Professor Marion Turner

This is also the time when we see insurgent voices, which can be productive, but can also be really problematic. So the Great Revolt, usually known as the Peasants' Revolt, though it wasn't really mainly peasants, it was lots of different people. But that also happens during Chaucer's lifetime. And the rebels indeed came into London through Aldgate, and he lived in an apartment over Aldgate, over that gate. So this is a man who has survived the Black Death. Yes.

Kyllä, se on todella mielenkiintoinen asia. Se on myös todella mielenkiintoista, kun meiltä saa tietää, mitä on edelleen löydettävissä rekordissa. Tämä on asia, jossa Chaucer oli käytännössä syntynyt jotain nimeltä raptus, joka on erilaisissa tapauksissa, jos se on yllättäminen, jos se on rauha, seksuaalinen rauha. Jumala nimeltä Cecily Champagne jätti hänet lisäämään tehtäviinsä raptusin liittyviin asioihin.

Ja pitkällä aikavälillä on ollut paljon historiallisia ja kirjallisia kritiikkoja, jotka olivat todella, todella kiinnostuneita, että tämä ei voinut olla rauha. Olemme hyvin investoineet ideaan, että tämä poetti, jonka me rakastamme, ei voinut olla rauha.

And then there were others who became very invested in the idea that he must have been a rapist, that we must believe women and accept that someone could be a great poet and a rapist. And of course someone could be a great poet and a rapist.

But there was a lot of debate about what the word in the document meant, because in some documents it means abduction. And abduction was not always forcible at this time. You know, sometimes that was a legal fiction where someone leaves of their own will, but then because their family want to get them back, they call it abduction. Lots of complicated things going on.

But a couple of years ago, and this is how exciting the world of Chaucer Studies is, so two scholars, Spassin Speckian, you and Roger, found some new documents. And what they found was that Cecily Champagne and Chaucer were on the same side of this law case, and they were both defendants together, and they employed the same lawyer.

Right. And then they found the writ, which was that someone called Thomas Stondon was making a lawsuit against the two of them. What had happened, according to Stondon, was that Cecily had been his servant and she had left before the end of her contract to go and be Chaucer's servant. So this was a labor contract.

Ja syy, että Cecily jätäisi hänet jälkeen, olisi se, että hän sanoisi, että hän ei ollut vahvistettavasti jättänyt hänet johtajalle.

Because it would be much harder to make a case against Chaucer and Cecily if she was saying, you know, this didn't happen forcibly. I wasn't forced away from the service. Because then all they have to do is defend the contract. The contract probably wasn't written down. It was easier to say, well, I left and then was employed. But these documents did, as I say, demonstrate they were on the same side and that this was something that was brought under the statute of labor. So going back to talking earlier about the plague. Yeah.

A group of people meet in the Tabard Inn, which was a real pub just south of the river in Southwark. They're all going off on pilgrimage to Canterbury. And they decide to make it less boring, so they don't just have to think about pilgrimage and God all the time. They're going to tell stories on the way there and on the way back. And they're going to compete for a free meal. And the innkeeper, Harry Bailey, is going to run this tale-telling competition. So you get this group of people together who are all going to tell stories.

But it's really different from Boccaccios. And the big difference is the nature of the tale tellers. So Boccaccios' tale tellers are all of the same class, which is high class. Chaucers are not. So the highest class person is the knight, who's not that high.

and there is a ploughman at the bottom. The vast majority are in between. So, you know, we have a summoner, a friar, a merchant, a man of law, a lawyer, a sailor, a cook, all of these... The miller, yeah. Yeah, the miller, the reaver, all of these kinds of people. So that's really, really important, the idea that a miller has just as much a right to tell a tale as a knight and might tell a better tale. So...

It allows Chaucer to tell lots of different kinds of tales and lots of different genres, lots of different forms. So you really do get this kind of sense that there's something for everyone. Who wins the competition?

It's unfinished. Oh, come on, Geoffrey. Chaucer hated finishing things. He really hated it. And I think it's because if you finish something, you kind of have to give it a meaning. You have to say, this is what it means. This is the winner. And he hated that. So most of his poems are unfinished or stagially overfinished in such a ridiculous way that it doesn't give you a resolution. So they don't get to Canterbury. Never mind get back home. Oh, brilliant. Yeah. I mean, that's good.

I feel like someone should finish the Canterbury Tales. We should have a modern ending somehow. Some scribes did that. So in manuscripts you get people who change the order, so they have them get to Canterbury, they write things that happened in Canterbury, they turn them back around, they add bits in. Would they credit themselves, or would they try and pretend that this is the original Chaucer work?

In a way it's neither, because they're not making it overt, but also it was such a normal thing to do, to add different things in manuscripts. But someone has still managed to work out what the original texts were. Oh yeah, it's obvious which ones are not by Chaucer. And the interesting thing of course, as you said, the hierarchy, the knight goes first, and then who butts in next?

The Miller. And so the knight is the person of highest secular, non-religious estate. And so he tells the first story after a kind of a fixed lottery. And then the host says, okay, well, the monk, the person of highest religious class should tell the next story. And then the Miller says, no, no, no, no, no. And the Miller is very drunk. And he says, I'm going to tell you a great story. I'm going to go next, you know.

Professor Marion, would you like to give us the official pronunciation? Now, we heard pick-a-purse, pickpocket. We heard knief, knife. There are words in there that we can all kind of go, oh yeah! And there are some words that you go, what?

Ja joitakin, kun näet niitä, niin ennen kuin sanotaan pale, parla, koska ääni on muuttunut, iso ääni on muuttunut, tai ennen kuin sanotaan i, sanotaan i. Joten yhdessä sanomaan ja lukemaan se voi usein tehdä sen paljon ymmärrettävämpiä.

Tämä on mielestäni todella mielenkiintoinen kappale. Tämä on Jumalan kappale, jossa puhutaan valkoisista elementteistä elämää, mutta tuossa linnussa, jossa on kappale, jossa on kappale, jossa on se idea, että taistelua on taisteltu, mutta myös osa tästä on vaikutuksen kuvauksesta. Se on Marsin kappale.