Last class, Dr. H discussed Chaucer portraying characters in all class positions as well as religious/secular, good/bad, and yet they all have things in common. Chaucer breaks up the hierarchies of society (class structure is unstable) shown by formal means.

Bakhtin- " It could be said (with certain reservations, of course) that a person of the Middle Ages lived, as it were, two lives: one that was the official life, monolithically serious and gloomy, subjugated to a strict hierarchical order, full of terror, dogmatism, reverence and piety; the other was the life of the carnival square, free and unrestricted, full of ambivalent laughter, blasphemy, the profanation of everything sacred, full of debasing and obscenities, familiar contact with everyone and everything. Both these lives were legitimate, but separated by strict temporal boundaries. (p.129-30)� Carnival: destabilized hierarchy.

�For any individual consciousness, language is not an abstract system of normative forms, but rather a concrete heteroglot (many speaking) conception of the world.�

Bill- �Language is more than words, reality of the world (we make it that way).�

Dr. H- �(language) is connected with things around us.�

�The world is just abstract terms that don�t necessarily have a basis in reality.�

Example- President Bush- �What we want for (Iraq) is a system of justice.� (abstract concept) �but people are getting killed� is the reality

Likes Miller�s wife

�(he�s) abstract, he doesn�t pay attention.�

What happens?

�it gets destroyed, he doesn�t kiss the girl.�

Dr. H recapped story- �For pure loves, women have lips but not asses.� If you think of love as pure, can�t think of a woman on a toilet. (not proper)

�The reality of the world can destroy the system of abstract thought that we build up.� � Dr. H (Absolms idea of love is destroyed by ass-kiss)

Wilfred Queen- �Dulce et decorum est� (It is sweet and fitting to die for one�s country)

Other authors-attacked reality by showing reality (like Queen)

Another example- �Ladie�s Dressing Room� � poem by Jonathan Swift (women do stink and become beautiful by a horrendous process)

Bahktin- author using these forms to show how courtly love may be questionable

BUT What about the fact that Chaucer includes a dirty story?

Function-Robert- �writing about being human�

Bill- �shuffle levels- low art read by high people about a middle person.�

Love is real (Thesis)

Love is illusion (Antithesis)

Do we have to choose?

Emily- �medium�

Bill- �synthesis between two�

�not midpoint but synthesis �new formulation from both sides.� Dr H

(Marxism)

Bill-�the layers in Chaucer� dialogic- an interplay, a free play among positions

Robert- �How do you reach a conclusion?�

Dr. H- �You can�t- constant tension.�

Robert- �Lots of varying degrees- not abstract.�

However, above encourages play, allows variance (has rules, rules are there for play)

Robert- �problem is applying abstract to things like government.�

If Chaucer hasn�t used narrative, no space for play, tension, irony.

Assignment- �The Wife of Bath,� where does she get off? Will be elaborated on the net.