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Geoffrey Chaucer’ın Canavarları: Canterbury Hikâyeleri’nde Genel Giriş ve Kȃhya’nin Hikâyesi’ndeki Değirmenci Karakterleri

Year 2019, Issue: 41, 127 - 142, 19.06.2019
https://doi.org/10.21497/sefad.586610

Abstract

Ortaçağ âlemi elyazmalarının kenarlarını ve Ortaçağ insanının hikâyelerini
süsleyen mantikorlar ve sentorlar gibi kompozit canavarlarla doludur.   Ortaçağ’ın canavarları aynı zamanda toplumun
Ötekileriydiler. Ortaçağ’ın Ötekileri genellikle “Biz” (insanlar) ve “Onlar”
(canavarlar) dikotomisiyle başlayan canavar çalışmaları altında incelenebilir.
Ortaçağ’ın Ötekileri sadece canavarlarla sınırlı değildi ve bu gruba kâfirler,
putperestler, homoseksüeller, vebalılar ve cadılarla beraber canavar Öteki
olarak görülen Müslümanlar ve Yahudiler de dâhildi. Atipik toplumsal
konumlarıyla, Ortaçağ’ın ruhban sınıfı, soylular ve köylülerden oluşan üç
sınıfından hiç birinde yer bulamayan değirmenciler de Ortaçağ’ın bu canavar
Ötekiler veya “Onlar” grubuna dahildiler. 
Onlar istenmeyen sonradan görmeler ve 1381 Köylü Ayaklanmasının önde
gelen isyancılarıydılar. Canavarsı varlıklarına uygun bir biçimde, kronikler
ayaklanmaya katılan değirmencileri hayvansı özelliklerle resmettiler. Tarihteki
emsallerine benzer bir şekilde Chaucer’ın Canterbury
Hikâyeleri’
ndeki Değirmenci karakterinin de en öne çıkan özelliği yüzündeki
kıllar ve kocaman ağzıyla hayvansı görünüşüdür. Değirmenci saldırgan ve
kargaşaya yol açan karakteriyle bir insandan ziyade kafasıyla kapıları- gerçek
anlamda toplumsal sınırları- deviren vahşi bir hayvana benzer. Bu Genel Giriş’teki Değirmenci karakterine
benzer bir şekilde, Kâhya’nın Hikâyesi’ndeki
değirmenci de hayvansı bir görünüşe ve toplumsal düzene karşı bir tehdite
dönüşen asi bir mizaca sahiptir. Bu bağlamda, bu makale Chaucer’ın Genel Giriş’teki Değirmenci karakterini
ve Kâhya’nın Hikâyesi’ndeki
değirmenci karakterini insan-hayvan karışımı ve başkaldıran Ötekiler olan
Ortaçağ’ın canavarları olarak incelemektedir.

References

  • “Crowd cheered the bomb that hit a PC: He was ablaze - the people were animals”. (1981. 04. 13). Daily Mail: 4.
  • “The peasants’ revolt”. (1981. 07. 08). Daily Mail:1, 4.
  • Abram, A. (2013). English life and manners in the later middle ages. Oxon: Routledge.
  • Akbari, S. C. (2000). From due east to true north: Orientalism and orientation. In J. J. Cohen (Ed.), The postcolonial middle ages (pp. 19-34). New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Alrasheed, K. M. (2009). The postcolonial middle ages: A present past (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Wyoming, Laramie.
  • Bishop, M. (1971). The Penguin book of the middle ages. Norwich: Fletcher and Son.
  • Blamires, A. (2006). Chaucer, ethics, and gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bleeth, K. (2002). Orientalism and the critical history of the squire’s tale. In K. Lynch (Ed.), Chaucer’s cultural geography (pp. 21-31). New York: Routledge.
  • Block, E. A. (1954). Chaucer’s millers and their bagpipes. Speculum, 29(2), 239-243.
  • Chaucer, G. (2008). The riverside Chaucer. L. D. Benson (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Childress, D. (2000). Chaucer’s England. Connecticut: Linnets Books.
  • Classen, A. (2002). Meeting the foreign in the middle ages. New York: Routledge.
  • Cohen, J. J. (1996). Monster culture (Seven theses). J. Cohen (Ed.), Monster theory: Reading culture (pp. 3-25). Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
  • Cohen, J. J. (1999). Of giants: Sex, monsters, and the middle ages. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
  • David, A. (1976). The strumpet muse: Art and morals in Chaucer’s poetry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Desai, R. & Eckstein, H. (1990). The transformation of peasant rebellion. World Politics, 42(4), 441-46.
  • Dillon, J. (1993). Geoffrey Chaucer. London: Macmillan.
  • Dobson, R. B. (1983). The peasants’ revolt of 1381 (2nd ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Eberhard, J. W. (1990). The English peasants’ revolt of 1381: A case study for the transformation of the English peasants’ mentality (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Texas, Arlington.
  • Fossier, R. (1988). Peasant life in the medieval west. (J. Vale, Trans.) Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
  • Gower, J. (1902). The complete works of John Gower. Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • Hanawalt, B. A. (1998). ‘Of good and ill repute’: Gender and social control in medieval England. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Hector, L. C. & Barbara, F. H. (Eds.). (1982). The Westminster chronicle 1381-1394. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Holmes, G. (1966). The later middle ages 1272-1485. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
  • Homans, G. C. (1975). English villagers of the thirteenth century. New York: WW Norton & Co.
  • Jones, G. F. (1955). Chaucer and the medieval miller. Modern Language Quarterly, 16(1), 3-15.
  • Justice, S. (1994). Writing and rebellion: England in 1381. Berkeley: California University Press.
  • Keen, M. (2003). England in the later middle ages: A political history (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.
  • Klerks, S. (1992). The making of a monster: The female grotesque in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Unpublished Master’s thesis). Carleton University, Ontario.
  • Lambdin, L. C. & Lambdin, R. T. (1996). The millere was a stout carl for the nones. In L. C. Lambdin & R. T. Lambdin (Eds.). Chaucer‘s pilgrims: An historical guide to the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales (pp. 271-280). Westport: Praeger.
  • Mann, J. (1973). Chaucer and medieval estates satire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mckisack, M. (1959). The fourteenth century: 1307- 1399. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
  • Mittman, A. (2006). Maps and monsters in medieval England. New York: Routledge.
  • Morgan, G. (2010). Obscenity and fastidiousness in the Miller’s Tale. English Studies, 91(5), 492-518.
  • Patterson, L. (1990). No man his reson herde: Peasant consciousness, Chaucer’s miller and the structure of the Canterbury Tales. In L. Patterson (ed.), Literary practice and social change in Britain, 1380- 1530 (pp. 113-156). Berkeley and Los Angeles. California University Press.
  • Patterson, L. (1991). Chaucer and the subject of history. Madison: Wisconsin University Press.
  • Pearsall, D. (1985). The Canterbury Tales. London: George Allen & Unwin.
  • Phillips, H. (2000). An introduction to the Canterbury Tales: Reading, fiction, context. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Prescott, A. (1998). Writing about rebellion: Using the records of the peasants’ revolt of 138. History Workshop, 42, 1-28.
  • Saul, N. (Ed.). (1997). The Oxford illustrated history of medieval England. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Schofield, P. R. (2003). Peasant and community in medieval England, 1200-1500. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Selby, S. D. (1999). Chaucer’s crisis of faith in the Miller’s Tale, the Clerk’s Tale and the Pardoner’s Tale (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Manitoba, Manitoba.
  • Smilie, E. K. (2012). Inquisityf of goddes pryvetee and a wyf: Curiositas in the Canterbury Tales (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Dallas, Dallas.
  • Strohm, P. (1990). Politics and poetics: Usk and Chaucer in the 1380s. In L. Patterson (Ed.), Literary practice and social change in Britain, 1380- 1530 (pp. 83-102). Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press.
  • Strohm, P. (1992). Hochon’s arrow: The social imagination of fourteenth-century texts. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
  • Strohm, P. (2008). Peasant’s revolt. In J. Harris & B. L. Grigsby (Eds.), Misconceptions about the middle ages (pp. 197-204). New York: Routledge.
  • Turner, M. (2006). Politics and London life. In C. Saunders (Ed.), A concise companion to Chaucer (pp. 13-33). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Urban, M. R. (2008). Monstrous women in middle English romance (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Cornell University, New York.
  • Wetherbee, W. (2004). Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Whittle, J. & Rigby, S. H. (1987). England popular politics and social conflict. In T. H. Aston (Ed.), Landlords, peasants and politics in medieval England (pp. 65-86). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Williams, D. (1996). Deformed discourse: The function of the monster in mediaeval thought and literature. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press.
  • Zieman, K. (1997). Chaucer’s voys. Representations, 60, 70-91.

The Monsters of Geoffrey Chaucer: The Miller in The General Prologue and the Miller in The Reeve’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales

Year 2019, Issue: 41, 127 - 142, 19.06.2019
https://doi.org/10.21497/sefad.586610

Abstract

The medieval universe was
captivated by composite monsters like manticores and centaurs which adorned the
margins of manuscripts and tales of medieval man. Medieval monsters were at the
same time the Others of the society. Medieval Others are largely treated under
the monster studies which begin with the dichotomy of “Us” (human beings) and
“Them” (monsters). The Others of the Middle Ages were not limited to beasts,
but embraced Saracens and Jews as the monstrous Others alongside heretics,
pagans, homosexuals, lepers and witches. With their atypical social positions,
millers were among those monstrous Others or “Them” of the Middle Ages as they
could not be fitted into any of the three estates; namely the clergy, the
nobility and the commoners. They were the unwanted upstarts and leading rebels
of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
In
accordance with their monstrous presence, the
chronicles depicted the millers of the revolt with animal-like qualities.
Similar to their historical counterparts, the most notable feature of Chaucer’s
Miller in The Canterbury Tales is his
animal-like appearance with a hairy
face and a gigantic mouth. Aggressive and disruptive, rather than a human, the
Miller looks like a wild animal bringing down doors-literally social
boundaries- with his head. Parallel to the Miller in The General Prologue, the miller in The Reeve’s Tale possesses an animal-like appearance and a
disobedient nature that grows into a threat to the social order. In this
respect, this paper discusses Chaucer’s Miller in The General Prologue and his miller in The Reeve’s Tale as medieval monsters who are man-animal composites and defiant Others.

References

  • “Crowd cheered the bomb that hit a PC: He was ablaze - the people were animals”. (1981. 04. 13). Daily Mail: 4.
  • “The peasants’ revolt”. (1981. 07. 08). Daily Mail:1, 4.
  • Abram, A. (2013). English life and manners in the later middle ages. Oxon: Routledge.
  • Akbari, S. C. (2000). From due east to true north: Orientalism and orientation. In J. J. Cohen (Ed.), The postcolonial middle ages (pp. 19-34). New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Alrasheed, K. M. (2009). The postcolonial middle ages: A present past (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Wyoming, Laramie.
  • Bishop, M. (1971). The Penguin book of the middle ages. Norwich: Fletcher and Son.
  • Blamires, A. (2006). Chaucer, ethics, and gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bleeth, K. (2002). Orientalism and the critical history of the squire’s tale. In K. Lynch (Ed.), Chaucer’s cultural geography (pp. 21-31). New York: Routledge.
  • Block, E. A. (1954). Chaucer’s millers and their bagpipes. Speculum, 29(2), 239-243.
  • Chaucer, G. (2008). The riverside Chaucer. L. D. Benson (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Childress, D. (2000). Chaucer’s England. Connecticut: Linnets Books.
  • Classen, A. (2002). Meeting the foreign in the middle ages. New York: Routledge.
  • Cohen, J. J. (1996). Monster culture (Seven theses). J. Cohen (Ed.), Monster theory: Reading culture (pp. 3-25). Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
  • Cohen, J. J. (1999). Of giants: Sex, monsters, and the middle ages. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
  • David, A. (1976). The strumpet muse: Art and morals in Chaucer’s poetry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Desai, R. & Eckstein, H. (1990). The transformation of peasant rebellion. World Politics, 42(4), 441-46.
  • Dillon, J. (1993). Geoffrey Chaucer. London: Macmillan.
  • Dobson, R. B. (1983). The peasants’ revolt of 1381 (2nd ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Eberhard, J. W. (1990). The English peasants’ revolt of 1381: A case study for the transformation of the English peasants’ mentality (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Texas, Arlington.
  • Fossier, R. (1988). Peasant life in the medieval west. (J. Vale, Trans.) Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
  • Gower, J. (1902). The complete works of John Gower. Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • Hanawalt, B. A. (1998). ‘Of good and ill repute’: Gender and social control in medieval England. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Hector, L. C. & Barbara, F. H. (Eds.). (1982). The Westminster chronicle 1381-1394. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Holmes, G. (1966). The later middle ages 1272-1485. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
  • Homans, G. C. (1975). English villagers of the thirteenth century. New York: WW Norton & Co.
  • Jones, G. F. (1955). Chaucer and the medieval miller. Modern Language Quarterly, 16(1), 3-15.
  • Justice, S. (1994). Writing and rebellion: England in 1381. Berkeley: California University Press.
  • Keen, M. (2003). England in the later middle ages: A political history (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.
  • Klerks, S. (1992). The making of a monster: The female grotesque in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Unpublished Master’s thesis). Carleton University, Ontario.
  • Lambdin, L. C. & Lambdin, R. T. (1996). The millere was a stout carl for the nones. In L. C. Lambdin & R. T. Lambdin (Eds.). Chaucer‘s pilgrims: An historical guide to the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales (pp. 271-280). Westport: Praeger.
  • Mann, J. (1973). Chaucer and medieval estates satire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mckisack, M. (1959). The fourteenth century: 1307- 1399. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
  • Mittman, A. (2006). Maps and monsters in medieval England. New York: Routledge.
  • Morgan, G. (2010). Obscenity and fastidiousness in the Miller’s Tale. English Studies, 91(5), 492-518.
  • Patterson, L. (1990). No man his reson herde: Peasant consciousness, Chaucer’s miller and the structure of the Canterbury Tales. In L. Patterson (ed.), Literary practice and social change in Britain, 1380- 1530 (pp. 113-156). Berkeley and Los Angeles. California University Press.
  • Patterson, L. (1991). Chaucer and the subject of history. Madison: Wisconsin University Press.
  • Pearsall, D. (1985). The Canterbury Tales. London: George Allen & Unwin.
  • Phillips, H. (2000). An introduction to the Canterbury Tales: Reading, fiction, context. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Prescott, A. (1998). Writing about rebellion: Using the records of the peasants’ revolt of 138. History Workshop, 42, 1-28.
  • Saul, N. (Ed.). (1997). The Oxford illustrated history of medieval England. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Schofield, P. R. (2003). Peasant and community in medieval England, 1200-1500. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Selby, S. D. (1999). Chaucer’s crisis of faith in the Miller’s Tale, the Clerk’s Tale and the Pardoner’s Tale (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Manitoba, Manitoba.
  • Smilie, E. K. (2012). Inquisityf of goddes pryvetee and a wyf: Curiositas in the Canterbury Tales (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Dallas, Dallas.
  • Strohm, P. (1990). Politics and poetics: Usk and Chaucer in the 1380s. In L. Patterson (Ed.), Literary practice and social change in Britain, 1380- 1530 (pp. 83-102). Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press.
  • Strohm, P. (1992). Hochon’s arrow: The social imagination of fourteenth-century texts. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
  • Strohm, P. (2008). Peasant’s revolt. In J. Harris & B. L. Grigsby (Eds.), Misconceptions about the middle ages (pp. 197-204). New York: Routledge.
  • Turner, M. (2006). Politics and London life. In C. Saunders (Ed.), A concise companion to Chaucer (pp. 13-33). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Urban, M. R. (2008). Monstrous women in middle English romance (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Cornell University, New York.
  • Wetherbee, W. (2004). Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Whittle, J. & Rigby, S. H. (1987). England popular politics and social conflict. In T. H. Aston (Ed.), Landlords, peasants and politics in medieval England (pp. 65-86). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Williams, D. (1996). Deformed discourse: The function of the monster in mediaeval thought and literature. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press.
  • Zieman, K. (1997). Chaucer’s voys. Representations, 60, 70-91.
There are 52 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Creative Arts and Writing
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Nazan Yıldız This is me

Publication Date June 19, 2019
Submission Date September 14, 2018
Published in Issue Year 2019 Issue: 41

Cite

APA Yıldız, N. (2019). The Monsters of Geoffrey Chaucer: The Miller in The General Prologue and the Miller in The Reeve’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales. Selçuk Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi(41), 127-142. https://doi.org/10.21497/sefad.586610

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