Note: The following is an essay originally written for Professor Michael Pasquier's Reli 3010 (Religion in the Americas) class during the Spring 2010 semester. Date of creation: May 9, 2010. If referring to this essay academically, please remember to make the appropriate citations so as to avoid running afoul of your institution's plagiarism policy. I have misplaced my "works cited" information for this essay, and will edit this post with that data as soon as possible.
Why do people worship? To what aspect of human nature does it appeal? Ideologies and beliefs evolve and change over time; is this the hand of a god at work, or is this simply the manifestation of cultural drift, caught in a reciprocal relationship with the church? Questions arise when one closely studies religion and faith, but sometimes more importantly, it becomes apparent that inquiries such as these are irrelevant. What is relevant is interaction, not between man and his god, but between man and his church, and how this relationship informs his interactions with his church, his state, and his fellow man. "What is god?" is not important; "What does man perceive god to be?" is. Perhaps one of the most important things which religion has to offer is a shared culture. Christianity, in particular, has been praised for its inclusiveness and the manner in which it builds a new community, not based upon ethnicity or bloodline, but upon common ideals and beliefs; even denominationalism allows for smaller, more cohesive groups to form (it should be noted that, in the American South, this inclusiveness rarely extends to homosexuals, political liberals, or those who fail to conform to a social norm, although there is positive social change in this arena). What religion does is allow for communal groups to coalesce, allowing communities in diaspora to retain a unified culture which binds them together, even if their homeland is no longer extant, and new groups to form around new causes, when the old banners fall and humanity's darker natures, warlust and enslavement, come to the fore.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Nothing New Under the Sun
Note: The following is an essay originally written for Professor Michael Pasquier's Reli 3010 (Religion in the Americas) class during the Spring 2010 semester. Date of creation: March 12, 2010. If referring to this essay academically, please remember to make the appropriate citations so as to avoid running afoul of your institution's plagiarism policy.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 - "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
There are many aspects of the folk religious tales of Southern, rural African Americans of the early 20th Century that are similar to the beliefs and preoccupations of the apocalypse-obsessed Puritans of the New World colonies in the 17th Century, while there are other aspects which are wholly different. What is most interesting about the ties between these two Christian but sharply dissimilar worldviews (for instance, the Puritans were highly concerned with meteorological issues and not only the bearing that they had on earthly affairs, but what was occurring on the invisible plane that caused such manifestations), however, is that both contain aspects of much older belief systems. While the layman's conception of a Puritan is likely to invoke images of anti-mystic hysteria and lives of quiet solemnity, neither view is entirely true or untrue. In fact, there was often condemnation of the occult, while the same sources refer to "mystic forces emanating from the stars and planets" (Hackett 31) as inerrable founts of knowledge, and "no one viewed these systems as in contradiction with each other" (35). Inextricably linked to their understanding of the universe: the chaos of the outer world was a result of man's sinfulness, and the movement of the cosmos was a reflection of that same imperfection, and the outer world as the manifestation of a (usually) invisible battle between good and evil. These beliefs are nominally linked to a Hellenic or Hellenic-derived worldview, particularly the parable of the Platonic Cave. Strangely lacking in these narratives, however, is the mortal link to the divine; while there were circulating stories of horrific creatures and monster births, the players in them are not the archetypical heroes of the Greco-Roman mythos, but merely reactors and faceless fodder for the projections of horrified Puritans. This absence is not found in the narratives of the descendants of slaves; if they are not of the mold of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories, i.e., they explain why some natural, usually fauna related, phenomena exists, then they involve the interaction of an archetypical hero with, if not the divine, usually the supernatural or unusual. In this way, African American narratives reflect a very African origin, while inheriting from the Christian lens through which it is viewed the archetypical heroes exemplified by Mediterranean mythologies.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 - "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
There are many aspects of the folk religious tales of Southern, rural African Americans of the early 20th Century that are similar to the beliefs and preoccupations of the apocalypse-obsessed Puritans of the New World colonies in the 17th Century, while there are other aspects which are wholly different. What is most interesting about the ties between these two Christian but sharply dissimilar worldviews (for instance, the Puritans were highly concerned with meteorological issues and not only the bearing that they had on earthly affairs, but what was occurring on the invisible plane that caused such manifestations), however, is that both contain aspects of much older belief systems. While the layman's conception of a Puritan is likely to invoke images of anti-mystic hysteria and lives of quiet solemnity, neither view is entirely true or untrue. In fact, there was often condemnation of the occult, while the same sources refer to "mystic forces emanating from the stars and planets" (Hackett 31) as inerrable founts of knowledge, and "no one viewed these systems as in contradiction with each other" (35). Inextricably linked to their understanding of the universe: the chaos of the outer world was a result of man's sinfulness, and the movement of the cosmos was a reflection of that same imperfection, and the outer world as the manifestation of a (usually) invisible battle between good and evil. These beliefs are nominally linked to a Hellenic or Hellenic-derived worldview, particularly the parable of the Platonic Cave. Strangely lacking in these narratives, however, is the mortal link to the divine; while there were circulating stories of horrific creatures and monster births, the players in them are not the archetypical heroes of the Greco-Roman mythos, but merely reactors and faceless fodder for the projections of horrified Puritans. This absence is not found in the narratives of the descendants of slaves; if they are not of the mold of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories, i.e., they explain why some natural, usually fauna related, phenomena exists, then they involve the interaction of an archetypical hero with, if not the divine, usually the supernatural or unusual. In this way, African American narratives reflect a very African origin, while inheriting from the Christian lens through which it is viewed the archetypical heroes exemplified by Mediterranean mythologies.
Train Up a Child
Note: The following is an essay originally written for Professor Michael Pasquier's Reli 3010 (Religion in the Americas) class during the Spring 2010 semester. Date of creation: March 12, 2010. If referring to this essay academically, please remember to make the appropriate citations so as to avoid running afoul of your institution's plagiarism policy.
Historically, it is demonstrated that women are the unofficial keepers of the faith, from ensuring that their offspring continue in the faith of their spiritual predecessors, Christian or otherwise, to engaging in scriptural explication and the holding of positions of lay authority in the church (particularly in missionary work, meaning that when the "heathen" first saw the face of Christianity, it was a woman's face). Ultimately, the alliance between women to Christianize the home transcended racial boundaries.ultation that women were as responsible and capable of becoming soldiers in the army of Christ as men, and were, in fact, a necessary component of the ranks of Christendom (307).
Work Cited: "(Multiple Essays)." Religion and American Culture. ed. David G. Hackett. Routledge, 1995. Print.
Historically, it is demonstrated that women are the unofficial keepers of the faith, from ensuring that their offspring continue in the faith of their spiritual predecessors, Christian or otherwise, to engaging in scriptural explication and the holding of positions of lay authority in the church (particularly in missionary work, meaning that when the "heathen" first saw the face of Christianity, it was a woman's face). Ultimately, the alliance between women to Christianize the home transcended racial boundaries.ultation that women were as responsible and capable of becoming soldiers in the army of Christ as men, and were, in fact, a necessary component of the ranks of Christendom (307).
Work Cited: "(Multiple Essays)." Religion and American Culture. ed. David G. Hackett. Routledge, 1995. Print.
All Saints
Note: The following is a reader's response to Brenda Marie Osbey's All Saints, written for Professor Michael Pasquier's Reli 3010 (Religion in the Americas) class during the Spring 2010 semester. Date of creation: April 18, 2010. I was lucky enough to have taken a class with Osbey when she was a professor at LSU, while she was still the poet laureate of the state. I would be more than happy to answer any questions about her which I can in the comments section.
Brenda Marie Osbey's book of poems, All Saints, paints an interesting picture of the spiritual life of the African Americans of New Orleans in the wake of the captivity and diaspora of the American Antebellum era, and how, even after the Civil War, their lot failed to improve significantly for some time, and the role of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the reconstruction of a psyche of a people imprisoned. Aspects of Protestantism are made apparent, particularly the widespread saturation of "Lost Cause" sympathies and ideologies, but fail to take root as strongly as the ritualism of Catholicism, which, concerned as it was with veneration, appealed to the spiritual and animistic beliefs of the African homeland. Catholicism was further ingrained because its saint-oriented worship allowed for Christ to become a secondary figure in his religion, allowing common spiritual focus to shift to a more ancestor-oriented worldview; the idea of a delivering messiah who has already come unsurprisingly fails to inspire those who are still captive. The openness of Catholicism also left the door open for the dominance of othopraxy over orthodoxy, as canonization becomes the purview of the common man, if only unofficially.
Brenda Marie Osbey's book of poems, All Saints, paints an interesting picture of the spiritual life of the African Americans of New Orleans in the wake of the captivity and diaspora of the American Antebellum era, and how, even after the Civil War, their lot failed to improve significantly for some time, and the role of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the reconstruction of a psyche of a people imprisoned. Aspects of Protestantism are made apparent, particularly the widespread saturation of "Lost Cause" sympathies and ideologies, but fail to take root as strongly as the ritualism of Catholicism, which, concerned as it was with veneration, appealed to the spiritual and animistic beliefs of the African homeland. Catholicism was further ingrained because its saint-oriented worship allowed for Christ to become a secondary figure in his religion, allowing common spiritual focus to shift to a more ancestor-oriented worldview; the idea of a delivering messiah who has already come unsurprisingly fails to inspire those who are still captive. The openness of Catholicism also left the door open for the dominance of othopraxy over orthodoxy, as canonization becomes the purview of the common man, if only unofficially.
The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Reli 3010)
Note: The following is a reader's response to William Alexander Percy's Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son , written for Professor Michael Pasquier's Reli 3010 (Religion in the Americas) class during the Spring 2010 semester. Date of creation: March 24, 2010. Please note, also, that insensitive racial terminology is used only in reference to the original text.
The nature of the post-Reconstruction South is one of dualism and dichotomy, and in few places is this more well evinced than the figure of William Alexander Percy, author of Lanterns on the Levee.
His rhetoric smacks of condescension, but it is an egotism tempered by what was, for his time, a progressive ideology. Kindness born out of a sense of responsibility (even if it is the supposed responsibility of the more enlightened man to lift his "lesser" fellow man) to better one's countryman because he is "less evolved" is still better than using that same reasoning as an excuse to buy, sell, and trade human beings like baseball cards. Percy's attitude is unconcealed, and while the language used is often shocking to the modern man, with his (more) enlightened worldview, the fact that one can find ethical dissonance with Percy, who, compared to his contemporaries, is a bastion of modern values, is encouraging for the state of current race relations. Percy does not shy away from delineating all that he finds despicable in the character of the "Negro," spending much of the chapter "A Note on Racial Relations" describing the myriad ways in which those African Americans he vouched for and trusted managed to betray that trust, including one notable incident wherein he allowed a man named Jim to stay on his property and serve in his home, to protect him from potential reprisal from a sheriff who may or may not have abused Jim in prison. Jim proceeded to steal as many of Percy’s small possessions as he could carry.
The nature of the post-Reconstruction South is one of dualism and dichotomy, and in few places is this more well evinced than the figure of William Alexander Percy, author of Lanterns on the Levee.
His rhetoric smacks of condescension, but it is an egotism tempered by what was, for his time, a progressive ideology. Kindness born out of a sense of responsibility (even if it is the supposed responsibility of the more enlightened man to lift his "lesser" fellow man) to better one's countryman because he is "less evolved" is still better than using that same reasoning as an excuse to buy, sell, and trade human beings like baseball cards. Percy's attitude is unconcealed, and while the language used is often shocking to the modern man, with his (more) enlightened worldview, the fact that one can find ethical dissonance with Percy, who, compared to his contemporaries, is a bastion of modern values, is encouraging for the state of current race relations. Percy does not shy away from delineating all that he finds despicable in the character of the "Negro," spending much of the chapter "A Note on Racial Relations" describing the myriad ways in which those African Americans he vouched for and trusted managed to betray that trust, including one notable incident wherein he allowed a man named Jim to stay on his property and serve in his home, to protect him from potential reprisal from a sheriff who may or may not have abused Jim in prison. Jim proceeded to steal as many of Percy’s small possessions as he could carry.
Upon this Rockabilly
Note: The following is a response to the documentary film Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus, done for Professor Michael Pasquier of the Louisiana State University's Theology Department for his Reli 3010 class "Religion in the Americas," during the 2010 Spring Semester.
What does Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus tell us about religion in the South? It is dominated by folk religion, as evidenced by the telling of "tall tales" and parables; it is inescapable; it is distrustful of the city; it permeates; and the sacred exists alongside the everyday, every day, in the smallest of moments. The South is a land where "every light pole is a cross, and every bridge has a little memorial," and devotion appears innate.
Just as was seen in Zora Neale Hurst's Mules and Men, religion in the South remains the domain of the storyteller. Parables are created out of whole cloth; just as John the slave triumphed over Ole Massa and the Devil himself in stories told by the descendants of slaves, so too do the pitiable characters who line the roads create their own legends. Just as slave stories which managed to survive the cultural holocaust of slavery to make landfall in the Western Hemisphere were altered and changed by imperialism, both religious and governmental, so are the rural narratives of the South informed by external influences. A man walking down the road with a cane is quick to share his memory of his grandmother warning him that bird spit was instantaneously fatal, all in her attempt to teach him that there are right and wrong ways of doing things, so cloaked in metaphor and Southern mindsets that the moral seems out of place. Imperialism of the Northern expansionists and corporatism is also exposed in a story macrocosm of the Southern experience, as he recounts how the Sears-Roebuck catalog garnered much attention, and his family and peers made up stories about the beautiful people in the magazine, transposing family dynamics, a subject with which they were intimately familiar, making the profane holy. Further, by making god in their own image (as evidenced by the titular statue, as well as the man who says he went looking for "the gold tooth in god's crooked smile"), they profane the holy.
The deification of the secular is omnipresent throughout the film, and its impact on the Southern town is delineated early, as the film crew passes through Farriday, Louisiana: the well-travelled man leading the documentarians points to the four corners of town, where stand a juke joint, a truck stop, a prison, and a church, and he says that this illustrates the four main aspects of rural Southern life. The juke joint, which he calls a "real place," is the main focus of social life outside of the church, where he claims the emphasis is less on drinking and doing drugs, and more on family. Likewise, they visit a prison, and he elaborates on his beliefs as to what causes a person to turn to religion like they would turn to crime: extreme poverty leads to both. Further, he says that, in the South, it's just "in your blood," telling his own short parable about an indoor cat who, upon roaming outside for the first time and running across a chicken, immediately attacks the fowl, because it is his nature (compare this to the story of Aesop's in which the scorpion, unable to resist its true nature, stings the frog bearing it across the river on his back and dooming them both; this kind of metaphor is nothing new).
Ritualism, the aspect of religion most widely discussed, plays a role in Southern religious life as well, and, just like Christ, these people's scars tell their entire stories. The most overt example of ritualism is relayed by the man with the cane, who recalls the proper method of burying a possum: despite being eviscerated and eaten, the possum might still awake and begin digging, and would find and harm the person who had buried them. "Little rituals keep you safe," he says, as he details the necessity of placing the animal's body so that the eyes are down, so as to confuse him when he regains his mortal coil. At a trailer park, tattoos, scarred tissue, tells one woman's entire life story, and the symbols she chooses (winged halo, a cross) are distinctly religious, as she gives the meaning for each one, pressing her fingers to them, as Jesus asked Thomas to press his crucifixion scars, as proof that his life was not illusory and transient.
Perhaps the most uniquely Southern idea presented in the film is the distrust of the city. The rural interviewees have little to say about the city, save for the coal miner who was reluctant to say much more than that he felt the city separated a man from the earth and hard work, before declaring he had no more to say and retreating to within the confines of his warehouse. While no one else makes reference to urban life, their beliefs and biases are apparent in the mural depicting the rapture, seen on the wall of the catfish restaurant. A farmhouse, barn, and church (center of family, livelihood, and salvation, respectively) are detailed, independent structures painted in bright colors, while across the river lies a dark, monolithic city skyline, undifferentiated in its buildings. A man in the restuarant points out the ascending spirits of the Christian chosen, rising from graves and the farmhouse, while the city yields no souls for Heaven's reaping.
What does Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus tell us about religion in the South? It is dominated by folk religion, as evidenced by the telling of "tall tales" and parables; it is inescapable; it is distrustful of the city; it permeates; and the sacred exists alongside the everyday, every day, in the smallest of moments. The South is a land where "every light pole is a cross, and every bridge has a little memorial," and devotion appears innate.
Just as was seen in Zora Neale Hurst's Mules and Men, religion in the South remains the domain of the storyteller. Parables are created out of whole cloth; just as John the slave triumphed over Ole Massa and the Devil himself in stories told by the descendants of slaves, so too do the pitiable characters who line the roads create their own legends. Just as slave stories which managed to survive the cultural holocaust of slavery to make landfall in the Western Hemisphere were altered and changed by imperialism, both religious and governmental, so are the rural narratives of the South informed by external influences. A man walking down the road with a cane is quick to share his memory of his grandmother warning him that bird spit was instantaneously fatal, all in her attempt to teach him that there are right and wrong ways of doing things, so cloaked in metaphor and Southern mindsets that the moral seems out of place. Imperialism of the Northern expansionists and corporatism is also exposed in a story macrocosm of the Southern experience, as he recounts how the Sears-Roebuck catalog garnered much attention, and his family and peers made up stories about the beautiful people in the magazine, transposing family dynamics, a subject with which they were intimately familiar, making the profane holy. Further, by making god in their own image (as evidenced by the titular statue, as well as the man who says he went looking for "the gold tooth in god's crooked smile"), they profane the holy.
The deification of the secular is omnipresent throughout the film, and its impact on the Southern town is delineated early, as the film crew passes through Farriday, Louisiana: the well-travelled man leading the documentarians points to the four corners of town, where stand a juke joint, a truck stop, a prison, and a church, and he says that this illustrates the four main aspects of rural Southern life. The juke joint, which he calls a "real place," is the main focus of social life outside of the church, where he claims the emphasis is less on drinking and doing drugs, and more on family. Likewise, they visit a prison, and he elaborates on his beliefs as to what causes a person to turn to religion like they would turn to crime: extreme poverty leads to both. Further, he says that, in the South, it's just "in your blood," telling his own short parable about an indoor cat who, upon roaming outside for the first time and running across a chicken, immediately attacks the fowl, because it is his nature (compare this to the story of Aesop's in which the scorpion, unable to resist its true nature, stings the frog bearing it across the river on his back and dooming them both; this kind of metaphor is nothing new).
Ritualism, the aspect of religion most widely discussed, plays a role in Southern religious life as well, and, just like Christ, these people's scars tell their entire stories. The most overt example of ritualism is relayed by the man with the cane, who recalls the proper method of burying a possum: despite being eviscerated and eaten, the possum might still awake and begin digging, and would find and harm the person who had buried them. "Little rituals keep you safe," he says, as he details the necessity of placing the animal's body so that the eyes are down, so as to confuse him when he regains his mortal coil. At a trailer park, tattoos, scarred tissue, tells one woman's entire life story, and the symbols she chooses (winged halo, a cross) are distinctly religious, as she gives the meaning for each one, pressing her fingers to them, as Jesus asked Thomas to press his crucifixion scars, as proof that his life was not illusory and transient.
Perhaps the most uniquely Southern idea presented in the film is the distrust of the city. The rural interviewees have little to say about the city, save for the coal miner who was reluctant to say much more than that he felt the city separated a man from the earth and hard work, before declaring he had no more to say and retreating to within the confines of his warehouse. While no one else makes reference to urban life, their beliefs and biases are apparent in the mural depicting the rapture, seen on the wall of the catfish restaurant. A farmhouse, barn, and church (center of family, livelihood, and salvation, respectively) are detailed, independent structures painted in bright colors, while across the river lies a dark, monolithic city skyline, undifferentiated in its buildings. A man in the restuarant points out the ascending spirits of the Christian chosen, rising from graves and the farmhouse, while the city yields no souls for Heaven's reaping.
Systems of Cruelty
Note: This post is comprised of selections from a previous term paper for a comparative religions course at Louisiana State University (Reli 2027: Studies in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, taught by Instructor Reem Meshal). It is a response to the question of whether or not religion has a place in academia.
In the modern era, there are many issues facing the acceptance of religion. For many believers, the decline in the role that magic and faith play in real world governments and schools of thought is cause for alarm, and, rather than examining the religion itself, its negative elements, or their own beliefs, focus their attention outward to see what is wrong with “the world” that is precipitating the dwindling numbers of church attendance, an incredibly unfortunate circumstance for an organization financially supported by compulsory donation. In theory, this search for the truth requires introspection and educating one’s self in preparation for “defense of the faith.” In practice, this means desultory comments towards those whose beliefs are different, and attacks upon the credibility of any work or scholar who dares have the nerve to suggest that scriptures of the group in question may be less than wholly accurate, or tampered with over the course of millennia, or metaphorical.
In the modern era, there are many issues facing the acceptance of religion. For many believers, the decline in the role that magic and faith play in real world governments and schools of thought is cause for alarm, and, rather than examining the religion itself, its negative elements, or their own beliefs, focus their attention outward to see what is wrong with “the world” that is precipitating the dwindling numbers of church attendance, an incredibly unfortunate circumstance for an organization financially supported by compulsory donation. In theory, this search for the truth requires introspection and educating one’s self in preparation for “defense of the faith.” In practice, this means desultory comments towards those whose beliefs are different, and attacks upon the credibility of any work or scholar who dares have the nerve to suggest that scriptures of the group in question may be less than wholly accurate, or tampered with over the course of millennia, or metaphorical.
The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Reli 2029)2029
Note: This post was originally created as a mid-term paper for Religion 2029 as taught by Reem Meshal at Louisiana State University during the Fall 2009 semester. Use of all or part of any ideas contained herein should be cited per your institution's guidelines, lest you face accusations of plagiarism.
The question being posited, "What role does man play in the creation of revelation?" is an important and vital one. How does one centralized piece of literature and mythology come into being, devoid of "extraneous" material (for instance, the removal of Lilith from the Talmud, or the deliberate excision of the Gospel of [the disciples of] Thomas from the Christian New Testament), ready for consumption by the masses? It has been said that the debate of the existance of a god is not a matter for academics, but for theologians, and while the logic of such a statement is highly debatable, that is not the topic of this essay; however, due to its relevance to the subject matter at hand, it must be discussed, albeit briefly.
How much of a role does man play in the recording of revelation? In the bluntest of terms, if a god(dess) or god(desse)s exist, then there is room to argue whether or not his/her/their true words and intentions were recorded, whether they were interpreted correctly, whether they were altered in the intervening centuries for the purpose of political or social control. If there is no pantheon, then all revelation is the product of man: man's words, man's thoughts, man's rationalizing of the world in which he lives, presented in the parlance of his time and undergoing apotheosis in the following decades. For the purposes of the clarity of the rest of this essay, there will be no further reference to the atheistic, academic view of the universe; we shall pretend (or, depending upon the viewpoint of the reader, "assume") that, at one time, there was a true revelation from a divine source, and discuss what changes have been made to the source over time.
The question being posited, "What role does man play in the creation of revelation?" is an important and vital one. How does one centralized piece of literature and mythology come into being, devoid of "extraneous" material (for instance, the removal of Lilith from the Talmud, or the deliberate excision of the Gospel of [the disciples of] Thomas from the Christian New Testament), ready for consumption by the masses? It has been said that the debate of the existance of a god is not a matter for academics, but for theologians, and while the logic of such a statement is highly debatable, that is not the topic of this essay; however, due to its relevance to the subject matter at hand, it must be discussed, albeit briefly.
How much of a role does man play in the recording of revelation? In the bluntest of terms, if a god(dess) or god(desse)s exist, then there is room to argue whether or not his/her/their true words and intentions were recorded, whether they were interpreted correctly, whether they were altered in the intervening centuries for the purpose of political or social control. If there is no pantheon, then all revelation is the product of man: man's words, man's thoughts, man's rationalizing of the world in which he lives, presented in the parlance of his time and undergoing apotheosis in the following decades. For the purposes of the clarity of the rest of this essay, there will be no further reference to the atheistic, academic view of the universe; we shall pretend (or, depending upon the viewpoint of the reader, "assume") that, at one time, there was a true revelation from a divine source, and discuss what changes have been made to the source over time.
The Obsolescence of Nobility: An Insurmountable Obstacle in The Knight's Tale
"The medieval notion was... what choices [one] made in his will determined the character of every act. Hence the deepest reality of the pilgrimage was not at all a matter of horses or sights or places, but was in the heart of the individual pilgrim.... Seen this way, what the narrator of The Canterbury Tales remembers is central. He remembers the group itself, what each said, what tales each selected from the storehouse of his own memory" (Howard 162).
The central idea of Donald R. Howard's The Idea of the "Canterbury Tales" is that the tale told by each pilgrim is not merely a representation of that pilgrim's ideas, but that the inclusion of details above and beyond strict necessity reveals more about each pilgrim than he or she intends, that Geoffrey Chaucer allowed his characters to not only tell tales which present their worldviews and opinions, but to betray significant details about themselves which must be interpreted appropriately to place the tale in question into an appropriate and understandable context. Beryl Rowland concurs with Howard's assertion that the Knight's Tale, rife with references to chivalric codes, the insurmountability of the whims of fortune, and ever-present historical revisionism with undercurrents of (in Chaucer's time) contemporary social interaction, is representative of the tales as a whole. "The deliberate effect of this style," she writes, "is a sense of obsolescence--the depiction of cultural ideas and practices which [have] lost their luster. The presentation of the Knight... serves as a reminder of the decline of the chivalric ideal; the Prioress, the Monk, and the Friar show the contamination of the religious by the secular; the Yeoman and the Plowman represent old values... obsessed with the past." This is perhaps the core element to bear in mind when reading and interpreting the Knight's tale: that he is a man on the precipice of a new era, one in which he will be obsolete, and thus, his tale is one that not only presents his lifestyle as noble and necessary, but forces his chivalric ideals, via anachronism, into a pagan myth, which is--or should be--obsolete as a reference point for morality and heroism within the Christian world he inhabits. But, as Rowland elaborates: "The idea of the world in decline from a former Golden Age is... a fundamental medieval concept" (Rowland 392), not originating with or solely attributable to Chaucer. This allows for yet another interpretation: this is a rallying cry to return to the ideals of the ancients, a denouncement of the entropy the Knight perceives around him, and the call for a return to that which he sees as more noble.
The conception of nobility holds a prominent place in the Knight's Tale, as well as the "Canterbury Tales" as a whole. The Knight is called upon by the host, Harry Bailey, to tell his tale first, as he is a member of the first estate, the aristocracy. Immediately following his narration, the "natural" order of storytelling is usurped by the Miller, a member of the third estate, who wishes to "quyte" (repay in kind) the Knight's Tale with his own. The Miller's Tale immediately precedes the tale of the Reeve, who, in his own way, attempts to quyte the Miller, albeit with much less success. In "Anger and Community in the Knight's Tale," John Lance Griffith draws a connection between the quarrel of these two third estate men and the argument between the Friar and the Summoner following the Wife of Bath's prologue, citing interactions such as these as "[exposing] the tensions and anxieties inherent in medieval social relationships" (Griffith 1), regardless of estate. While the host fails to maintain the order of the classes, the Knight is able, through his story, to maintain what he, as a noble, perceives as the correct method of introduction: he begins with Theseus, a Knight and a king--Louise Olga Fradenburg refers to the glorification of Theseus as painting him as both "like a god and like God" (Fradenburg 53)--and descends the ladder of the estates to describe the lowliest of the Theban soldiers. Author Jane Chance states "Chaucer seems to suggest his characters are out of control," that the Knight's "spiritual commitment is ambiguous" (Chance 9). She further likens the usurpation of the Knight's position by the miller to the Peasant Revolt of 1381, which occurred during Chaucer's formative years, and suggests that the explicit delineation of social order within his tale may be a reaction to the upset of social norms which will follow his tale. This may appear to make little logical sense within the chronological order of the narrative of the tales as a whole, but Chaucer's fondness for playing with the boundaries of his medium is well known.
Perhaps most interestingly, however, is the interaction between the thoughts and statements which appear to be Chaucer's and those which appear to be the Knight's. The Knight, often apparently in spite of himself, allows his construction of Theseus to do those things which he cannot, to demonstrate an attitude toward change that the Knight himself does not possess: "Theseus's openness to 'pitee' [when confronted by the widows of Thebes] was equally an openness to change, a willingness to respond and adapt to 'adventure', the unforeseen and arbitrary interventions of chance.... This readiness to change, to drop one set of plans and conceptions or attitudes, characterizes Theseus throughout the tale" (Griffith 11). Theseus is the Knight's analog within his tale, the man the Knight wishes he could be, yet his role as object of admiration is curious. Theseus, as he is presented in a classical context by Ovid (Ovid's mythologies are those with which Chaucer was likely most familiar, as evidenced not only here in the Knight's Tale, but The Wife of Bath retells, or, more correctly, mistells, the story of King Midas from Ovid, citing the author by name), is not as well remembered or beloved as the Knight would have his listeners believe; in fact, the most famous story in which he is a participant involves assisting his friend in the rape of Proserpina (Hamilton 220). This places Theseus in a much less flattering light, and reveals quite a bit about the personality of the Knight in his admiration of such a man.
Further, Theseus exhibits weakness of which the Knight does not seem to be aware: "[Theseus] immediately turns to Thebes and establishes himself as the principal force of his and his subordinates' destinies" (Griffith 12), but he is subject to the whims of Fortuna, fate embodied, who appears to hold sway even over the pantheon of gods who play an integral role in the conclusion of the tale. For instance, Chaucer was well aware of the analogous nature of the construction of houses of worship, such as cathedrals constructed in his time, the shape of which was evocative of the imagery of the Christian cross. In the tale, when the arena is constructed with temple-like structures within it, the depictions of the acts of the gods upon the walls of their respective devotion rooms are not representations of the kindness and benevolence the characters seek. Instead, they are of actions of questionable morality, such as Diana's destruction of Actaeon, a youth who glimpsed her nudity while searching for a stream of water in which to cool himself: "a death... completely undeserved; he had done no wrong" (Hamilton 374). Of the many tales of antiquity in which the gods' interaction with man was beneficial, the Knight chooses these, forcing the reader to question his true intent, as well as a frame of mind which would result in the glorification of such an individual.
Perhaps the Knight is more aware than is at first apparent of his own subservience to Fate, acknowledging that he, too is subject to her whims, fading as he is into obsolescence through no fault of his own, in a way that he cannot alter or avert, except to make his way of life survive him by making it part of a story with historical relevance.
The Knight is, however, unaware of those things which connect him to the men of lesser classes; like the Yeoman and the Plowman, he, too, glorifies older values and is obsessed with the past. His glorification of a long-dead era is made that much more interesting when he is viewed as a man descending into obsolescence. Griffith suggests that the Knight's representation of Theseus is the product of two distinct traditions "the French tradition...which sees the Knight's Tale as a celebration of the romantic-heroic values of chivalry, with Theseus as the embodiment of those values; and the English tradition which views those values with skepticism, identifying in Theseus' order the potential for chaos" (Griffith 3). When viewed through a historical lens, this idea is born out. The French system of Knighthood (with which Chaucer would be intimately familiar), and its differences from the British standard, starting with the Knighting of Louis VI while he was still a prince and without his father's knowledge, an action which ultimately resulted in all French kings being Knighted before coronation. Further: "In the late 13th century, a decision of the Parliament in Paris forbade the count of Artois from making unfree men into Knights without the king's consent; interesting to note, the two men who had been so Knighted were allowed to remain Knights subject to the payment of a fine. This marked both the closure of the Knightly class as well as the beginnings of a new form of access, by purchase" (Velde 3). Doubtlessly, Chaucer’s feelings on the subject are conflicting, as he himself was only a part of the nobility by virtue of purchase and not by birth. The Knightly class and the noble class were not so intricately linked before the 12th century as they would become, Knights being men who could afford armor and the means to engage in battle, to be sure, but not necessarily members of the aristocracy. It is at the end of this age of interconnected nobility and knighthood that Chaucer's Knight finds himself, on the edge of a new era where the duties that were once solely that of the nobility were contracted to freelance mercenaries. Caught in the middle, it is no surprise that the Knight's tale is an archaic one, an insertion of his own worldview into a world completely unlike his own, almost as if he is anticipating a coming era where his lifestyle will be likewise outdated, an attempt to apply nobility to history retroactively. He is trying to make his ideals, and thus, himself something eternal and immutable, to fight the diminishing he knows is coming. Fate has thrust this fading upon him, and he once again demonstrates that his heart is tied more to the pagan world than to the Christian Britain in which he lives, as he seeks immortality not through salvation, but through memory, just as did the heroes of myth.
Fradenburg says of nobility that it is likely the result of the conceptions of community and duty espoused by Thomas Aquinas in his attempts to justify the classicist views of Aristotelianism to "[re-theorize] the [concepts of] just war... on behalf of the newly consolidated states of the thirteenth century" (Fradenburg 54). Nobility, she says, arises from genuine emotion towards one's community or state, but evidence of this emotion in the Knight himself is hard to find; his loyalty is to the idea of nobility, not nobility itself, and these two things are not identical. The Knight perceives his obligations as not to be the protector of the people and the kingdom as a knight, but to the memory and preservation of the knighthood. On one hand, Fradenburg notes that "[W]hat cannot be read in the tale is what is in the heart, whether of Jupiter or Providence or Emelye" (60), but she goes on to say that the tale is "preoccupied with hiding... and removing the things that emerge or become manifest inside it" (61). Much can be made of the conflicting points of view of the chivalric tradition, which the Knight invokes in the ancient world via anachronism, and the realities of the nature of war. It may be argued that the soul-killing nature of war was not a sentiment of the medieval mindset, but David Aers states in his Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative Imagination that "Chaucer's imagination had great sympathy with the growing criticism of war (the lust for conquest and its economic foundations) among late medieval writers" (Aers 176), so this idea is not without precedent. The Knight attempts to paint a picture of idealized sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for one's king, while he himself arrives at the Tabard Inn still dressed for battle. This can be interpreted in one of two ways: he has either just come from war to engage in his pilgrimage, or his physical description indicates that he carries his war around with him, unable to escape it. The question then becomes, what is this war? Is it a war against a foreign nation, did he serve the land and its people in its protection, or is it a war to maintain the status quo, a war existing among the social castes, an internal struggle made manifest by his outward armaments?
The Knight is a complicated individual, and a curious case study, even within the broad range of well-developed characters that populate the world Chaucer created. He is at first glance noble, but this is an informed ability more than anything; the adulation of men with morals contrary to the Christian world in which he lived subjects him to an interpretation of his tale that is less than flattering. His position on nobility, his defense of it, is born not out of a true affection for this system, but out of a desire to prevent his own slide into oblivion and history. The Knight is a symbol of the nobility which is slowly fading before his eyes, into the recesses of history; his tale is an attempt to eternify his own values by placing them in a historical context, a pre-emptive measure to ensure that chivalric codes outlast him by inserting them into a context which is not only historical but mythological, a story untouched by time. Whether or not his ventures were in vain must be decided by the reader; surely the fact that his tale has survived eight centuries must be some indication that it was, in fact, timeless, and the amount of academia devoted to its study has ensured that the Knight’s viewpoint outlived Chaucer, and the era of the three estates.
Works Cited
Aers, David. Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative Imagination. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 1980. Print.
Chance, Jane. "Representing Rebellion: the Ending of Chaucer's Knight's Tale and the Castration of Saturn (1)." Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: International Review of English Studies. (2002): Print.
Fradenburg, Louise Olga. "Sacrificial Desire in Chaucer's Knight's Tale." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 27.1 (1997): 47-75. Print.
Griffith, John Lance. "Anger and Community in the Knight's Tale." Fu Jen Studies: Literature and Linguistics. 2008. Print.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. 11th ed. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1998. Print.
Howard, Donald R. The Idea of the 'Canterbury Tales'. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Print.
Rowland, Beryl. "The Idea of the ‘Canterbury Tales’." Modern Language Quarterly. 38. (1977): 390-395. Print.
Velde, Francois. "Knighthood and Chivalry." Heraldica.org. 01 09 1996. Web. 20 November 2009.
Note: This post is comprised of selections from a previous term paper for an English course at Lousiana State University (Engl 4137 - Chaucer, Professor Jesse M. Gellrich). Using all or part of it and presenting such as your own ideas in all likelihood violates your institution's plagiarism policy. Be advised.
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