The Miller's Tale

The Miller's Tale reflects Chaucer's relation of the nature of each character's tale to the personality of the character telling it.  While the Knight's Tale was a noble, heroic story of two men battling for love, with the noble Duke Theseus making things better in the end, the Miller's tale is a nasty tale told by the drunken Miller when it is not even his turn to tell a tale.  While Theseus is portrayed as noble by the Knight, the Miller portrays hende Nicholas as cunning and good with girls, and Nicholas ends up with the carpenter's wife in the end.  While the Nicholas's actions are obscene, grabbing Alison's crotch and farting in Absalon's face, he still ends up with the carpenter's wife, who is "ful moore blisful on to see than is the newe pere-jonette tree" (3247-3248), while the whole town thinks John is crazy.  The Miller's Tale provides a contrast to  The Knight's Tale.  In The Knight's Tale, the characters pray to the God's, make sacrifices to the Gods, and promise to be obedient to the Gods in hopes that the Gods will help them.  In The Miller's Tale, Nicholas can use astronomy to predict God's will, and he even pretend to know what God will do in order to trick John, the carpenter. 

The Knight's Tale Parts 3 and 4

Parts 3 and 4 of The Knight's Tale provide further evidence of "literature in motion;"  Egeus consoles Theseus after Arcite's death by describing life as "a thurghfare ful of wo" in which they are "pilgrymes, passynge to and fro."  The pilgrims telling the stories are travelling by foot through literature, and the characters in The Knight's Tale are travelling by foot through life. 
The description of the altars in the battle stadium evoke negative images.  "Love's servants" experience "sacred tears" and lamenting" instead of the joy and happiness one typically associates with love.  I believe there is a message in The Knight's Tale that humans cannot rely on Gods to make their prayers come true.  The Gods seem to bring about nothing but trouble in this story, besides Saturn, who ultimately brings Palamon and Emelye together, but who does so through killing Arcite.  Mars helps Arcite win the battle, but Arcite only stays married to Emelye for a few days.  In fact, Theseus is the final factor in allowing Palamon and Emelye to be together.  For these reasons, I believe The Knight's Tale conveys the fact that humans are responsible for their own actions.  Is it Chaucer or just the knight telling the tale who believes this?

What is a blog?

A blog is a place where someone can share his/her ideas and thoughts.  The blogger can post anything he/she thinks, and others can read and comment their reaction to the original post.  This can lead to valuable discussions and give new perspectives to anyone reading the blog and comments about the blog.  This is my first time owning or even reading a blog, and I am looking forward to the new form of communication (new to me, at least).  I think a blog can spark more ideas than formal writing in some ways because the writer and the people commenting on the ideas of the blogger can focus less on making what they need to say sound nice, and just write the raw idea, without any fluff. 

Parts 1 and 2 of The Knight's Tale

Parts 1 and 2 of The Knight's Tale from The Canterbury Tales demonstrate "literature in motion," when motion is considered as emotional ups and downs, not physical movement.  After all, the "ups and downs" on the "ride" of life are based on emotions, not physical location.  The characters in the story are constantly having changes in emotion.  Theseus goes from being elated, at the very beginning of the story, to vengeful, after he meets the widows, who were victims of Creon.  Palamon is bitter about being locked up in the tower until he sees Emelye, with whom he immediately falls in love;  his excitement about being in love quickly turns to anger when Arcite falls in love with Emelye.  Arcite, who seems to be very fortunate after he is released from prison, is actually devastated because he can no longer see Emelye.  Parts 1 and 2 also show that love, which is an extremely positive force in the ideal situation, can tear people apart when infused with jealousy.  Love's positive and negative aspects are displayed in Parts 1 and 2;  Palamon and Arcite's love for Emelye gives them hope while they are imprisoned, but it also turns them against each other and nearly kills them both before Theseus finds them and puts an end to their battle.

"Migrations" by Dorian Merina

I interpreted "Migrations" by Dorian Merina as a connection between high economic demands and slavery.  The poem lists many goods being brought across the ocean, from "untwisted silk" to "sapphires"  to "cherries."  The people working on the boat, bringing the goods to the greedy buyers "sleep or fight to sleep" and "awake to the damp air" with "salt in the throat and cough to awake to the dark night," which is a constant pattern for them.  This poem reminds me of the movie Blood Diamonds.  The ignorant buyers of goods either are not aware of or pay no attention to the harsh realities others live in to ensure they can have diamonds, "quantities of velvets," or any other product.  I did not understand the purpose of the list of "[words] like achuete" and "tacayo."  The most effective part of the poem to me was "On the boats come the blood, the blood, the blood."  This made me imagine that along with the goods being shipped across the ocean is the blood of the slaves, slaves who are toiling to help make the materialistic, ignorant middle/upper class people happy.