ENGL 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Geoffrey Chaucer, Beast Fable, Laxative
13 Jun 2016
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Document Summary
Poem begins with spring, traditionally associated with love. Pilgrimage turns out not to be purely spiritual. Earthly bunch of pilgrims, especially the members of the religious order. Pilgrims do not seem to be thinking much about spiritual things. Pilgrimage becomes redirected by the host into a journey about storytelling. Group - small microcosm of a group that is essentially still hierarchical, where the hierarchies are beginning to break down. Also to understand what chaucer thinks the place of poetry in this society is. Chaucer suggests poetry is part of our essential nature, needed, not to help us get through the spiritual, but deeply bound up the spiritual. Through storytelling the pilgrims can make the journey. It sustains them, allows them to achieve their goal. Nun priest is not described in the prologue. We all only know about the story he tells. Suggests maybe we are defined by our stories - the subject, how we tell it, how we speak it.
