Luke’s Reviews > The Canterbury Tales > Status Update

Finishing the rest of this off in verse translation rather than Middle English spring break. There's academic integrity, and then there's blowhard masochism. I've read enough of the original to justify devoting my vacation to the former.

Right so bitwixe a titlelees tiraunt
And an outlaw or a theef erraunt,
The same I seye: ther is no difference.
To Alisaundre was toold this sentence,
That, for the tirant is of gretter myght
By force of meynee for to sleen dounright,
And brennen hous and hoom, and make al playn,
Lo, therfore is he cleped a capitayn;
And for the outlawe hath but smal meynee,
And may not doon so greet an harm as he,
[...]

The act of using the Old Testament to prop up antisemitism will never cease to amaze.

Three brothers facing off against Death, ey?

Running through The Squire's Tale and all the other bits in both ME and verse that the class doesn't cover may cut into next quarter's Brontës and Milton and female mystics something fierce, but there's grades on the one and striking the literary appreciation iron while it's hot on the other.

The number of epigrams Middlemarch derives from these pages is helping my comprehension of both texts a surprising amount.

Found my $100 class assigned edition in the library, aka fucking the system of another brick in the capitalistic wall with the Wife of Bath.

For holy Church's good may be dispended
On holy Church's blood that is descended.
Therefore he would his holy blood honour
Though that he holy Churche should devour.

(My class has me jumping around in this, so bear with the incoming nonlinearity.)

Headcannoning the Pardoner as female/a trans male/nonbinary.

I can't believe I'm excited about reading this. Must be getting old.