Chaucer Gentrified: The Nexus of Art and Politics in the Ellesmere Miniatures
The twenty-three miniatures of the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales (San Marino, Huntington Library MS 26 C 9) have been well studied, from Edwin Ford Piper's 1924 descriptive article to several essays in the 1997 The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation, which was published in con junction with the sumptuous new facsimile of the manuscript and Mary C. Olson's chapter in Chaucer Illustrated.1 Among the issues debated over the decades has been the fidelity, or lack thereof, of the illustrations to the text. Piper, Martin Stevens, Malcolm Parkes, and A. I. Doyle have argued that the pictures are, in Stevens's words, "as faithful as possible to the verbal portraits."2 Conversely, Richard K Emmerson's close study of the miniatures denies that the artists attempted to reproduce Chaucer's verbal portraits. Olson concurs with Emmerson.3 Anyone who gives the Ellesmere miniatures more than a cursory glance must acknowledge that Emmerson and Olson are correct in stating that the artists' depictions deviate in varying degrees from Chaucer's descriptions. Such deviations generally do not detract from the pictures' ability to function as rubrics. On the contrary, the additions of the Physician's urinal, the Summoner's summons, the Reeve's keys, and the Clerk's books4 allow a reader to iden tify the characters quickly and so are included, even though (with the pos sible exception of the keys) they are inappropriate accoutrements to be carrying on horseback on a pilgrimage.5 Rendering images more easily recognizable was only one motivation for the artists' innovations, though. Taken together, the changes amount to a program seeking to deflect Chaucer's satire of the upper and upper-middle classes and of most of the religious figures while emphasizing the negative aspects of the lower orders. Whereas the text tends to the ambiguous and the equivocal, the illustrations consistently eliminate these qualities and instruct the reader/viewer in how to regard each pilgrim. The Ellesmere miniatures reveal that, within a decade of Chaucer's death, the Canterbury Tales was being turned into an icon of establishment values.
Text and Context: Chaucer’s Friar’s Tale
ALTHOUGH MEDIEVAL STUDIES have emph,si,ed the need for interdisciplinary cooperation and approaches, even in the most intensively cultivated fields, like English social and institutional history and Middle English literature, there has been little systematic or extensive cross fertilization. 2 The present essay suggests some ways of exploring the necessary connections between medieval society and its literature by taking one text, Chaucer's Friar's Tale, as an artifact of interest to scholars trained in both literary and historical disciplines. Throughout the essay the central contention is that a reading of society helps us understand the tale and that a reading of the tale helps us understand society. 3
An introduction to dramatherapy
What Is Dramatherapy? Theory into Practice Preparing for Dramatherapy Beginning a Dramatherapy Session Applying Dramatherapy The Heart of Dramatherapy Dramatherapy and 'Mental Illness' Dramatherapy and Other Forms of Disorder of Mind Other Client Groups and Dramatherapy