Clever Magazine, "Fall, '06, Canterbury Tale " (www.clevermag.com)

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A Canterbury Tale of One’s Own

by Michael G. Cornelius

Michael is the author of the award-winning novel Creating Man (Vineyard Press, 2001). He has also published short works in numerous journals and magazines.

When people—any people, from strangers sitting next to me on a plane to my soon-to-be mother-in-law—find out I’m a medievalist, and more specifically a Chaucerian, they always get a funny look on their faces, a look somehow resembling my yellow Labrador retriever Alexander waking up from a nap and smelling a turkey cooking in the oven—puzzled, expectant, and yet somehow knowing that he’s never truly going to get it. And yet despite this none of these people ever ask me why I am so enamored of The Canterbury Tales. Maybe they assume it’s because of the depth of Chaucer’s language, or the ribald nature of his stories, or the absolute humanity he writes into his tales. Sure, these are all good reasons. But it’s not why I love Chaucer; no, I have a much better excuse.

I’m on Spring Break from college, sophomore year.

“Dad, I’ve something else to tell you.”

His look says it all. I’ve just come out of the closet to him; now there’s more?

“Dad, I’m, well—I’m changing my major.”

He eyes me warily. “To what?”

I won’t meet his gaze. “To English.”

“English!” he explodes. My previous major—journalism—had been proletariat enough to satisfy him. “What are you gonna do with an English major?”

“I’ll find a job.”

“What? You gonna be a teacher?”

“No—yeah—I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

“Why? Why change now? Why English?”

For answer, I pull out a dog-eared, well-worn copy of the Viking Portable Chaucer. “Just try it,” I ask. He finally takes the book from me, stands up, and walks away. I honestly think he’ll throw it out. My father is not a reader.

A week later, I get a phone call at my dorm. “What the hell is a Summoner?” It’s Dad.

I explain. “Oh, that makes sense,” he says. “So what’s a Pardoner?” I explain that too. “Jesus H. Christ,” he proclaims. “Did everyone work for the church back then?” I smile and say yes. And I breathe a sigh of relief. Now I know everything’s okay.

On the first day of every literature class I teach, I pose to my students the following riddle: “If history is the study of the human past, and sociology the study of the human present, what is literature?” The natural response my sleepy-eyed literary novices come up with is the “study of the human future.”

“Not quite,” I say. “To be more accurate, it’s the study of the human. Period.” I doubt this impresses them, so I continue. “And I’ll make you a promise—you’ll leave this class a better person, or I’m not much of a teacher.” Now I have their attention.

And somehow, this always leads me right into Chaucer, into the Miller and the Parson and the Friar, into people so recognizable my students are always captivated by them, always hotly debating them as if they lived next door, and there I am, smiling as I watch doors closed by six hundred years of terminable history slowly open. And I’d like to say that this is why I study Chaucer—to improve my self, my students, to help us see our collective medieval past intermingling with our collective literary futures, to prove to them and to me that the merit of the written word is not in what it can help us attain, but in what it can help us explain.

I’d like to tell you that the main reason I think everyone should read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is because that this amazing collection of stories represents such an important piece of literary history, the magnum opus of the most important writer sans Shakespeare. I’d like to tell you that the Canterbury Tales is one of those few pieces of literature that everyone can recognize, that people like the gross, over-indulgent Miller, the noble, fatuous Knight, the humble, saintly Parson and the bawdy, endearing Wife of Bath are people we meet and see every day.

I’d like to tell you that the Canterbury Tales is one of those rare pieces of literature that actually has the power to sway people’s lives, to influence their decisions and allow them to recognize truths about themselves they may not otherwise ever see. I’d like to tell you that this is why I became a medievalist, that the amazing complex layers of this work drew me into the study of its own rich texts. And it would be partly true. But that’s not the main reason I became a Chaucerian.

Nope, the main reason I became a Chaucerian is because of my father, who always tells me when I slice my golf ball that “you gotta stay loose, loose as that Wife of Bath, oh yeah.” Maybe that’s not reason enough for some people, but it’s good enough for me.