Carol Eshleman sent me these notes before her paper on ‘Literary Alchemy in the Canterbury Tales‘ that I posted last week. This short essay, though it includes some of the same material, speaks to the Potter-Chaucer parallels more explicitly Enjoy!

The Potter and the Pilgrim: Alchemical Parallelism by Chaucer and Rowling

Since becoming a resident of the Potterverse and engrossing myself in John’s books on the series, I’ve become a ridiculous fan of literary alchemy. Therefore, when my Medieval Literature professor told us we could do our term paper on any aspect of Middle English writings, I immediately yelled, “Alchemy!” in a fashion that would’ve made either of my favorite Grangers proud. In an equally unsurprising manner, the research that I was doing on Chaucer seemed to resonate with my own thoughts on Harry Potter. When uncovering the alchemical parallels that are used in the Canterbury Tales, I discovered literary devices strikingly similar to the ones that Rowling uses in the Hogwarts Saga.

In analyzing Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous work, it is important to keep in mind that although the pilgrims are telling separate tales, these stories are not told in isolation. Chaucer’s characters tell stories that comment on, extend, and often mock other tales that have been told previously in the larger narrative. The Miller’s Tale is extremely funny to read on its own, but it becomes more meaningful when seen as a mockery of the Reeve and of the Knyght’s Tale. A lifetime could be spent deciphering parallels between the various tales. The complexity of this endeavor is heightened by the state of the work as a whole. Chaucer never finished writing the Canterbury Tales, and the tales that are completed exist in fragments containing only several stories apiece. Luckily, this can be used to our advantage. Tales within the same fragment tend to have the greatest amount of connections. [Read more…]

A Guest Post from Carol Eshleman!

The Canterbury Alchemist: A Pilgrim’s Allegory

A canon and his yeoman race up to Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrims, begging to be allowed into their party. What follows is a tale of failed transformation and the subject of scholarly speculation spanning centuries. Analysts have argued about purposes of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale along extremes from Chaucer merely imitating the alchemical literature of his time to Chaucer himself being an alchemist. What is more intriguing is why an author would have an outsider intrude upon a set cast of characters after taking such pains to describe them in detail. Mark J. Bruhn points out Chaucer’s self-reflectiveness in this scene: “Chaucer-the-narrator poses from within the dramatic moment the inevitable and crucial question it provokes: who are these unexpected interlopers?” (289). Because the premise of Canterbury Tales is that a group of people on a pilgrimage to Canterbury each tell story, the solution to Chaucer’s purpose must lie within the tale this intruding character tells. The Canon’s Yeoman’s tale of alchemy thrust upon the greater cast of pilgrims points to a larger alchemical allegory that Chaucer wishes to impart upon his readers.

An argument can be made for Chaucer’s use of alchemy as an imitation of other literature during his time period. Indeed, the general format of Canterbury Tales is an amalgamation of medieval literary genres, which fits with alchemical symbolism in general since alchemy “was not confined within the boundaries of few genres” (Linden 4). Because there were a plentitude of writings concerning the processes of alchemy, it’s highly possible that the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale was merely representative of this content as its own category of literature. The accuracy with which Chaucer portrays the alchemical process, however, is an extensive subject for debate. [Read more…]