The Lost Canterbury Tales

Shrek! Shrek! I'm silver, Shrek!

FLASHBACK

If you pursued an English major for more than five minutes, you read Chaucer. I had the (dis)pleasure of reading the whole thing in Middle English; not only did I sound like a brain-damaged pirate, I gained a deeper understanding of Chaucer's rhyme scheme when writing dirty stories about mistaken identity, pranks involving pseudo-rape and the actual kissing of butts. The hallmark of heritage literature. Kids, when your parents tell you that shows like Jackass are mind-rotting, putrid acts of humiliation, they're right, but you have the opportunity to argue that much of the content can be traced as literal interpretations of tales passed down and borrowed in European history, many of which are available for their perusal in The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron. You'll be mowing the lawn in no time, but the smug satisfaction of an academic explanation for your deviant behavior will put you well on the way to winning many an argument while losing many an ally.

I also vaguely remember something the "professor" had written about the Tales, in which we had to place each story on her "homoerotic continuum". At the time I went along with it, but complained to another professor about the silliness of the exercise. He concurred and said something insightful and poignant about the academic system being so out of whack that to get any attention (funding) anymore, one must concoct wild interpretations of established texts. I've forgotten it now, and because I've been out of the intelligentsia for years, in favor of surrounding myself with adolescents and their lack of sophistication, I now refer to that Chaucer class as Pin The Tail On The Gay Line. In honor of Geoffrey, I've penned a mighty limerick:

I once read a man named Chaucer

who fancied himself an author

we've studied his tales

- a class many fail - 

turns out he's a bit of a tosser

This is the first result for a GIS for "homoerotic continuum". I guess you could say it's for the birds. HA! HA!

FLIMSY CONNECTION TO BOOK REVIEW

Sonya Hartnett's The Silver Donkey has a parallel structure to the aforementioned works, but in this instance there is only one storyteller, and he only has tales featuring heroic donkeys. Think of him as a really lazy Aesop. Oh, and instead of telling stories to pass the time on a pilgrimage, the guy does so to entertain some Dudley Do-Right kids who might be his ticket home. 

While the stories serve as a break in the (in)action of the story, they also do a little to raise the esteem of the lowly donkey, who is apparently much maligned in WWI-era France. (Yes, it's another WWI book! But this time the story is away from the trenches, and it has the Jimmy Carter seal of approval, so you know it's about peace and/or building houses.) Our protagonist has run away from the front, but is overcome by blindness that slowly lifts over the course of the story. Is it self-inflicted? A nervous reaction to the horrors he witnessed in battle? Did he stare at the sun too long? He's found in a forest by two young girls who pledge to keep his secret and help him get across "the channel" to his homeland. Never does Hartnett reveal that it's the ENGLISH CHANNEL and that he's going home to ENGLAND. I used the power of context clues to make the connection in, I don't know, six seconds, but these are details I would have liked to actually see, for the sake of the YA reader. Bah, they'd probably get it. But, I know that YA boys are generally big on facts and locations. I know because I still act like one. 

So, the titular silver donkey is the linchpin to the story, and carries a special meaning to the runaway soldier, and to the girls he befriends. This could serve the double purpose of a primer for symbolism and pro-donkey propaganda in the classroom, which will, I'm sure, be misconstrued as some kind of endorsement of the Democratic Party. I can't wait to the Conservapedia version called The Golden Elephant, in which the soldier volunteers to fight, kills a hundred terrorists, and rescues the kidnapped Republican President, whose Secret Service code name is, you guessed it, Golden Elephant. 

Back to donkey symbolism. They're known for:

1. Stubbornness. 
2. Bearing burdens.
3. Jesus rode one into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday 
4. Helping kids get away with saying "ass".

Pretty impressive list. Hartnett covers 1 & 2 in full detail, and dips into Jesus territory when the soldier tells the tale of the donkey who carried Mary for days, all the way to the stables. So, donkeys aren't all bad. I'm seeing the ass at the end of the tunnel here. 

I should add that there can be an intro-to-intro to gender studies lesson within this book, when comparing the reaction to the soldier's stories by the young girls and the young boy, as well as the roles they play in getting the soldier on his way home without incident. The girls provide food, listen patiently to the tales and marvel at the shiny animal figurine, while the boy begs to hear details from the war and does all the actual work to book surreptitious passage back to England. I wonder what the Wife of Bath would make of this tale. 

The Silver Donkey treads where Chaucer rarely does, most likely because there are few easy laughs in altruism and the human predilection/instinct to help others in need. If you doubt we're capable of such behaviors at a young age, watch Alan Alda play with monkeys to get a fuller picture. I suppose, though, that we have our children read about kindness, compassion, and sharing when they're young so that when they read something as lurid as Chaucer, they realize that his complicated morality demonstrates realism at its finest (see the ambivalence of the Wife of Bath's prologue), much of the characters' behaviors are socially irresponsible (and therefore funny), and that fart jokes never go out of style. 

NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT

A book which I've wanted to read for quite some time. Teenage boys in Juvy struggle to make sense of their misdeeds and place in society. Let's just say that at one point in time this was our location!

BORING STUFF

The Silver Donkey

Sonya Hartnett

2004 Penguin (Australia)