Medieval for a Cause

Last year I wrote about Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in April; this year, in keeping with that same spirit of spring, I read a prose retelling of the work. My online hours may have been spent keeping up with current events, and my walks may have entailed enjoying the flowers while tuning out modern noise, but my mind was in the Middle Ages. I wasn't sorry to absent myself, at least sporadically, from some of this week's sound and fury. Going medieval isn't always bad.

I think you need to read at least some of the tales as Chaucer wrote them to get the flavor of the language, even if it slows down your comprehension. One of the most memorable experiences I had in an English class was hearing Middle English verse read out loud while we mastered pronunciation in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other works. For the first time, I could hear the underlying rhythms of the English language--hear it clearly as music--with the sense of the words taking second place to the sound. However, if I were teaching The Canterbury Tales, I would also have the students read a modern retelling so that they could enjoy the stories as stories.

To fully appreciate them, it's true: you have to read the entire work, or the bulk of it, and that would probably only take place in a course devoted to Middle English poetry. It's an ambitious project to read them all but worth it. It's not just the stories in themselves, but what they say about the people who tell them, and their listeners, that makes the Tales so much fun. You have, among others, the opening story told by a long-winded knight, a series of unflattering and/or bawdy tales told with the purpose of annoying someone else, the unforgettable forthrightness of the Wife of Bath, the stark morality of the Pardoner's tale of the three wastrels, and the folksy humor of the Nun's Priest's tale of the sprightly Chanticleer who outfoxes the fox.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about "Chaucer's Retractions," which comes at the very end. This is Chaucer, still in character as one of the pilgrims, turning aside, just as the company is approaching its goal, to offer a private speech in defense and/or apology for all his works, including the Tales he has just concluded. In spirit, it's a little like the series finale of some long-running TV show in which of one of the characters wakes up, and you find it was all a dream. After so much irreverence, crudity, and satire, Chaucer in effect takes it all back, just in case there was something in there that might have offended God or man. Of course, his failing to do this until the last dirty joke has been told leads you to question his sincerity, but the seriousness of his prayer also seems to hedge his bets. After all, death could come suddenly, and there was no sense taking any chances. If there's humor in this retraction, it's a dark humor, as I read it, laced with a sense of mortality.

A medieval pilgrim stopping in the woods unavoidably makes me think of Dante's pilgrim, who lost his way in a similar place before seeking his salvation. I'm also jumping ahead a couple of centuries to Shakespeare's Prospero, who, having used the magic arts to regain control of his fate, gives them up in the end, saying, "This rough magic I here abjure." Although Chaucer's purpose, to instruct, seems very different from Prospero's, they are both in effect using their creative power to shape things to their will. All of Chaucer's characters are subject to his whim, just as the inhabitants of Prospero's island are subject to his, until they're released. There's an inevitability to this release, but it's also a little sad, a letting go.

April is a great time to read The Canterbury Tales. You can rest your eyes by looking out the window at the trees leafing out and the flowers budding and put yourself in company with the pilgrims setting out on their journey, which, by the way, begins with crossing a stream. (Is The Canterbury Tales, in some sense, an underworld journey? This is a question I would put to my class of imaginary students, who may someday be actual ones.) I let time elide like that the other day at the coffeehouse while finishing the Tales, and it was as if the fourteenth century and the twenty-first blended together and became one, a Frappuccino of centuries. It was as if no time had passed at all since the pilgrims first gathered at Starbu--, I mean, the Tabard Inn.

Sweets to the Sweet

Just before Valentine's Day, there was a news article online summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of married vs. single life in several categories, including health, finances, and emotional well-being. It was--if I may say so--notably even-handed in pointing out that there are ways in which being single can be superior to being married, something that's worth remembering. You'll get no arguments from me against the idea of wedded bliss, except that achieving it seems so darn tangled up in issues of human frailty and other variables. Of course, if you're married, you don't need to be reminded of that.

Would you agree that it's better to be alone than to be with the wrong person? I think of it along the same lines as the home owner's vs. renter's argument, which I have also had presented to me as a fait accompli on the side of buying, as if renting were merely the same preliminary and temporary step on the way to home ownership as singlehood is to marriage (though some financial advisors, in fact, say that home buying is a lifestyle choice more than anything). I'm never quite sure why people are so dead set on getting others to embark on a course which has little more than a 50-50 chance (according to some estimates) of succeeding. I sometimes think that if more people managed to get out of their 20s, as I did, without tying the knot, they might have a different outlook on the whole question. I was miserable during most of my 20s while everyone around me was getting married, but for some reason, once I passed the 3-0 threshold and took a deep breath, it was kind of fun (though scary) to be a holdout.

Yesterday I was reading a biography of William Shakespeare in which the author, Stephen Greenblatt, recounted the evidence regarding the playwright's married life, particularly the issue of whether he was happy or not. The biographer admitted that assessing this is very hard to do, but he pointed out that there are few signs evincing a happily married state in Shakespeare's portrayals of married couples. Greenblatt didn't address the love sonnets in that section, but he did say there was plenty of poetic precedent for keeping marital expectations low and directing your longing toward someone else (as in the case of Dante, who was never married to Beatrice). The idea of looking to your marriage for true companionship really took hold later, Greenblatt says, as part of the new sober-mindedness swept in with the Protestant Reformation.

I do wonder sometimes whether people today put too many expectations on marriage, but as someone who's never (yet) done it, it's nothing I can speak about from personal experience. In a spirit of bipartisanship, let me just say that I believe very much in personal choice on the married/single question, though choice should be leavened with wisdom whenever possible.

What I can speak about with authority is the best Valentine's Day cookie recipe I've ever come across, guaranteed to bring you, married or single, a few stolen moments of bliss, for as long as it takes to eat one. I offer the thought as a gift to my readers, a little late, though if you're one of those who think of every day as Valentine's Day, that doesn't signify. Now, pay attention, because it's not often that I give out recipes and practical hints, and this one is a keeper. I got the recipe from Delish online (they credit Martha Stewart), so if it's precision you're after, go there and look up Chocolate Sweet Hearts.

Even making these cookies is fun, because it involves melting chocolate, brown sugar, and butter over a saucepan of simmering water until you have, basically, a bowl of molten chocolate. How many things under the sun are as delectable as that? You stir an egg into this and then combine it with a flour-cocoa-baking soda mixture. Where I part company with the recipe is in using my special Valentine hearts pan, which has six large heart-shaped cavities into which you press the prepared dough. After you bake them for 12 minutes or so, they come out of the pan in lovely heart shapes, no two alike, some with scalloped edges, some with little x's and o's, and some with hearts within hearts.

Here's the only caveat: you have to watch the timing. Last year, I left them in a little too long, and they were too crisp around the edges. This year, I took them out a little too soon, and they were a bit soft, though still delicious when they cooled. When you make them into big cookies like I do, they have the texture and taste of brownies. I eat one with a glass of milk after dinner, and it's perfectly wonderful. In fact, I still have some chocolate to use up, so I may have to make another batch once this one is gone.

Just one woman's idea of a great way to celebrate Valentine's Day, sans recriminations, sans jealousy, and sans hard feelings to ruin the holiday. Of course, one advantage to being single in this case is that there's more for you and you don't have to share. You may, quite rightly, point out to me that sharing often makes things more fun--and I agree completely. So if you're married, I simply advise you to double the recipe. That way, you and your partner can enjoy six full days of chocolate bliss, just as I do. I've still got one cookie left, and it's going to taste just as good as the first one did.

Sweets to the sweet (and that is Shakespeare).