucer learned this instructive tale from Boccaccio and
>>> Prynne has gone to school on the both of them, among others. What
>>>remains to
>>> be done now, as always, is for the rest of the world to learn from
>>> poets--but the world we live in seems neither inclined to be so
>>>educated nor
>>> to have produced many poets with the wherewithal for the job, including the
>>> requisite gentilesse.
>>>
>>> Candice
>>>
>>>
>>> Christopher wrote:
>>>
>>>>> So what should poets do? What _can_ they do? The questions you
>>>>> began with. I
>>>>> too don't believe that poetry can (or should) be justified by its
>>>>> _usefulness_. It's certainly not very 'useful' in any direct or
>>>>> obvious way.
>>>>> But as writers and as readers we _can_ 'work and eat at the same table',
>>>>> as
>>>>> Prynne puts it. We can remain alive to the consequences of
>>>>>what is on that
>>>>> table. We can 'look to [our] limits and employ them' (also Prynne).
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> Alison Croggon
>>
>> Home page
>> http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>> Masthead
>> http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
