Tag: Chaucer

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Undergrad Wednesdays – Emily as Subject of Foucauldian Prison Discourse in “The Knight’s Tale”

[This post was written in the spring 2018 semester for Karrie Fuller's course on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It responds to the prompt posted here.]

Courtly love, as described by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, consists of a series of rigidly-defined criteria by which a man may rightly pursue a woman. In such pursuit, it is not uncommon for a man to become infatuated with a woman to the point of physical illness. He admires her from afar as she becomes the sole object of his gaze; the entire energy of his being is directed towards contemplation of her beauty. This dynamic may progress significantly without any direct reciprocation from the female party. In Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale,” Emily endures the reality of courtly love to the point of abject suffering. (For a further analysis of the female voice in Chaucer’s tales, consider reading Ashtin Ballad’s Emily’s Modes of Expression in the Knight’s Tale- A Precursor to the #MeToo Movement). Several hundred years after the writing of The Canterbury Tales, Michel Foucault offers in his Discipline and Punish consideration towards a prison construct termed the ‘panopticon’. In this building, a fortified guard tower at the center of a circular room looks out upon rows of prison cells stacked against its perimeter. The windows of the central tower are tinted so as to prevent the prisoners from knowing whether or not they are under observation at any given moment. This dynamic instills a latent sense of paranoia within the prisoner and subjects them to a power relation which renders them unable to resist the the penal system above them. Between these two works appears a space for courtly love to exist in relation to the construct of the panopticon. With Emily’s character as a grounds for consideration, the following post will explore the extent to which courtly love suppresses the female will by means of persistent observation and imposition of external force.

Stateville Correctional Facility Roundhouse. Closed in December of 2016, Stateville Correctional Facility located in Crest Hill, Illinois represented the longest-surviving panopticon-style prison house in the entire world. It was closed following a human rights investigation which exposed the facility for its poor living conditions in addition to its financial inefficiency compared to traditional prison formats.

While observation from afar comes to constitute a significant theme in “The Knight’s Tale,” its practical application is inverted with respect to the work of Foucault. In effect, it is the prisoners who observe a free subject rather than enforcers of the penal system who gaze upon a  prisoner. Chaucer details Palamon’s first encounter with Emily in writing:

And so bifel by aventure or cas* (it happened by chance or accident)
That thurgh a window thikke of many a barre
Of iren greet and square as any sparre* (beam)                                                                    
He caste his eye upon Emelya (ln. 1074-1077).

Here, Palamon and Arcite conduct their observation from a point of concealment imposed against their mutual will. While the physical structure of the prison operates at a base level against them in their observation-power exchange with Emily, the Foucaldian implications of their situation work such that power weighs in their favor. Though Palamon and Arcite are traditional prisoners in the immediate sense, Emily here occupies the role of the panopticon prisoner. Her status as a young woman of consequential birth renders her a conventionally attractive subject of the male gaze. She is, however, entirely unaware of her sustained observation and subsequent fetishization by the palpably-bored Palamon and Arcite. (For an alternate exploration of love in Chaucer’s work, consider reading Nicole Matthias’ What is love, Or Chaucer as Related to Modern Views of Love in Literature).

Further, the role of the Gods in Chaucer’s work seem to embody the indifferent nature of the penal system with regard to the will of its prisoners. Foucault, a significant critic of Western prison practice in the 19th Century, argued that prison systems employed methods inconsistent with the personal development of prisoners. As a consequence of this, recidivism abounds and the penal system as a whole devolves into a self-indulgent cycle of discipline and punishment. Here, there seems to be a tension between an individual’s free will and a near-supernatural sense of predestination towards a certain fate. Chaucer employs this mechanic in the pseudo-smiting of Arcite following his victory in battle. In granting such a great degree of power to the fickle hand of fate, Chaucer emphasizes Emily’s own helplessness to resist the power structures above her. Not only is she impotent in the face of the male presence which observes her and dictates her future, a further unseen element toys with the very fate of mortals and casts their affairs in a perpetual state of uncertainty.

In summary, Chaucer’s work in The Canterbury Tales maintains relevance beyond its value merely as a surviving fourteenth-century work of literature. Granted appropriate consideration, many tales serve as a fruitful ground for application of modern theory. In Chaucer’s time, the panopticon was hundreds of years from conception. The very notion of an advanced, sprawling penal system seems beyond the scope of possibility for Chaucer’s own context. Still, in producing nuanced works such as “The Knight’s Tale,” Chaucer effectively allows for his work to carry significance well into the modern age.

Connor Dunleavy
University of Notre Dame

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Undergrad Wednesdays – Islamaphobic Rhetoric in Chaucer: Not Just ‘A Thing of the Past’

[This post was written in the spring 2018 semester for Karrie Fuller's course on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It responds to the prompt posted here.]

The Canterbury Tales were written in the late 1300s, using language so antiquated to modern ears that it sometimes hardly resembles modern idiomatic English. But does this mean some potentially problematic ideals reflected in the tales are antiquated as well? Certainly not. Anti-Semitism, misogyny, and class issues are just some of the relevant and often troubling topics which pervade the tales. Particularly disquieting is the Islamophobic language used in “The Man of Law’s Tale” because of how eerily reflective it is of language used in instances of hate crimes today in the Western world. Not only that, but a driving force behind an increase in such abuses is often attributed to misrepresentation of the Islamic faith in the media, particularly in newspaper headlines. Some may scoff at the archaic lexicon of Middle English, but hundreds of years after the death of Chaucer, we must reckon with the bitter truth that we are continuing to use the written or printed word to perpetuate extremely hateful and prejudiced ideas of Islam.

A medieval depiction of the Crusades, with Muslim soldiers on the left and Christians on the right (de Tyr).

There is no question that Geoffrey Chaucer’s representation of the Islamic faith in “The Man of Law’s Tale” is extremely negative. In this tale, a Syrian Sultanness massacres her own son and hundreds of his followers in cold blood in order to gain political power. She uses her son’s conversion to Christianity to manipulate her court against him and justify the massive slaughter. Chaucer paints her as the ultimate, heartless villain, using language which suggests her Islamic faith is the root of all evil, whereas the Sultan himself may be considered an upstanding character, but only because he has forsaken his beliefs and converted to Christianity. Even though this action is merely to become eligible to marry the Christian woman, Custance, any reason for conversion is seen as preferable to retaining the Islamic faith. Syria itself is referred to as “the barbre [barbaric] nacioun” (Chaucer 126), and the Sultanness as a “welle of vices” and “roote of iniquitee [evil]” (Chaucer 128). The Muslim nation is painted as barbaric and corrupt, a mysterious land of lawlessness where a mother may murder her son without remorse and become the source of evil itself. The devil, as a snake bound to hell, is invoked in comparison to the Sultanness, with the lines, “O serpent under femynynytee [femininity], / Lik to the serpent depe in helle ybounde [like the serpent bound deep in Hell]!”(Chaucer 128). There is no definitive proof that this starkly anti-Muslim rhetoric is representative of Chaucer’s personal attitude toward Muslims; he may have been incorporating a popular sentiment of prejudice inherited from the Crusades. Fought from around 1090 through the 1200s, this was the period of Holy Wars between Christians and Muslims over sites of shared religious significance (“Crusades”). But, whether Chaucer upheld those attitudes or not, the widespread popularity and influence of The Canterbury Tales could have facilitated the spread of such hateful views in medieval popular culture.

Modern-day readers may only speculate about just how much the Man of Law’s views spread originally, but it is certainly evident that the hatred continues today. The consequences are truly tragic, as the rate of hate crimes soars in places like London, where tension over Islamophobic media representation has been building since the ISIS terrorist attacks in Paris. The Metropolitan Police of London reported a 70% increase in Islamophobic hate crimes committed over the course of the year following the month of July 2014-2015, from 478 reported the previous year to a disheartening 816. The people most at risk of becoming victims to such crimes are women wearing hijab, as they are more easily targeted (Sudan). Verbal abuse like that used against a woman riding public transportation often echo sentiments which appear in The Man of Law’s Tale; in this attack, the woman is referred to as “the devil,” reminiscent of the way in which Chaucer refers to Satan’s jealousy of the Muslim Sultanness (Sudan). Newspaper headlines make damaging blanket statements with gross and off-base generalizations like “UK mosques fundraising for terror” in The Daily Star Sunday, or “Muslim sex grooming” in The Times. The first of these headlines was condemned by IPSO press regulation, and the second was referred to as “appalling” by Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Ian Hopkins. Both were criticized for using extremely misleading language to paint the Islamic faith in a negative light (Versi). Statements like these are meant to make the Islamic faith and culture appear violent and barbaric, similar to the illustration of the Sultanness depicted by the remorseless mass murder and descriptions of the “barbre nacioun” of Syria (Chaucer 126).

A Muslim woman becomes the victim of verbal attack in language which invokes the devil, akin to that used in “The Man of Law’s Tale” (“ISIS bus rant: In the grip of hate”).

Hate-filled rhetoric of this nature proves that we cannot dismiss the prejudiced sentiment depicted in medieval texts like The Canterbury Tales as antiquated and irrelevant. Instead, the striking similarities it has to how Muslim culture is represented in language today are a testament to the fact that we have not made enough progress in promoting more globally-minded and tolerant thinking. Islamophobic rhetoric has existed for far too long in written, print, and now electronic media, and improvements must be made in the kind of language used to discuss Islamic culture in unbiased and culturally aware terms. We must recognize how deeply rooted intolerant language is, the consequences it has, and the need to finally move forward and correct the manner in which Islamic culture is represented.

Meggie Kollitz
University of Notre Dame

Works Cited

“Crusades.” History.com.A&E Networks 2010. Web.

de Tyr, Guillame. Histoire d’Outremer. 1500s. France (Paris), Paris, BnF, département des Manuscrits, FranÇais 22495 fol. 90

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. by Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor, 2nd ed. (Broadview, 2012)

“ISIS bus rant: in the grip of hate.” YouTube, uploaded by RT UK, 19 October 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7NUgWhxLmg&feature=youtu.be&has_verified=1

Sudan, Richard. “Increasing attacks on Muslims caused by media-hyped Islamophobia.” RT. RT 8 December 2015. Web.

Versi, Miqdaad. “Why the British media is responsible for the rise in Islamophobia in Britain.” Independent. independent.co.uk. 4 April 2016. Web.

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Undergrad Wednesdays – Food for Thought: The Alt-Right and the Prioress’s Tale

[This post was written in the spring 2018 semester for Karrie Fuller's course on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It responds to the prompt posted here.]

In many of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,there exist the specters of fourteenth-century social attitudes, whether these be about religion, gender, or any other topic now carefully studied by literary critics. Even amongst all of these numerous tales, however, the “Prioress’ Tale” and its blatant, vicious anti-Semitism stands out as particularly troubling. Troubling, and, unfortunately, as relevant now as it was so many centuries ago due to a curious movement among the modern alt-right supporters of America. Social and political movements, including violent or radical movements, often justify themselves with appeals to authority, wherein they use literature of the classic Western canon, from the Bible to Aristotle to Dickens, to validate their ideologies. The modern alt-right movement that has recently gained some infamy in the United States in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and the Charlottesville rally is no different.

In order to gain real traction, radical movements must appear to be steeped in legitimacy. This can come in many forms, such as the pseudoscience, phrenology, perpetuating racist attitudes, but often it comes in the form of (mis)interpreting the literary canon to fit a radical ideology. For the alt-right and very far-right, a favorite author to discuss is, strangely, Jane Austen. If read and analyzed in the way that most people would, Austen is not an ardent supporter of the alt-right, but they use her works in multiple ways. For one, she becomes a symbol of sexual purity, as part of a mythological age that ended with the 1950’s in which women were pure and chaste. Austen’s novels, as do many of the titles alt-right movements use, also hearken to a nostalgic ‘better world’ of the past, where white, Christian males had the most social power. For example, in a speech at the University of Colorado Boulder, controversial conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos references Austen in his speech extolling the dangers of feminism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTBafIj-ay0 (link removed to reduce the traffic to his site; please use only if needed for research purposes to avoid supporting intolerance). Austen is just one of many authors that the alt-right has picked up as validation; they are, for example, also very fond of ancient Greek Stoicism, using this philosophy to justify their beliefs.

Chaucer’s “Prioress’ Tale” is a good example of the kind of literature that alt-right groups could use to justify their positions on anti-Semitism. It is a story that totally villainizes the Jewish people, putting them in bed with Satan, saying, “Oure firste foo, the serpent Sathanas/ That hath in Jues herte his waspes nest/ Up swal and seide, “O Hebrayk peple, allas!” (VII. 558-560). It not only casts Jews as villains, but also perpetuates stereotypes that have followed them for centuries, as the Prioress’s statement that the Jewish community is, “Sustened by a lord of that contree/ For foul usure and lucre of vileynye/ Hateful to Christ and to his compaignye” (VII. 490-492). In other words, they are villainous money-lenders. In addition, they hate Christians for their love of Mary, and conspire (a stereotypical favorite pastime for Jews) to murder a Christian child: “Fro thennes forth the Jues han conspired/ This innocent out of this world to chace/ An homycide therto han they hyred” (VII. 565-568). Because of its similarity to the problems that the modern alt-right movement has with the Jewish people, this tale could be made into an easy example of how Jews have been the way that they are for centuries, and are unlikely to change. It could easily be used to fuel hatred.

The use of canonical literature to inspire hatred, of course, raises many problematic questions. What is the correct way to approach literature that deals with sensitive issues in insensitive ways? Is it best to attempt to teach it, giving the caveat that it is insensitive? Or is it best to ignore it, or ban it, because of the idea that even with the caveat there will be, here and there, people who use such literature to justify hatred? Is literary merit always worth that risk? This hearkens to the perennial debate about whether Huckleberry Finn should be banned; some people have moved to ban it for ‘inciting racial hatred’ in high schools. All this, of course, despite the fact that many critics do not think that Huck Finn is a racist book, and its author almost certainly wasn’t- just the possibility that it could incite hatred, due to ignorance and misinterpretation, is enough for some to want it banned. Perhaps some of the Canterbury Tales, such as the “Prioress’ Tale,” are even worse than Huck Finn, because of authorial intent. Mark Twain seems to not have been a racist; Chaucer, on the other hand, might have been terribly misogynistic or anti-Semitic. Should authorial intent matter? Indeed, should a book with literary merit be banned or restricted because its author had radical or violent views, or should it be read to try to understand and counter those views, despite the risks?

Upon reading the “Prioress’ Tale” and seeing the anti-Semitism therein, these questions must be asked. For ideals that most consider dangerous and grotesque, like neo-Nazism, radical Islam, or misogyny, classic literature can be a powerful tool for trapping the mind, just as it can be a powerful tool for liberating the minds of others. The question is, which use is going to take precedence; in other words, how can the liberating be maximized while the trapping is minimized?

James DeMaio
University of Notre Dame

Work Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Edited by Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor, Broadview Press, 2012.