'The Pardoner's Tale' by Zia Akhtar

Seven men, in an inn on the outskirts of Canterbury, sipping ale until they are drunk. they have no names, they do not deserve names for their sins.

The first man, we will only know him as lust. He is married, with four children, who he makes work on the fields at his leisure, while he visits his wife, and then his mistress. He has never seen me, nor any other Pardoner, for the idiot believes he has done nothing wrong!
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The second man, who we call sloth, still lives with his mother, and the wheat that she grows, he eats, he stokes the fire with wood that she chops, and eats the meat that she kills.
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The third man, who shall hereby be called anger, has a wife but no child. his rage is fed by nothing, but seems to be endless. he hits his wife, he hits his mother, his father, and his brother, he hits the wooden walls of his dilapidated shack.
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The fourth man, who is known as envy, burnt down his neighbour's hut, fueled by jealousy of the oak of his walls against the mud of his own.
He should come to me, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

The fifth man, who is gluttony, has never left his house, as the doors are too narrow. He eats everything, and has everything brought to him.
He should call me to him, and I will have my profit, and he will find heaven.

Lesson on The Pardoner's Prologue

We began the lesson all by creating our own Pardoner's Tale, Here is mine:



It was the third of September



That day I always remember



The rain came flooding down


As we ventured through the holy town



I always said the journey had to put you to the test



To prove the Lord you are worthy to be blessed



The weather was harsh but I prevailed



When others gave up and their spirits failed




The we went on to read the introduction to The Pardoner's Tale, which was about the Host commenting on the previous tale told by the Doctor. I have uploaded an audio video of The Prologue below so you can hear again just how it should sound.











In the prologue a lot of things are revealed about the Pardoner, for example the fact that "in chirches whan I preche, I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche" meaning he tries to impose upon people when he preaches even though we know Pardoner's aren't meant to teach the word of God.

The Pardoner does try to make himself out to be more important than he is by flashing his "Bulles" ( church documents) supposedly to make others think he is licensed to preach, but then he goes on to talk of the relics he has for sale which "as wenen they echoon ( they all believe )" to be real, suggesting he tricks people out of their money for false relics.








The Homework for this lesson was to read the rest of the Pardoner's prologue and answer the questions on pages 20 & 22 in the Text book.

My Pardoner's Tale

This is pretty awful, in fact just don't read it....

With my pig bones a yonder,
and my mind stuck in ponder,
I felt my mind begin to wonder,

Is it fair to make them pay?
in hopes of forgiveness without use of prey?
like they are my puppets, nothing more than clay,

Yet I continue to abuse there trust,
weather it be gluttony, greed or lust,
continue to make money I must

Aspects of narration.

On Monday we started the lesson with having to do a drawing of Lockwood, labelling it in terms of what the other characters, readers and Lockwood, himself, thought about his own character.

We found out that firstly Lockwood viewed himself as a person that was a reserved man “I felt interested in a man that was more exaggerated reserved then myself”. From this we referred back to the narration of Nick from “The Great Gatsby” in which his opening words to the novel “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores”- When the reader of the novel reads this we automatically assume that both our narrators are people that are reserved and do not pass judgment, but this is not the case with either of them...

Similarly to Lockwood, we discussed that Nick also passes judgment when discovering facts about “Gatsby”- through the notion of gossip and private conversations from Jordan Baker, the readers also recognise the narration in the “Great Gatsby” to our filters. Lockwood a man that claims to be reserved in the start of the novel proves to be the complete opposite of this. The whole novel is based on the diary entrees of Lockwood and him pursuing Nellie in to telling him what happened at the Heights before he came even when it is time for Nellie to take rest.

Looking at what the readers thought of Lockwood the majority of us viewed him as being unreliable because of the many mistakes that he makes in narrating the story. Lockwood firstly mistakes a bag of dead rabbits for a cushion of cats, and then he assumes that he knows the relationships of the people at the heights by thinking that Cathy is the wife of Heathcliff and that Hareton is the son of Heathcliff. Lockwood also misjudges the weather by thinking that it will be a light snow shower when it is a heavy storm shower. From the misjudgements made us as the readers a forced to take all information given, into question again; as we are continually being misguided.

Thus, all the information we got is from letters and then from what Nelly overheard and then finally from Lockwood who acts as our frame narrator. We know that everything we are told might not be the whole truth because of the influence that people have had on to this information. For example Nelly is not fond of Heathcliff as she refers to him as a “gypsy” so when Nelly is giving account about Heathcliff this might be tainted with her emotional feelings towards Heathcliff.
After that exercise we looked at an article by Sue Hemming which looked at the similarities between Lockwood and Nick Carraway.
The main points that we took from this article were that both Nick and Lockwood enter the stories in the middle of things and have to learn about the past in order to understand the present.

From this article we also looked at the fact that both Nick and Lockwood are outsiders. This means that they are emotionally detached and both make mistakes in thinking what is happening has something to do with them. This provides the reader with a bit of comedy and intrigue.
We then took the point that both narrators in the end go back to where they came from because they find out that coming to these new places was not the new start that they where hoping for.

The main point that we took was the last point that the article made which was in the direct words of Sue Hemming “If the distorting prism of the narrator is removed and the focus placed directly on the central characters (as it so often is in film and television adaptations) the stories tend to degenerate into melodrama lacking the moral questioning and ambivalence of the originals”.
This means that if the stories did not have these narrators, the stories would lack mystery and excitement that we gain from finding out the whole picture through bits and pieces.

sorry guys here is the home work!!!!!!!!

Home work
Read chapter 3
1.What does Cathrine Earnshaw's diary add to the narrative?
2. How does the portrayal of Hinley and Francies's relationship contrast with that of Heathcliff and Cathrine?
3. How is the extent of Heathcliff's anguish (sorrow)reveald when he hears of Lockwood's dream. what is Lockwoods /your reaction to Heathcliff's feeling here
4.How is suspence built up in this chapter?

Sooo yeah heres my story, which by the way has no relevance to pardoners... but who cares! Plus I just thought Id like to make up a story...

Pardoner and the Beast

"Day one...Pardoners tell tales, that direct the way of a pilgrimage. As I walked half awake the other half at rest, my fragile mind was still under the illusions of a disturbing dream. Each step a recreation of last night. As far as I remember, whilst approaching two narrow walls of equal stature and weight. There opposition to each other like a static war of glares, judging by the marks upon the Dacite rock.

I entered, I felt the harsh chilled serenity that seemed to dominate every end of the hall. Its ancient shadows mimicked my movements. Until the last burning ember of the crimson flame, left nothing but the absence of light. From all angles, the screech of crying howls sculpt and almost embody the fastening footsteps, of that of a synchronised but yet ambitious hunt.

He approaches me and the black fire in the cave, escapes into his hungry colourless eyes. I call out to the familiar face that is the reason for my presence in the holy pilgrimage "Wise pardoner?", the words that are climbing out from my static lips and leaving me motionless. The face of hope revealed its true identity.

Half beast and half man, half Angelic and half Satanic. At this precise stagnant moment, when all that was moving was the pouncing paws of the Pardoner and his serrated teeth, when even the ancient walls turned to see the bloody coritied artery dissevered from my neck, spew blood like the compressing of a puppies head, I realised that the pilgrimage had sent my soul to the skies and sent my body deep into the imprisoning layers of the earth.

My story; a representation of a possible tale, Chaucer's Pardoner may tell.

And as I blew the candles of the holy church,
There came before me a poor boy sorry to search.
For his sin's had drowned him thoroughly as did the rain,
Yet it did not stop him collapsing from guilt and pain.
I asked him, "What do you here,cold and out of breath?"
He replied, "My lord, please, oh please save me from death!"
I seized my duty and took him in my arms,"Tell me, what have you done?"
"I stole an apple my lord. Ate it, and now its gone"
"Stealing is a sin! Your full of greed! pay for your forgiveness and plead"
"I have no money, my lord, I live on the streets"
"Then go! Leave! Pick up your feet!"
"Have mercy my good lord! All i possess is my petty soul"
"Leave! i am no longer your lord."
"I do have the only thing special to me, my mothers necklace. She has died."
"My son! Give me that gold, and come inside."

Mahsa.

The Portrait of the Pardoner

The main purpose of this lesson was to understand the portrait of the pardoner and the role of a pardoner in medieval society.

The first thing we done in lesson was to look at an image shown on the board and discuss in pairs what we think the image could be conveying. The image is shown below:

Chain Of Being

After discussing in pairs we came together as a class and began to share our ideas about the image. We discussed how the picture could be showing different levels of hell or perhaps a sort of hierarchy towards god. In the end we came to the conclusion that the image was showing the chain of being.

The chain of being is a Christian concept that states the hierarchal order of life on earth. The chain of being is as follows:

• God
• Angels 
• Humans
• Animals
• Plants

After this activity we then moved on to pondering on the role of a pardoner. Normally after committing a sin a person would need to seek advice on how to gain penance in order to gain forgiveness from god. (penance is a way to gain forgiveness i.e praying or giving up your time for others) A pardoner’s role is essentially to eliminate the need for penance after committing a sin. A pardoner would ask for money in exchange to give someone forgiveness from god. The amount of money asked for by the pardoner would depend on the severity of the sin committed.

For people seeking a path to heaven in the middle ages a pardoner would have seemed such an easy method to gain forgiveness from god so naturally people would not mind paying sometimes large sums of money to a pardoner in order to gain forgiveness.

Pardoners also offered biblical relics in exchange for money; they would claim to own the bones of saints which they would sell to people for sometimes very large amounts of money. More often than not however these ‘biblical relics’ were jus bones of animals. We talked about how greed; a sin in itself was often a sin that could be associated with pardoners.

For the last part of the lesson we began to annotate the portrait o fthe pardoner. Through carefull analysis of the text we began to depict key physical aspects of this particular pardoner. with these physical attributes we built up a picture of the pardoner.

“this pardoner  hadde heer as yellow as wex’ (line 677) = the pardoner has bright blonde hair

“dischevelee, save his cappe, he rood al bare.” (line 685) = he has dishevelled (dirty) hair and was bareheaded apart from a skullcap.

“a vericle hadde he sowed upon his cappe” (line 687) = a vernicle is a medal that is representative of a pilgrimage to Rome.

These are jus a few examples of the annotations we made, homework was to draw a picture of the pardoner based on what we depicted from the portrait of the pardoner.

The English language

                            

The main task for this lesson was to explore the development of the English language.

We started this lesson by discussing about what types of social states would be involved in the telling of the Canterbury tales.

The types of examples that we came up with were:

Knights

Miller

Pardoner

Wife of bath   

What we learnt in this lesson was that there were a lot of people taking part in the Canterbury tales and that they all had their own stories to tell. (Examples of these people are as shown above)

In every tale told there would be a host, the host would always introduce the tale. As well as the host introducing the tale, the host would also be able to make interruptions and comment on a tale; after a tale was finished he would then introduce the next tale.

We discussed what types of reasons they would tell tales in the middle of their journeys.

The main reasons that we came up with were:

To pass on time

To close the gap on their status

As well as those two reasons, they would also tell their own stories as a competition to see who has the best tale, because they were all in competition to see who has the bets tale, potential problems could surface such as jealousy and ignorance hence this will lead to disagreements of who has the best tale.

After discussing about the reason of why would they tell tales on their journey to Canterbury. We were given a short text which showed how people used to write in the past centuries.

The text was as follows: (Note: I am writing this from the sheet that we were given in our English lesson)

Whan That Aprille, with hise shoures soote

The droghte of march hat perced to the roote

And bather every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendered is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heath

The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with opne eye-

So preketh hem Nature in hir corages-

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sundry londes;

And specially, from every shires end

Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for the seke

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke

We were given three colours

The first colour should say: words that are spelt and mean the same as they do now.

The second colour should say: words that sound the same but are spelt differently.

The last colour should say: word that we do not recognize.

The colours were used to highlight the themes that I stated previously.

We were also asked to try and translate the text into modern English

       As you can see from mine example, this is how your text should look like.

               (Sorry about the quality of the picture, I took it with my phone)

For the final part of the lesson we were given a list of important names that we came across everyday in our lives and names that are very important in terms of the people that play an important role in our society.

The names that we were given are as follow:

Bus drivers

Sales assistant

Actor

Plumber

Chef

Hairdresser

Teacher

Judge

Doctor

Vicar

We were then asked to put numbers from 1 to 10 in our exercise book. (1 being the most important and ten being the least important), then we placed the names in the order that we think is the most important.

This was my list

1. Vicar
2. Doctor
3. Judge
4. Teacher
5. Chef
6. Bus drivers
7. Plumber
8. Sales assistance
9. Actor
10. Hairdresser

Narrative!

Narrative Voices...

In this lesson we focused on narrative voice.....within various novels, we as readers tend to question the responsibility of the narrator, which is why the reader can never be sure on how accurate or reliable the narrator seems. Perhaps this is done on purpose to allow the reader to be left confused....make their own interpretation on a situation?

To understand this in more depth the whole class was set a task; this was carried out in 5 steps;
1) Tell the person next to you what you did at the weekend...BE DETAILED!!
2) Write on the paper what your partners did last night after they got home. BE DETAILED!!
3) Give your number 4
4) Read the paper. Summarise what it said and tell it to number 5
5) Summarise what number 4 just told you...

In conclusion we came to understanding that Narrators all tell their own narrative on the basis of what they are told- In other words they are all filters. Within “Wuthering Heights”, we closely analysed the narrative of Lockwood. Through Lucy Webster’s article in “Lockwood suitable guide?” we discussed what we found out about Lockwood and his responsibility as a narrator....in particularly we discussed how the author notes that Lockwood passes judgements on the characters and their relationship, as well as this he mistakes a heap of dead rabbits as cats. This misinterpretation is closely linked to the critical exploration of the polite society and the conventions which govern it in the (18th, evidently Lockwood fails to realise that these are not valid within the world of Wuthering Heights. The attempts to name, categorise, and interpret, and the failure to do so effectively is a dominant theme in the text.

As a group we also looked elements of “realism” within the narrator’s voice...focusing on language, structure and form. During this task, however, we found and discussed how Lockwood could be classified as a frame narrator; in which he has full control over the novel/ the story as a whole. Besides this we found that within “Wuthering Heights” there are layers of reliability, as Lockwood seems to frame what Nelly narrates to him, narrators are framed like prisms; in which the information is reflected at different direction.; the story is refracted by what the narrator subjects (place judgements).Becoming familiar with the transactions between Nelly to Lockwood, we also argued that the readers are more similar to Lockwood; we do not understand the situations within the novel, as we are separated /isolated from everyone. In relation to elements of the gothic, the readers emanate from another realm in which we enter into another, in other words we are unfamiliar with our surrounds- touring the gothic.

This psychological uncertainty links to the notion of “terror” within the gothic...in which Bronte may have done this on purpose to allow the reader to wonder into the mysteries of Wuthering heights. Similarly, in relation to the bloody chamber; within the story of “the Erl King”- the use of shifting tense links to Bronte’s use of uncertainty as this confuses the reader and misleads them to enter into another realm...


HOMEWORK:
• Discuss the opening two chapters of “Wuthering heights”. What do we learn about our narrator? (A02, Link to the Elements of the Gothic!!!
• Comment on my blog post...PLEASE ;)

Shaun's contextual analysis

An Introduction to the "Pardoners Tale"

Hey guys, I’m going to try and make this easy to revise from! Obviously my hand writing is shocking, and I can’t read it at times, hence information could be inaccurate.

We studied some key areas, which possibly determined the way the Pardoners tale was written, which are in preparation to reading it. They were as following; “The Canterbury Tales”, “Medieval England Historical context”, “Religious context”, “Literary Text” and “Chaucer and his life - Biological context”

So if you remember miss put us in groups and we looked at each source of information, and gathered different information.

The first “The Canterbury Tales” was “a collection of stories loosely linked together”, told by different characters. Themes within the Canterbury tales were; “loves from a distance”, “male lovers suffering nights of anguish and “writing poetry”.

Key terms within this context we looked at were, “Fabliaux” which were extended jokes or tricks, often bawdy and usually full of sexual innuendo. “Fables” were tales that make a moral and point, often using animals as characters. “Sermons” were stories conveying a moral message (similar to Fables).

Moving onto “Medieval England Historical Context”. There was a belief of “Ptolemaic System” which was the concept of Earth being “centre of the Universe”. They obviously believed in a different kind of solar system. One in the picture below...

A Ptolemaic conception known as “The great order of chain being” was consistent of God, angels, man, animals and plants (which is in hierarchal order). God, angels and man were considered to have the ability of reason, movement, life and existence. Animals were said to have the ability of movement, life and existence. Finally plants the lowest in the chain order, are said to have the bare minimum of just life and existence.

Studying the “Religious context” we came to realise the significance of the churches powerful hierarchal positioning in “middle ages”. In the church there were strong emphasis on the confession of sins, those confessing were truly sorry. Although forgiveness was meant to be spiritual, it became financial after some time. In essence you would buy your way to forgiveness.

More people were needed to confess and collect pendency, so the term pardoner came about. Pardoners were people who listen to confessions.

We then looked at Chaucer’s language as part of “Literary context” which was language of the middle Ages – approximately between the 1150 – 1500.

Lastly we looked at “Chaucer and his life - Biological context” were we studied the influence of key events in his life. Some quick events were:

Born in 1343 in London

His father a wine merchant, operating in London. Chaucer inflicts his father’s passion of win selling into own his own passion – i.e. “demonstration sermon”.

In 1359 he went to war, at this still a teenager against the French. Chaucer was then captured by the French in Reims.

He married Phlippa de poet (1365).

Chaucer went on a “diplomatic mission” between the years 1372 – 1378.

He went to France in 1377 to negotiate peace.

13/09/2010- Wuthering Heights.

We started off the lesson with Kate Bush's disturbingly addictive song, Wuthering Heights. It is sung from Catherine's point of view, as she pleads to be let in through Heathcliff's window.



Not the actual video to the one we observed in class but this version truly captures the longing emotion through her facial expressions to demonstrate Catherine's emotions.
We then discussed the modern adaptations of Wuthering Heights such as the movie:



and whether or not the song just like the book is relatively 'Gothic'.

"Its hard to give a clear answer, as Wuthering Heights does have elements of the Gothic, but they are not clear and vivid enough to be categorised as a Gothic novel"
"Why is that? What about the dream? It involves a ghost doesn't it? so it must be Gothic?"
"Sure, but that could just be a dream."
echo's of 'yeah..' follows..

Its hard to say that Wuthering Heights is a Gothic novel, because it contains a great deal of realism. The story itself is based upon a tiresome love triangle and endless family disputes, factors which is present in our society today. By throwing in Gothic elements such as isolation, unattainable love, association of the supernatural etc. this blurs the lines between it being Gothic and not.

Then, we were put in groups of three and were given small cards which had key quotes on them and our task was to categorise them in any order which best reflected the book;
- Realism= social class/ family disputes
- Gothic= pathetic fallacy/ personification/ elements of the Gothic e.g. ghosts
- Romance= love/ exaggeration of emotions/ excessiveness
- Isolation= Wuthering Heights from the rest of society and the characters also confined by the 'moors'.

We then moved on to exploring the layering narrations of the book. This questions the reliability of the storey line as Nelly's version may have been changed by Lockwood's version.
"Just like Chinese whispers!"
Exactly. Bronte has probably done this to reflect the complication of the story itself and to warn the reader to reserve direct judgement.

HOMEWORK (Mr Sadgrove):
- Read article from e-magazine= "Lockwood a suitable guide?" narrative voice in Wuthering Heights.

Questions:
- What are the authors key points about Lockwood?
- What are Lockwood's failings as character/ narrator?
- How does Lockwood present himself? Is this realistic?

DUE MONDAY 20th

An Example of a good Scribe Post

In this lesson we completed a student survey and discussed our reasons for chosing English as as an A level course as well as our favourite books. These ranged from books studied at school (such as Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray) to books chosen and read independently. We were also introduced to our teacher's expectations in English and the make up of the course for AS. The first unit is called Dramatic Genres: Tragedy and entails the study of a Shakespearean tragedy - Othello (click on link for a synopsis of the play and other information) and a modern tragedy.

Following this we discussed/brainstormed the concept of tragedy in general terms, coming up with assosiations of sadness, melancholy, death, revenge, depression etc. This informed a discussion of what we might consider 'tragic' and whether things such as the BP oil spill could be deemed 'tragic'. With a general understanding of some ideas of what tragedy might mean we looked at several poems which could be considered to espouse a 'tragic' view of the world or an event. We discussed Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold and the sound of an ebbing sadness Arnold percieves in a world ''where neither joy, nor love, nor light... nor peace' are possible. Key to this discussion was the meeting of WHAT the poem said to us and HOW the poet had shaped his meaning. Here is an animation of Arnold reading his poem.



This led to an analysis of three futher poems which groups will need to get to know well for homework in preparation for teaching them to the class next lesson (Thursday). Futher Homework was to research a definition of tragedy and bring it to the next lesson.

Mr S