The wife of Bath's tale

 

Chaucer's slides

CHAUCER 

The Middle Ages

HENRY II and THOMAS BECKET

CHAUCER's life cloze test

CHAUCER and BOCCACCIO

CHAUCER probably read Boccaccio’s Decameron, Although we have no proof of this.

Some biographers think that Chaucer met Boccaccio in Florence, during a staying in Italy in 1372.

There are some similarities between the two works. However, there are some differences, too.

DECAMERON                                        The CANTERBURY TALES

Completed around 1350                                                 Completed between 1387 and 1395

NARRATORS                                                                  NARRATORS

Seven young women and three young men                    Thirty pilgrims, including Chaucer

They come from the aristocracy                                     They come from different social classes

They tell stories in prose                                                  They tell verse tales

During the Black Death (1348)                                                                  In April

In a country house                                                                 During their journey to Canterbury

To escape the plague                                                               To visit Thomas Becket’s shrine

100 stories                                                                             120 stories (only 24 completed)

Each member of the group                              

will tell a story each day for 10 days                                                                                                           
DECAMERON              

In general, the storytellers choose a theme and   
all of them tell a story regarding that theme

                                                                            The Canterbury Tales
          

Each pilgrim will tell two stories while going 

to Canterbury and two stories while coming back from Canterbury 

                           Each tale reflects the personality of the  pilgrim telling it

It’s told in a style of language fitting the social class of the narrator

SIMILARITIES

Chaucer and Boccaccio implicitly criticize ecclesiastical corruption and their treatment of women is similar.

Main events in Chaucer's time

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Founder of Our Language

The Age of Chaucer | Features of the Age of Chaucer

THE MIDDLE AGES

THE MIDDLE AGES

THERE WERE THREE LANGUAGES

FRENCH was used by the Norman nobles (LAW;FOOD;ART;MEDICINE;LITERATURE)

LATIN was used by the CHURCH and as the language of learning

MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100-1450) The language of COMMON PEOPLE

14^th century

THE GROWTH OF THE MIDDLE CLASS (NEW JOBS: shoemakers,carpenters,bakers,clothmakers,tradesmen)

They formed a new URBAN MIDDLE CLASS

They were SKILLED ARTISANS

·         They organized themselves into GUILDS ( da GELD-payment)

·         They controlled the quality of goods

·         They regulated prices and wages

·         They held fairs

·         On particular feast days, they performed scenes from the Bible

14^th century

THE GROWTH OF THE GENTRY(people of good social position, specifically the class of people next below the nobility in position and birth)

A class of landowners who was becoming rich

The Wife of Bath's tale -summary

Students in the third class have studied The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer.
In particular, they've focused on The Wife of Bath. They've read the description made by Chaucer in the General Prologue.
They've also read the tale told by her and they 've been asked to make a summary of it and build up five sentences about the text.
Here's one of the summaries with the questions:

The Wife of Bath’s tale

Questions:

1.   Why does Queen Guinevere punish the knight?

2.   What is the punishment?

3.   According to the hag, what do women most desire?

4.   What does the hag want the knight to do for her?

5.   At the end of the story, why does the hag decide to be both beautiful and faithful?

Summary:

Queen Guinevere punishes a knight for having rapen a maiden. His punishment is to discover what women most desire.

After a year, the knight hasn’t discovered yet what the Queen has asked him. When he goes to the court again, he sees an ugly old hag, who tells him that she will give him the answer if he grants her anything she wants.

The knight agrees. The hag says that women want to have sovereignty over their  husbands. Then, she asks the Queen to force the knight to marry her.

They get married but, on their wedding night, the knight doesn’t want to consummate the marriage because his wife is horrible, old and low-class. Therefore, the hag starts a speech about gentility, poverty and old age.

She offers the knight a choice: either he can have her or he can have a beautiful but not faithful wife. The knight turns the choice over his wife and she decides to be both because he has yielded sovereignty to her. Finally, they live happily together. 

 Here’s another summary

During King Arthur’s age, in a land of fairies and elves, there’s a young knight who one day sees a young woman walking along a river and rapes her.

To punish him, queen Guinevere and her ladies decide to make him find out women’s biggest desire and if he doesn’t, he’ll be beheaded.

So he starts his search: he finds out lots of answers but he can’t find two women who agree.

One year later he goes back to King’s Arthur’s court without an answer, but on his way he meets 24 fairies who are dancing: they disappear all of a sudden, to be replaced by an ugly old woman who accepts to tell him what women most desire, but only on one condition.

He has to promise to please her. He accepts, so the old lady tells him that women want to have control over their husbands.

After that, the hag wants him to fulfil his promise: he has to marry her. But during the wedding night he doesn’t want to go on with her because he thinks she’s ugly, old and poor.

The hag tells him to choose between an ugly but faithful wife and a young but unfaithful one. He asks his wife to make a choice and it means that he accepts to give his wife sovereignty over him.

That’s how he ends up having a beautiful and faithful woman and living with her happily ever after.

QUESTIONS

Which punishment do the Queen and her ladies decide to give the knight?

Who does the knight meet on his way to King’s Arthur’s court?

What is women’s biggest desire?

What does the hag want the knight to do?

What choice does the knight make?

THEMES 

• Sovereignty (Maistrie): The central theme concerning women's desire for control in marriage and over their own lives.
• Experience versus Authority: Alisoun's use of her lived experience to challenge traditional clerical authority and male-authored texts.
• True Nobility (Gentillesse): The argument that true nobility is a gift from God based on virtuous deeds rather than birthright.
• Justice and Transformation: The knight's journey from a criminal act to a restorative form of justice through education and his ultimate submission to his wife's will.

CHAUCER –an interview

This morning I introduced Chaucer in an unusual way.

I didn’t read his biography. I didn’t explain his life to the students. I didn’t choose a video on youtube about him. I didn’t have them see some slides I could find everywhere.

Instead I decided that the best way was an interview.

I gave three students some materials about Chaucer and I told another group of five students to prepare some questions.

They had to imagine to interview Chaucer’s “ghost”  about his life. The students having the information were asked to take notes about the basic things on Chaucer’s life.

I asked the students, who had to prepare the questions, “What would you like to know about the author?”

The students wrote down the following questions:

1.       Which century did you live?

2.       What was your social status?

            3.       Did you work? What job did you do?

            4.       What was your most important work?

          5.       Who were your works addressed to?

                           6.       What themes did you deal with in your works?

7.       When did you die?

One of the students answered the questions, using the first singular person and adding some more information on the basis of his information.

Another student told about Chaucer’s life using the third singular person.

I think it was a good exercise to ask questions and give answers using the Past Simple and the first and the third singular person.