Author Archives: Christene

Captcha

bluebutterfly

Since I moved the blog to this new site I have been changing things around and playing with the way it works. While it is still not where I want it to be, I think the visuals are coming quite close. However, one of the biggest problems is the amount of spam comments. I introduced various plug-ins to attempt stopping the problem, but they have just created more work for me. My last two solutions seemed to work best. I installed an invisible captcha that detects spam and prevents it from posting by trapping it in a spam comment folder. For the most part this was successful, but some still slipped through. So I made it that no comment could go through without my moderation if it included a link to anything. This also worked, even though it prevented actual readers from immediately submitting comments that contained useful links. But the spam folder constantly needed to be emptied (and there is not an “empty all” button). It was terribly time consuming, and if I didn’t keep on i,t the number of spam comments I got was slowing down how my blog functioned on the back end of things. Just this last week I got 104 thousand spam comments which required manual deletion. Ugh.

Because I simply do not have time for this, I have done what I was really trying to avoid doing – installing a captcha. Well, considering that the majority of you find other ways of communicating your comments to me outside of my blog, I figure this will not upset too many people.

So, there it is… captcha. If this works, I can remove the link restriction. And for the few of you who do comment, I decided to make it fun and install the kind of captcha that has you solve simple math problems when posting. I figure that should give you something to do, and simultaneously prevent people who can’t solve simple math problems from commenting on my blog. All problems solved.

Gamelyn

 

Canterbury_Tales

It is done. For what it is worth, here is the abstract, keeping in mind that I am *terrible* at abstracts where I have to turn 8000 words into 500… or basically any abstracts for that matter…

The Tale of Gamelyn is the black sheep of the Canterbury Tales. Few have spent more time on it past dubbing it “un-Chaucerian” and making various arguments against its authorship. Here I wish to assert not only Gamelyn’s authorship, but its origin and correct place within the tale order of the Canterbury Tales.

Some Chaucer scholarship has so deeply seeped into tradition it has become irrevocable truth among medievalists, and unfortunately the idea that Gamelyn was an addendum to the Canterbury Tales and not penned by Chaucer has suffered such a fate. However, when looking at three of the major strands of arguments against Gamelyn’s authenticity certain fallacies become immediately apparent.

To better understand why Gamelyn is a part of Chaucer’s oeuvre and intended for the Canterbury Tales, it is important not only to look at the text in light of narrative, but to perform the proper and necessary codicological and paleographic research of the twenty-five extant witness manuscripts that include the tale. And most importantly, its absence from other manuscripts must be considered, especially among those thought to be authoritative and part of the “early manuscript” category, despite phylogenetic analyses that attest to the similarities between the exemplars used.

Yet it is also the tale’s narrative originality that casts doubt among critics as to Chaucer’s authorship. The majority of his works were either adaptations of previous narratives, or had clearly transparent points of influence. Gamelyn cannot be placed anywhere prior to its existence within the Canterbury Tales. Nevertheless, when regarding Gamelyn as un-Chaucerian based only upon its utter uniqueness, the underlying assumption is that Chaucer was incapable of creating original work – a theory which the corpus of works unquestionably credited to him disproves. However, while there was in fact no other similar tale, what I would like to point out is that despite its original narrative it is actually just another example of appropriation and recycling of old ideas (in a most ingenious way).

Through point by point plot comparisons and parallels in language, I will explore how Gamelyn is Chaucer’s version of Beowulf. Once this is outlined, the question still remains as to where within the Canterbury Tales it belongs, and which of the pilgrims is the best candidate for having told it.

In every manuscript where the tale may be found it is placed after the unfinished Cook’s Tale, having lead scholars to believe that it was to be told by the Cook in lieu of his initial tale, much like Chaucer the pilgrim tells two tales after having abandoned the first one (Thopas). Evidence among the manuscripts, including several where the tale is not found, corroborates this hypothesis. However, by careful analysis of all the pilgrims who could have been the tellers of this tale, and through a process of elimination, I will propose the Yeoman (not to be confused with the Canon’s Yeoman) as Gamelyn’s teller.

In short, this paper will probe Gamelyn from myriad perspectives to better understand its place and origin within the Chaucer tradition.