 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello and welcome to The Authority where this week we'll be discussing one of the greatest of all English authors, sometimes called the father of English poetry or even the father of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer. So Geoffrey Chaucer was lived in the 14th century, was born sometime in the 1340s and dies in 1400. So writing in the late 1300s, he's a contemporary with the poet who wrote The Green Knight who was our focus in the last episode and just to remind ourselves he did a bit of comparison between whoever the anonymous poet who wrote The Green Knight is and Chaucer last week. But to remind ourselves Chaucer unlike the one that's a green poet, that's a Gawain and the Green Knight poet, living out in the West Midlands of England's you know, where cities like Birmingham are now. Chaucer was in London. Chaucer is at the heart of the politics and the court. So he was a courtier, he was a diplomat, he was a member of parliament. So he moved in the highest circles, the highest echelons of society. He was revered in his own lifetime. He was famous in his own lifetime. And he was the first poet to be installed at Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey. So you know, if you go to London as a tourist, you will visit Westminster Abbey. You'll go to Poets Corner where many of the most famous poets in English language are buried where he was the first. So you know, he's called the father of the English language, the father of English poetry, the father of English literature. So perhaps he's appropriate, he should be the first person to be buried in Poets Corner. And when he was buried in Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey was an abbey. Benedictine Abbey had been there for many years, centuries at that time, and was destroyed by Henry VIII, which was over a century after Chaucer's time. This is the century of Mary England, of Catholic England. This is the cultural backdrop to Chaucer's life. Now, why is he sometimes called the father of the English language or the father of English poetry? Well, it wasn't until the late 1300s that the lords, the ladies, the nobility, the aristocracy parliament began using English as the official language. It was always French prior to that. So the language of the aristocracy was French. The language of the university was Latin of the academics. The language of the ordinary people was English. And the first opening of parliament in English as opposed to French wasn't until Chaucer's lifetime. So what Chaucer does, he chooses to write in the vernacular. So he's not first writing in Latin. Dante, by the way, does the same thing. He also chooses not to write in Latin, which was really the language of literature up until that time, he chooses to write in the vernacular Italian. And Chaucer, following Dante's lead, and we know that Chaucer admired Dante, there's actually a quote by Chaucer about Dante, where he treats him as he should with the highest praise. So Chaucer chooses to write in English. But Chaucer's English is different from the old English, even the English of his contemporary, the Segre and the Green Knight poet is writing because it's now a fusion of two languages, the old English, which is Germanic, is now fused with the French, which is Latin in its roots. And one of the reasons for the richness of the English language is the fact it's really two languages that come together. So there's the word choice has obviously increased and just we can say freedom from the Germanic fry height, the German for freedom, or we can say liberty as in liberty in French. So we have that choice would Chaucer was the person who first if you like popularized this English, which was a fusion of the French and Germanic aspects of the language. He's best known for other works. He's best known for the Canterbury Tales. And that's what we got to focus on in this episode. Now it's an unfinished work. Now normally for works unfinished, you think, well, it's also in that case, not that good, perhaps, right, because it's not finished, except that in this case, the different tales are finished, one can presume what the sum of them are. And these tales stand alone as finished works. So the fragments of the unfinished whole are nonetheless, full, complete fragments in themselves. So some of these tales are finished works of art. So it's not spoiled, even though I keep using the metaphor of the missing piece, the jigsaw puzzle, well, these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle never existed, because Chaucer died before he could finish the Canterbury Tales, which was a hugely ambitious work anyway. But what's left is nonetheless one of the greatest works in the English language. I'm going to read what I wrote about Chaucer in my book, Literature, What Every Catholic Should Know, because sometimes I think I've said it the best I can already, and why should I garble something which I've expressed lucidly elsewhere. So this is talking about the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales, just very, very briefly. The idea of the Canterbury Tales is a group of pilgrims on their way from London, they meet up at a pub called the Tabard Inn in southern just south of the River Thames, not far from where later Shakespeare's Globe Theatre would be. And they are going to go on pilgrimage to Canterbury. And Canterbury, of course, is where the martyr Thomas Becket, that's where his shrine and tomb is, that's where he was murdered a few hundred or more years before this. And what they decide to do is they're going to tell each other's stories on the way there and on the way back. So you have this assembly of characters, most of whom are pretty miserable sinners with a couple of saints thrown in. And that's what I'm talking about here. So in the general prologue, we're introduced to the pilgrims before we get to any of their stories. The general prologue begins with an evocation of resurrected life. It is April. And sweet showers help to bring new life to every wood and field. This sets the scene for the resurrected spirit of people longing to go on pilgrimage. One such group of pilgrims meets by charts at an inn in London and decide to journey together to Canterbury telling each other stories along the way. We are then introduced to the pilgrims who are a motley group comprised mostly of reprobates who are evidently in need of the grace that a pilgrimage brings. There is the knight, a man of courage and martial prowess who joins the pilgrimage as an act of thanksgiving having returned from the wars. There is the knight's son, the squire, who has the courage of his father in battle, but is altogether a dandy in times of peace wearing the most fashionable clothes and hairstyle and delighting in music and dance. There is the less than holy prioress who is too prim and proper for her own good. Seeking the pleasures that opulence affords. Even worse than the prim prioress is the worldly monk whose wealth makes a mockery of his vow of poverty and whose heretical theology makes a mockery of his orthodox pretensions. As if the prioress and monk were not cause enough for scandal, the friar plums new depths of depravity committing acts of fornication and adultery, getting maidens pregnant and begging from the rich so that he can keep up his life of luxury and luxury. The role called of reprobates continues. The shady merchant, the pleasure seeking Franklin, the avaricious physician, the formidable and self-serving wife of Bath, the utterly uncouth miller, the dishonest manseful, the corrupt and lecherous summoner, and last and perhaps worst, the corrupt pardoner who makes a living setting fake relics to the gullible faithful. And yet in the midst of this doom and despondency, Chaucer kindles candles of sanctity to lighten our hearts and enlighten our way. There is the conscientious clerk, a student who prefers poverty and a life of learning over the comforts of the world. There is especially and magnificently the poor parson who exemplifies the calling of a good and holy priest, putting his hypocritical neighbors to shame and his life of simple service to the farthest flung members of his flock. And there is his and there is his brother, the ploughman, who living in peace and perfect charity, loving God above all, is the epitome of a true holy layman. And so it is that Chaucer seasons his largely objectionable menagerie of miserable sinners with a couple of saints, one representing the clergy and the other, the laity, who serve as candles in the dark, shining forth sanity and sanctity in the midst of the mayhem of the madness of sin. So I would particularly recommend if you don't read the whole of the general prologue of the candidate who tells at least read the passage which normally just titled the poor parson of the town. So the part of the general prologue which is about the parson, the holy parson, and I'm not going to read it because it's quite long, but I would recommend that you read it and there's no better place to read it than in poems every Catholic should know which is published by Tan books and compiled by yours truly here. So it's a chronological list of poems every Catholic should know and it includes the extract from the general prologue on the parson of a town. I want to talk about at least one of the tales while we're at it and my favorite probably is the nun's priest's tale. So this is you know the nun's priest, one of the pilgrims, a priest who's traveling in the service, a chaplain if you like for for the prioress. He tells a tale and it's a it's a fable. A fable of course is a story normally about animals but anthropomorphic animals in other words animals that can talk and think and of course these are normally allegories that teach moral lessons we think of esops fables for instance. So this fable is about Chantecler the rooster and Pertolote his favorite hen and and a fox amongst others. So Chantecler you know as with roosters if you've kept chickens and if you have kept chickens you will understand this even better than you will otherwise you know roosters are very pompous right prideful they they they look after their their flock they look after themselves first and foremost. So he suffers from pride and he has seven hens and again right we know that we're learning right our allegorical antennae are twitching seven hens well that might not mean anything straightaway but then when we come to see what it's about we realize the seven hens represent the seven deadly sins so he has a ha ha ha sure of seven deadly sins that he surrounds himself with all the time for his personal comfort now Pertolote his favorite Hen he is it signifies pride right the first and the worst of the seven deadly sins they it's the sin that once we have that gives us permission to commit the other six, right? Once you make yourself God and you decide who's right and wrong and what you want to do is up to you, then you allow yourself to do the other six deadly sins. Why not? So she represents pride and then the third character is the fox. And it's very important that he's a coal fox, c-o-l. And the thing about a coal fox, it has black tips on both ears and a black tip on its tail. And as regards to caricature, that will remind us of the devil, right? Horn's tail. And he certainly plays the role of the devil. This fable is in some sense a representation of the fall of the story of Adam and Eve. So Chanticlea has a nightmare. And in this nightmare, he sees that he's tempted to come down from his high roost by a fox. And then, you know, the fox gets him, right? It's the nightmare. So he talks about this nightmare to Pertolote, his favorite hen, who tells him that to solo the nonsense. And he's not going to admire him unless he's going to be the proud, you know, number one is not going to be scared of any as stupid as dreams. And then there's a very long part of the fable where they talk about dreams. And Chanticlea, we've discovered that Chanticlea, this rooster is a great biblical scholar, not just a biblical scholar, a great scholar of the classics and antiquity. He gives all these examples of how prophets have had dreams and how the visions in dreams have proved to be prophetic and true and how God sends messages via dreams. And so that dreams are not things that could be just dismissed. Whereas Pertolote has actually, she's not as eloquent. She's not very clever. But she's proud enough to be a philosophical materialist, an atheist, if you like. And she says, you know, all you need to get rid of all that nonsense is a good laxative to help you sleep, right? Everything can be solved with physical medicine, with physics as a physician. And again, we have Chorsus Schumer here and in Latin, he says to her, because she's not very clever and she doesn't speak Latin. So she says, he says to her, in principle, mulie est hominus confusio, which he says to her immediately offers, Madam, the meaning of this Latin is woman is man's man's whole joy and happiness. Now, of course, if you know the Latin and you know the meaning of the original words, that's very funny. Because in principio mulio est hominus confusio is in the beginning, woman is man's confusion. And I guess this is this is obviously an allusion to Adam and Eve, okay? Whereas he says to her, knowing that she doesn't know Latin, woman is man's whole joy and happiness. So he's being facetious. Now, when this actually happens, we're told, just below what I've just read. Now, when the month in which the world began, the month called March, when God first created man, had ended. And since this beginning, two and 30 days and nights had passed also, it charged that Chanticlea in all his pride, his seven wives were walking by his side, etc. What date is that? Well, first of all, the date on which the world began, March. Now, you have to understand again, the mystical calendar. March, the 25th is the feast of the Annunciation. It's also historically seen to be the date of the crucifixion. Historically, it's also therefore, as obviously the Annunciation and the crucifixion are connected to the Fall, that the Fall is also seen to date back to March. And therefore, we get the creation March. Now, of course, literally, that's impossible, all right? Because before the sun, before the earth is circling the sun and we're rotating on its own axis, there aren't days and years and months. So obviously, this is not meant literally, it's meant literally. So connecting the creation of the world with the Annunciation, which did happen on a certain date and the crucifixion, which did happen on a certain date after months existed. So it's connecting all these things allegorically and biblically, theologically. But what is when the month in which the world began, the month called March, when God first created man, had ended and since his beginning, two or 30 days and nights had passed also. So March has ended, but then since its beginning, 32 and 30 days and nights have passed also. So you go back, you go to the end of March, then you go back to the beginning of March, March the first, you count 32 days, where are you? You're April the first. What is April the first? April Fool's Day. And April Fool's Day is an old festivity that goes back, certainly the Chaucer's Time. This is another joke because this is about foolishness. What is sin? It's foolishness. What is the fall of Adam and Eve? It's foolishness. We talked about sanity and sanctity being synonymous or sin and madness or sin and stupidity are also synonymous. So all of this re-re-re-presentation of the story of the fall which this fable is now going to present is happening on April Fool's Day. It's the foolishness of man or in this case the foolishness of a rooster and a hen who represent man in the fable. So I'm going to read how the fox plays on Chanticleer's Pride. It's Chanticleer's Pride that makes him gullible enough for the fox to fool him. So where are we? Is the white page? Oh destiny, none of us can avoid a lass that Chanticleer flew from those beams. Alas, his wife had no belief in dreams. So he didn't listen to the wisdom of his dream and he came down that morning and it was a Friday. He bought this adventure. Okay, so we're already connecting all of it to March the 25th to the crucifixion and to the cause of the crucifixion which is the fall of man and in this case the fall of the rooster. Oh divine Venus goddess of pleasure, seeing that Chanticleer was your worshipper, right? He doesn't worship God, doesn't worship Christ on the cross. He worships Venus, the goddess of erotic love of pleasure and served you to the utmost of his power, much more for delight than to multiply. So he's not interested in the sexual activity to have children but merely for the pleasure it gives. How can you suffer him to die on Friday of all days for its sure days? So of course it was Friday, but the day of the crucifixion is a date that's connected to the goddess Venus who Chanticleer worships. So here we have the connection with the fall and the crucifixion. I thought I was going to read where the fox plays on Chanticleer's Pride, one of my notes. It must be further down here but I'm not going to look for it because I can't find it, fair enough. But basically what he said, I could tell you what he says anyway, that he flatters Chanticleer. So he says, you sing so beautifully. I wonder if he sing as well as your father did. Your father had the most beautiful voice. One day he even sang for me in my own house to my great pleasure, in other words when he ate him. And then he persuades Chanticleer, look, why don't you show me how well you can sing? So what does that involve of your rooster? If you've ever watched a rooster, well it closes its eyes so it can't see. It stretches its neck so it's plenty to grab onto and crows. And of course, flattered by his pride, this is what Chanticleer does to show what a beautiful voice he has. And it's what his eyes are closing, his neck is stretched, the fox grabs him and flies off with him. The farm is thrown to chaos. They're all trying to find out what's happened to the chicken. I've been in that scenario with my, we actually saved one of our own hens from a fox's mouth once. So that's another story. But I can sympathize with the chaos that ensues with the sound of the distressed rooster being carried off by the fox. But the fox has got away with it. He's going to escape. But then, Chanticleer says to the fox, why don't you, you don't have to run now. You've already safe. You can, when you turn around and gloat, right, sort of, because you've, you've run, right? So the, now the fox represents Satan is seduced by pride. And of course, he turns around and he's going to gloat. And what's he do? He opens his jaws. Chanticleer is released from the grip and then flies up onto a tree. And again, if you look at the symbolism, flying up onto a tree is symbolic of the cross. So what happens? Satan is deceived by his own pride. He falls by his own pride not once, but twice. He falls by his own pride, first of all, from heaven. But also, he falls in a sense of being foolishness for the humility of God in believing that in crucifying Christ, somehow or another, God could be defeated. There's a wonderful analogy I'm going to resist the temptation to talk about now from the line in which an award wrote by C.S. Lewis. But perhaps we'll get to that in a later episode of The Authority. But this relationship between pride and foolishness So and then the moral of the every fable has to have a moral, of course. So at the end of it, so let's have a look. So the fox says, when now Chanticleer is safe up in the tree, you know, come down and I should tell you what I meant. And I'll speak honest truth. So help me God. This is a devil swearing to God that he's going to tell the truth, right? And Chanticleer's response is no, I'll see us both damned first before I come down from this tree. But myself first and worst, both blood and bones before you trick me oftener than once, you know, once bitten twice shy. You're not with your soft soap and flatteries, get me to sing again and close my eyes. Tell to him who shuts his eyes when he should look. And that on purpose, the Lord send bad luck. All right, there's the first moral. And then we get the final moral. But if you think this tale a Trumpery about a fox and a cock and hen, don't overlook the moral, gentlemen, for everything that's written says Saint Paul is written surely to instruct us all. So take the corn and let the chaff fly still. Now gracious Father, if it be thy will, as our Lord promised, make us all good men and bring us to his heavenly bliss are men. So as with the green night, which we discussed in the last episode, it ends with a prayer that God in his mercy may deliver us from sin and take us with him to heaven. Now, just to finish that this is just one of the tales. I want to focus on one of the tales. They're not all fables. But Chaucer chose to end with the Parsons tale, which is which is interesting for a couple of reasons. The Parsons, of course, the saint that we've been introduced to in the in the general prologue that we talked about, it Chaucer ends with with the saint having the last words. And what's interesting, it's not a story. It's not a tale. The Parsons are not interesting at telling another story. The Parsons is interested in giving it's a sermon on the seven deadly sins and the necessity of penitence. And basically, all the stories in some sense are woven on the theme of sin and the consequences of sin and the necessity of repentance. But the Parsons how ties it all together. And although the work's unfinished, but we know that it was Chaucer's intention that it would conclude with this sermon on the seven deadly sins by the saint in the company of the pilgrims, the Parsons. And although it was meant to come last, he seems to have written it first or towards the beginning. So it was always his intention throughout the whole thing that it would end basically with a straightforward prosaic non fictional story, just a sermon are treaties on the seven deadly sins and the necessity of penitence. And then we're going to end with Chaucer's retractions before he died, his own act of a penance, if you like, which shows what a holy man he was at least at his death, irrespective of anything else. So these are his words, slightly modernized, thankfully, because it would be difficult for me to read and difficult for you to understand otherwise. Now I pray all those who hear or read this little treatise, if there be anything in it which pleases them to thank our Lord Jesus Christ from whom proceeds all wisdom and all goodness. And if there be anything that displeases them, then I pray them to ascribe the fault to my incompetence and not my will. For I would gladly have spoken better had I the ability. As the Bible says, all that is written is written for our instruction and that has been my aim. And so I meekly beseech you for God's mercy that you pray for me, that Christ have mercy upon me and forgive me my trespasses, in particular my translations and my authorship of works of worldly vanity which I revoke in my retractions. Troilus and Cressida, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women, the Book of the Duchess, the Parliament of Fowls, those are the cantibutals that conduce to sin, the Book of the Lion, and many other books, if I could remember them, and many a song and a shivious lay for which Christ and his great mercy forgive me this sin. But for the translations of the Constellation of Boethius and other books of legends of the saints and works of morality and devotion, for these I thank our Lord Jesus Christ and his blessed mother and all the saints of heaven in treating them that they should send me grace to lament my sins and attend to my soul salvation from henceforth till the day I die and grant me the grace of true penitence, confession and penance in this present life, through the merciful grace of him who is king of kings and priest over all priests, who redeemed us with the precious blood of his heart, and I may be one of those who shall be saved on the day of doom. Those are the words of a saint, at least at the time he wrote those in true spirit of contrition and humility, and I can't think of any better way of ending this episode of the authority except with that wonderful prayer from this wonderful poet, one of the greatest English language, Geoffrey Chaucer. We can actually move from someone who is certainly trying to be a saint in Geoffrey Chaucer in the next episode to someone who has been canonized as a saint. In the next episode of The Authority, we will look at the work, the poetry of the great Jesuit Martyr from the time of Shakespeare, Saint Robert Suther. Until then, thanks so much for joining me in The Authority, and goodbye and God bless. This has been an episode of The Authority with Joseph Pierce, brought to you by Tan. 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