This past week, we had two groups present their Canterbury Tales projects. Each group did a fantastic job and I learned a lot about each tale from hearing their presentations. After reading each tale there were a few things I didn’t pick up on, but each group covered every aspect of their tale. However, there were a few things I believe each group could have done better. I think both groups needed to focus more on and answer all of the guiding questions. I feel like they both drifted away from them, and didn’t even answer a few of them.
The Franklin’s group went the first day. They had a powerpoint that guided their presentation and had all of their main ideas on it. The socratic circles gave us a chance to discuss things more in-depth and here what others had to say about the same topics. However, I think they got a little out of hand because they just seem to be a way for people who didn’t read or who have no idea what were talking about to sit back and hide. I learned a lot from this presentation though. I got a lot of the deeper meanings out of everything.
The Miller’s tale did a really good job. Each member of the group had adequate knowledge on the tale and also the deeper meanings behind everything. It really helped me to get all the characters straight in the beginning when we made the character maps. As I read the story I got so many of the characters confused, so that really helped me get them all straight and really focus on the characteristics of each one. The character maps also helped me picture how each character is related to each other, which also got kind of confusing in the story. This actually kind of surprised me since I watched how much work they did in class. This just shows that the members of that group really are capable of more than what they do in class every day!
The Wife of Bath was a product of its time because Chaucer had her talk about things that women wouldn’t have talked about before this time period. This was one of the first stories written where the women characters were openly discussing their marriage and sex lives. The wife talks many times about how she is “experienced” in the bed room and will give her husband sex whenever he wants it. Chaucer writes, “My husband shall have it both evening and morning, whenever he wants to come forth and pay his debt” (line 151-153). The wife also talks about how she has had many, many husbands. In this time a woman was only supposed to get married once. Chaucer has the wife getting married five times and talking about it openly, so it is clearly innovative.
This is also an innovative story because it is a frame narrative. It is a story inside a story. All of these people are going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Chaucer has set up a competition and has arranged for each person to tell a story. Whoever tells the most interesting story will win a free dinner. The general prologue explains each character in order of their class. The only way for Chaucer to get members from different social classes on to one boat was to have them go on a religious pilgrimage. Each individual prologue and tale is a story inside of the big story, making it a frame narrative.
Our project is going really well so far. We have done a close reading and a drawing. We drew a big picture of what we thought the wife of bath looked like according to her description in the general prologue. Then we found quotes that explained her physical appearance and than what she thought and how she acted, and wrote them around her. We also wrote a paper comparing and contrasting the wife of bath with other characteristics of the other tales we were supposed to read. Each one of us read another tale and compared and contrasted it. I read the Franklins tale, and found that a common theme was love. The Franklin’s tale talked a lot about courtly love, but it was different because the lovers were married and it wasn’t a love at first sight kind of thing.
We are also each researching a topic of interest and blogging about it this weekend. I am blogging about innovation and how it was the first time that women talked about sex and their marriages openly. We are each doing an artsy kind of thing too. I have to write a song/poem about the wife that reflects her personality and beliefs. We have also made a quote book. We each had a certain type of quotes we were looking for, I was looking for quotes about control, and we are going to combine them all into a cute little book. Our final thing is going to be to combine it all into a scrap book and make it all very pretty.
Ok. So, The Wife of Bath’s prologue is twice as long as her tale. I think this is because the focus is more on the wife than on the actual tale. We learn so much about the wife through the prologue. Her ideas and beliefs are reflected in the tale. She has control over her lovers and in her relationships and she tells us about that in her prologue. In the tale, the knight has to find out what women want the most in their relationships to keep their lives. The answer is control over their lovers, so that is how the two parts tie together.
At first our group thought their was a significance of each of her husbands, so we were going to do an activity that focused on each individual one. Then i started to think about it and I realized that it isn’t each husband that matters, it’s the fact that she had five of them. I think virginity is a big thing in this tale too. She talks about how she isn’t a virgin so much and it’s so easy to call her a whore or a slut because she is constantly talking about sex. She always says how “experienced” she is, but i guess since she is only “experienced” with her husbands she isn’t a slut? She is just very open about it, which i find to be very strange for this time period.
My group is reading The Wife of Bath, and it is honestly a lot easier to read than I thought it would be.I was really glad I got to read this one, because I have heard a lot of things about it. I have heard that it is really entertaining and the wife is pretty crazy. I heard that it wasn’t hard to read and even kind of fun. After I read it, I even kind of agreed, which is saying a lot for me because I never think reading for school is fun. I like how there is so much to decipher and uncover throughout the tale and the prologue. There are a lot of connections that can be made and a lot of things that aren’t flat out said and you have to dig under the surface to see.
The prologue is much longer than the actual tale, and our group decided that it could be because she wanted to tell more about herself than about a tale. The theme of the tale, women want control and love conquers all, reflects the wife’s personality perfectly. This was really innovative because it doesn’t seem like women would have been able to talk about these things very much or openly before this time. Chaucer had her talking about her sex life and how she had 5 husbands. I don’t think women were supposed to talk about that before this time period, but I could be wrong. I also think that this could have shown the beginning of the Women’s Right’s Movement.
Our group was trying to think of some activities we could do for our project and I think we only came up with one or two ideas because we were doing it at the very last minute of class. We thought we could make a paper doll of the wife to show all of her characteristics. That kind of seems like what we did when we drew the pictures when we were reading the general prologue, but now we know so much more and so many more details about the wife. We would also make dolls for all five of her husbands to help us better understand the characteristics of all of them. On the doll is wouldn’t only be physical characteristics but also things about her personality and her life could also be portrayed on the doll.
When I first started reading this, all she talked about was sex and how “experienced” she was. So naturally, I was like, “Wow she is a whore.” Then I realized that she is only “experienced” with her husbands so she isn’t really one. She seems to be really well-liked among everyone else. I think this is because her life and her story are all very entertaining. I kind of think she is a gold digger, but I could be wrong. Her first three husbands were good, rich, and much older than she was. She never said she was really in love with them, so that makes her seem like kind of a gold digger.
The general prologue of The Canterbury Tales set the scene for the story and introduced all of the characters that would be in the story. This story is the tales of people of all different classes on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Chaucer wanted each person to tell two tales on the way and two tales on the way home, but he died before he could finish the story. The only way to get people from all different classes together on one trip was to make it a religious journey. The tales are told in order of class with the highest class first. We find out that they are trying to tell the best story and whoever tells the best story will get a free dinner.
I liked the prologue. I really liked how it was easy to read, and even though there were a ton of characters, they weren’t hard to keep up with because Chaucer made them stand out in the text. I also really liked how after each character there was a quick, clear description of them so I didnt have to go look for it in the book. I liked how it was all right there together for me. I really think the prologue will be a good example of how the whole book will be: easy to read.
The Canterbury Tales are written in Iambic Pentameter. They were originally oral tradition. There are many stories inside a story, so it is called a frame narrative. Each tale is part of a different genre because someone different tells them all and they all have different personalities that come out through their tales. In the story, it is clear that Chaucer is observing but it is not his stories at all and he is just writing them down.
This is going to be a lot different from most of the texts that we have read because it is in middle english. Even though it is translated, it still has some roots and some weird things about it. I think it is going to be a lot like Perceval because it seems like all of these people are going on a quest also. There is also a lot of cultural material that they share because both of them were written in the medieval time period. It is going to be kind of like Beowulf because it has that poetic background. It shares some of the same characteristics with Beowulf and Perceval because they all have oral tradition in them.
The 14th century was a time in England that was full of turmoil. There were a lot of problems going on with the church and in society. There was a big problem with famine and ended up leading to people eating babies. The famine was occurred because the climate changed so quickly and the crops couldn’t adopt, so there was so food for the increasing population to eat. The black plague was going on in this time and it lead to a lot of death. In England at this time, all men were considered equal and were given equal rights.
This past week I went to Boston with Madi and Virignia and Virginia’s parents. We went to “look at colleges” but we only did that for about 1/10 of the trip. We really just wanted to go to Boston and used that as an excuse. On Saturday we flew from NO to NYC, where we saw some famous people in the airport, then we flew to Boston. It was pretty late so we just ordered some room service and chilled in our hotel room. Then the next day was dedicated to shopping! We woke up, ordered room service (we did that about 20 times this trip), then went to Neiman Marcus. Then we went to Harvard, the gift shop that is, then Harvard square and shopping around there. Then we went back to our hotel and went to Saks and Barneys. The next day we went to Boston college, which I didnt really like too much, and the next day we went to Boston University which was so much better! There were some things I really liked about it, but at the same time there were some things i really didnt like about it. For one thing, there is no football team. Its not a very campusy school and you cant really tell it apart from other office buildings in downtown Boston. Its a really cool city though and the school is the the heart of the city, so it would be really fun and would never be boring. I would also have to get my test scores up a lot to get in. Its also pretty far away from home, which wouldnt be that bad of a thing, i just wouldnt be able to come home that much. The college decision is about to get stressful! Then the next day we flew home!
This morning my eyes popped open at 6:11 and I don’t need to wake up until 7. That is probably because I have so much stuff due today that I just didn’t do and I figured it would get done somehow. This has been one of the most stressful weeks of my whole life. Monday we had so much stuff due in every class and a couple tests and quizzes. Then on Tuesday we had a ton of homework due and a Physics test and a precal quiz, and somehow i managed to fail both of them. Tuesday night I stayed up till midnight studying for my government test and quiz I had yesterday because I didnt get home from the basketball game I was cheering at until 10:30, and then I woke up a 5 yesterday morning. So I did all my homework in other classes haha. So anyways my point is that I am very stressed out. And last night I was supposed to write a lab report for physics. I wrote about 1/4 of it and then stopped. So i guess since i woke up so early i might get to school early and try to get someone to help me with it. I also have lunch to do it since i have it last today. Tonight I have to cheer again and I have another government quiz tomorrow but I recently heard the BEST news ever and Im pretty sure i shed a tear or two when i heard this..we have no math test tomorrow!!!!!! I guess all of our teachers are just cramming a lot of stuff in right before the break.
I was a very naive boy
I was living with my mom in a house where she kept me sheltered
I really didnt know anything about life, and I wasnt supposed to find out about knights
One day i was in the forests, and saw some knights, and i decided thats what i wanted to be.
When i told my mother, It killed her.
She gave me advice on what i should do on my journey.
On my way to find King Arthur, I found a maiden and tried to kiss her because my mother told me to.
I traveled to King Arthur’s Castle to be knighted
I killed a knight and impressed Arthur.
If i could find the Holy grail, i knight i would become.
As i went on my journey to find the knight, i grew and became older. I left some of my ignorance behind and became more of a man than a little boy.
I found the Red Knight and killed him to get the Holy Grail.
I had many trials and tribulations on my journey, but i pleased the king and i became a knight.
Today was Virginia’s birthday, so all of our friends went to lunch and then we went to see He’s Just Not That Into You. I had read the book, so I kind of knew what it was about, but i thought the movie was so cute. It was one of those movies that was really depressing and if you were single would make you really sad, but would also make you know what to definitely not do when looking for a man. It was also a really funny movie. One of the characters was so stupid and she did the most retarded things. I wanted to jump through the screen and try to save her from the things she was saying and doing. I was so embarrassed for her. Some parts of the movie she was doing some things that were so unbelievable that i had to close my eyes. It was kind of a predictable movie, but some of the things that happened were so adorable and it made me just want to cry. It was so precious. I really liked how in the end, everyone kind of got what they deserved. For example, I hope i dont spoil this for anyone, but the man who cheated on his wife didnt end up with his wife or the woman he cheated on her with. I like it better that way because in my eyes, he is the bad guy. Overall, it was just a really cute movie and i thought it was really funny. Its one of those movies i could watch again.
