Word: chaucer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This research syndrome has certain rather ridiculous facets. Professor X, for example, is "in" Chaucer. He has published several articles on the text, and has succeeded in exposing two punctuation errors in the Robinson edition. He seeks a job in State U. where old Professor Y, the incumbent Chaucerian, has just died. Now Professor X, having heard through a friend that the position is open, and having discreetly let it be known that he is interested, gets a request for copies of his articles. He dutifully sends them to the department chairman, on whose desk they sit unread, until...
...absurd. If you view education as a human rather than an institutional enterprise, then it hardly matters where X is, so long as he is happy and gets along passably with his colleagues. No matter where he is, he will be able to promote scholarship by publishing articles on Chaucer and to promote education by unfolding the Canterbury tales to a few interested students...
...most difficult problem for the English Department appears to be striking a balance between these courses on the one hand, and the specialized single author courses on the other. Assuming that the "great" poets--Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Milton--can only be considered in literary vacuo, these authors are glossed over or omitted from the period courses in order to receive full treatment on overlong courses of their own. The contemporaries of these authors are barely mentioned, although there is opportunity to consider sources exhaustively...
Author Turner's most savage anecdotes are from the annals of court medicine. In a day when only God could save a King, a typical court quack was John of Gaddesden (probably Chaucer's "verrey parfit practisour"). John went so far as to publish a list of ailments that, financially, were beneath his notice. His gaudiest feat: curing Edward I's son of smallpox by swaddling the boy in scarlet robes, confining him to a room hung with scarlet drapes, claiming that the color's influence turned the trick. The 17th century court physician had less...
Furthermore, some of the gossips regard Librarian-Piano Teacher Marian Paroo (Barbara Cook) as something of a hussy because she approves of such racy authors as "Chaucer, Rabelais and Balzac." In this setting of cornfield provincialism, the Music Man decides to stir up a little trouble to distract attention from his own shenanigans. His horrifying revelation to the townspeople: a pool table has been installed in the billiard parlor...