THE CANTERBURY TALES

FURTHER READING
Burke, Redmond A. What Is the Index? Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing Company, 1952. Index of Prohibited Books. Revised and published by the order of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. Vatican: Polyglot Press, 1948. Saunders, Edith. The Prodigal Father. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1951.

THE CANTERBURY TALES

Author: Geoffrey Chaucer Original date and place of publication: 13871400, England Original publisher: Unknown Literary form: Short story collection

SUMMARY
The Canterbury Tales is a group of stories, mostly in verse, written in the closing years of the 14th century. Chaucer establishes the framework for the book in a lengthy prologue, in which he describes the 29 individuals who meet with their host at the Tabard Inn in preparation for a pilgrimage to the popular shrine of Thomas Becket at the Canterbury Cathedral. They agree that, to pass the time on the journey, each pilgrim will tell four stories, two on the way to the shrine and two on the way home. The host will judge the best tale, and the winner will receive a sumptuous feast at the inn. Chaucer originally planned a book of 120 tales but died in 1400 before completing the work. Only 24 of the tales remain. Of these, 20 are complete, two are deliberately left incomplete because the pilgrims demand that the tellers cease, and two others were left unfinished by Chaucers death. The pilgrims extend across all levels of 14th-century English society, from the nobly born Knight, Squire, and Prioress to the low-born Miller, Cook, and Yeoman. None are spared Chaucers critical examination of the human condition as he uses his characters and their tales to expose the absurdities and inadequacies of all levels of society. The travelers quarrel, interrupt, and criticize each other; become drunk; and provoke commentary. Members of the religious hierarchy are shown to be corrupt, women are lusty, and the dark underbelly of society is exposed. The tales reflect the tellers, from the gentle Knight, modest as a maid, who describes an abstraction of womanhood in his pure Emily, to the bawdy Miller, who describes his Alison as a highly provocative physical object. Risqu language and sexual innuendo pervade most of the tales. The Cooks Tale describes a wife [who] whored to get her sustenance. In Introduction to the Lawyers Prologue, provocative images of incest emerge in Canace, who loved her own blood brother sinfully and wicked king Antio75

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chus [who] bereft his daughter of her maidenhead. The Reeves Tale tells of a miller named Simpkin whose wife was a dirty bitch and whose daughter was with buttocks broad and round breasts full and high. The Wife of Baths Tale, one of the two most commonly anthologized of all the tales, offers an extraordinary view of women and sexuality. Described in the prologue as having had five husbands, not counting other company in her youth, the Wife of Bath questions the concern over virginity and asks Tell me also to what purpose or end the genitals have been made? She lustily promises, In wifehood I will use my instrument as freely as my Maker has sent it. The second of the two most popularly anthologized stories is The Millers Tale, a story about adultery. Alison, an 18-year-old woman married to a middle-age miller, is courted by Absalom the parish clerk, but she is already having an affair with the boarder, a student named Nicholas. Absalom serenades her outside her window and promises to leave her alone only if she will let him kiss her. She agrees and, when he arrives at her window in the dark, she offers her naked arse, which he kisses. He soon realizes the trick, for it seem somehow amiss, for well he knew a woman has no beard; hed felt a thing all rough and longish-haired. Seeking revenge, Absalom returns to the Millers house carrying a red-hot poker from the fireplace and calls to Alison for another kiss. This time Nicholas, who had risen for a piss, decides to have his arse kissed to carry on the joke. And, showing the whole bum, he is shocked when Absalom was ready with his iron hot and Nicholas right in the arse he got. Later, John, the other student boarder, mistakenly climbs into bed with Alison, who thinks it is Nicholas, and he pricked her hard and deep, like one gone mad.

CENSORSHIP HISTORY
Canterbury Tales has been expurgated since its first appearance in the United States in 1908 in the Everymans Library edition. Seventeen of the tales were translated into modern English with extensive expurgation, and seven were left intact but in the original Middle English language. In 1953, the tales were innocent victims of the Red Scare, when critics approached the Texas State Textbook Commission and demanded that the commission bar the Garden City editions of Canterbury Tales and Moby-Dick from their schools. The two works were illustrated by Rockwell Kent, charged by critics with being a communist. For the most part, however, the off-color references of the original text and blunt Anglo-Saxon terms related to the anatomy or to bodily functions have raised concerns among parents and those who select textbooks. Thus, they are routinely omitted from most editions, as are curses or oaths uttered by characters in the original tales. Editing has led to such absurdities as He caught her by the queynte being transformed into He slipped his hand intimately between her legs. Challenges to the inclusion of The Millers Tale, The Wife of Baths Tale, and even the Prologue have sought to remove 76

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the readings from classrooms because of the unhealthy characters and the nasty words of the text. Risqu language and characters have made the tales a ready target for textbook evaluators and community and school watchdogs. In 1986, a lengthy case arose over the use of a textbook that included The Millers Tale and Aristophanes play Lysistrata in an elective humanities course for Columbia County High School students in Lake City, Florida. The tale appeared in The Humanities: Cultural Roots and Continuities Volume I, a state-approved textbook that had been used for 10 years without incident. In 1985, the daughter of a fundamentalist minister had enrolled in the course and objected to the two selections, even though they were not assigned readings but portions referred to and read aloud by the teacher. In lodging a formal complaint, the minister identified sexual explicitness, vulgar language, and the promotion of womens lib as his reasons for demanding that the text be withdrawn from use. His specific objections identified concern over the inclusion of the terms ass and fart in The Millers Tale, as well as the jocular way in which adultery appears to be treated. An advisory textbook committee made up of Columbia County High School teachers read and discussed the two selections, then recommended that the textbooks be retained and that the two selections not be assigned. The school board rejected their suggestions and voted to confiscate all copies of the book and to lock them in the book room. Anxious to avoid the charge of censorship, board members also voted to allow a copy to remain in the high school library, but it was placed on the mature shelf. In 1988, the American Civil Liberties Union submitted an initial brief against the school board in Virgil v. School Board of Columbia County, 677 F. Supp. 1547, 1551-51 (M.D. Fla. 1988) and argued that the actions of the board in removing the textbook from the classroom suppressed the free thought and free speech of students. The ACLU based its arguments on decisions made in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 102 S.Ct. 2799, 73 L.Ed.2d 435 (1982), in which the court decided that school boards violate the First Amendment rights of students when they arbitrarily remove books. (See BLACK BOY ) The defense attorney for the school board relied on Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 108 S.Ct. 562, 98 L.Ed.2d 592 (1988) in presenting the case, although the case applied to the right of school administrators to censor articles in a school newspaper that was produced as part of a high school journalism class. The case went to court, and in deciding Virgil v. School Board of Columbia County, 862 F.2d 1517, 1525 (11th Cir. 1989), the judge determined that the Hazelwood case was the relevant precedent. The limited scope of that case in interpreting the First Amendment rights of students influenced the court to decide in favor of the school board. In the Virgil decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit concluded that no constitutional violation had occurred and the school board could decide to remove books from the classroom provided that the removal was reasonably related to the legitimate 77

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pedagogical concern of denying students exposure to potentially sensitive topics. The written contention of the board that the two selections contained explicit sexuality and excessive vulgarity was judged to be a sufficient basis for the removal of The Humanities: Cultural Roots and Continuities from the classroom. The plaintiffs decided to appeal the case to the United States Supreme Court and directed the ACLU attorney to file a Petition for Writ of Certiorari in 1988. After more than a year passed, the plaintiffs learned that the Supreme Court had never received the petition because a secretary newly hired in April 1989 by the office of the ACLU attorney had never sent it out. The plaintiffs decided not to pursue the matter because the changed character of the higher court did not promise success even if the motion to argue the case were approved. In September 1995, parents of seniors in the Eureka, Illinois, High School complained to the Eureka School Board that parts of this classic are too racy. Board members directed the teacher, Nancy Quinn, to stop teaching the work until the board could review the material further. School Board president Eric Franz stated that the parents were particularly concerned with classroom discussions about marriage and adultery that were prompted by the tales. He characterized the action of the board as about education, not censorship and said that the board had to determine whether the communitys standards are violated by any particular piece of literature. The board voted to ban the full version of The Canterbury Tales and to replace it with an expurgated version, which they described as annotated.

FURTHER READING
The Censors Tale. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. September 25, 1995. Available online. URL: http://www.umsl.edu/divisions/artscience/english/faculty/grady/eureka3.jpg. Chaucers Tales Get Suspension from Illinois High School Class. St. Louis PostDispatch. September 22, 1995. Available online. URL: http://www.umsl.edu/ divisions/artscience/english/faculty/grady/eureka3.jpg. Johnson, Claudia. Stifled Laughter: One Womans Fight against Censorship. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994. Scala, Elizabeth. Canace and the Chaucer Canon. Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 1539.

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS (SERIES)

Author: Dav Pilkey Original date and place of publication: 1997, United States Original publisher: Scholastic Books Literary form: Illustrated childrens book

SUMMARY
The Captain Underpants series consists of eight books aimed at a readership of children ages eight to 12. Librarians and the publisher report that boys are 78