Chaucer's Social Politics Essay Outline (not in outline form just yet)

INTRO:

• Social classes have been around for a really long time
• In many instances, people can be against social order
• Chaucer seems to not like social order that much
• THESIS: Although Chaucer says that he is conservative and reverent, he hints in his work that he can be progressive and irreverent towards social order.

POINT 1: I think Chaucer is progressive about the social hierarchy but doesn't speak it out loud rather showing it through the characters of the different stories.

•    Chaucer agreed with the monk on being progressive?
•   "He took the modern world's more spacious way" (7).
• "That is to say a monk is out of his cloister that was a text he held not worth an oyster; and I agreed and said his views were sound" (8).
•  nagging wives want their husbands to do better (hint as raising social class) because they know that their work is better than the average men's for their social class 
•  "Their wisdom would have justified a plan to make each one of them an alderman they had the capital and revenue, besides their wives declared it was their due" (13).
• Wife of Bath description= progressive?
• She seems to be very successful and skilled compared to the normal idea of women in this time period.
• "In making cloth she showed so great a bent she bettered those of Ypres and of Ghent" (15).

POINT 2: I think Chaucer is irreverent because he has hidden sarcastic points about almost every character but he tries to hide it with a double meaning

• The Squire: not very squire-y "Of time, in hope to win his lady's grace. He was embroidered like a meadow bright and full of freshest flowers, red and white. Singing he was, or fluting all the day" (5).
• Yeoman: Doesn't really seem like a Yeoman "He was a proper forester, I guess" (6).

POINT 3: On the outside Chaucer likes to portray that he isn't progressive.

• In the case of anyone picking up the double meanings in his stories, he gives disclaimers
• I'm not that smart so don't be mad if I'm wrong: "Further I beg you to forgive it me if I neglect the order and degree and what is due to rank in what I've planned. I'm short of wit as you will understand.
• I'm just repeating what was said originally: "I speak plainly and with no concealings and give account of all their words and dealings, using their very phrases as they fell" (22).
• Obscures the lower class to hide their talent in their jobs with altercations in physical features
• The Cook: "Made good thick soup and bake a tasty pie. But what a pity - so it seemed to me, that he should have an ulcer on his knee" (13).
• The Reeve(cunning): "A better hand at bargains than his lord, he had grown rich and had a store of treasure" (19). "The reeve was old and choleric and thin " (19).
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The Pardoner's Tale .vs. the Tale of Three Brothers

The Pardoner's Tale and the Tale of the Three Brothers are alike because they both take a journey to battle Death. They come up with separate strategies to get what they want. In the Pardoner's Tale, the three men come up with strategies to kill each other to keep all  of the money that they find under a tree. In the Tale of the Three Brothers,the three men also go on a journey to battle Death. They allegedly defeated Death and they all got an item of their choice and used that opportunity to get something they want, whether it be a loved one, or to be free from Death's harmful grip. Additionally, in both stories, all three of the characters die and are taken by Death.
     However, the characters all die for different reasons. The three brothers all die because the items that they received all had loopholes except for one, who died on his own account of handing down his invisibility cloak. In contrast, in the Pardoner's Tale, all three die from their greedy plans to take the money for themselves. In the Tale of the Three Brothers, the characters die from their ignorance and Death tricking them. In the Pardoner's Tale, the three characters died because their greedy plans to kill one another worked.
   

Beowulf Film Explication / Assessment

     EXPLICATION

     My group did the scene in which Beowulf tells his epic boast. The first scene starts with a shot of the stain-glass window with a cross, a harp, and a crown and then it pans down to Beowulf standing directly underneath it. This shot shows the association Beowulf has with the things displayed on the window (cross= Christianity, crown= hero). Showing both the window and Beowulf in this single shot shows that Beowulf is related to the themes of heroism and Christianity displayed in the stain-glass window.
     When Beowulf was responding to Unferth with his boast about his monster-slaying journey, the camera has a extreme close-up on his face. the camera goes 180 degrees around his face back and forth during his speech. This close-up and camera panning shows the rate of intensity Beowulf is speaking with and how valuable it is for the story as a whole. This shot also shows the theme of heroism because the camera is focused on nothing but Beowulf and his epic speech.
     During Beowulf's boast, we added a flashback of him killing the sea monsters in his path. We edited in a flashback instead of 'Beowulf' talking to give the audience a better picture of what happened and show the importance of this scene since it is a big focal point in his boast. The camera almost moved with Beowulf at a reasonable distance to let the audience follow alongside him.

PROJECT ASSESSMENT

     I think our group did exceptionally well on establishing the key themes in the first shot of the stain glass window. I think we also did a good job of explaining the sea monsters in the flashback and helping the audience understand what that part was all about.

     Overall I feel like we did a good job but I think we needed a few more pieces of mise-en-scene to depict the themes. Perhaps we could have used an establishing shot in the chapel for the first scenes to help give the audience an idea of where they are. 

     I feel as though our group worked very well together. We supported each other's ideas and we helped explain things in clearer detail on parts of the project that one of us may have found unclear.

PMW 10/31

Tone of the Prologue

     The tone of the prologue has kind of the same feel to it as the mood. It feels quite calm if I personally was in the author's perspective. Also like the mood, I feel an adventurous atmosphere in it. the passage "from every shire's end of England...they wend to seek holy blissful martyr..." shows the authors meaning towards the people's desire to go on a pilgrimage (15-17). Furthermore, Chaucer highlights a more desperate tone in the prologue. He shows this tone through his description of the people yearning to go on a pilgrimage.


Mood of the Prologue

          The mood of the prologue is very serene. The use of the different seasons and flowers add a very calm sense to The Canterbury Tales. For example, the first two lines of the prologue exemplify this mood, "When in April the sweet showers fall and pierce the drought of March to the root.." (1-2). Because of the multiple uses of the word sweet, it seems to get in my head that the mood is sweet. It almost has an adventure-y theme to it. The quote "Then people long to go on pilgrimages and palmers long to seek the greater strands..." really highlights the adventurous aura the prologue gives off (12-13).