CANTERBURY TALES (II): WHAT A CHARACTER!

 CANTERBURY TALES (II): WHAT A CHARACTER!  Notes on the Cook

Characterization -

• Chaucer uses both indirect and direct characterization for the cook
• Direct
• “He was as brown as a berry.”
• “Well-built and short”
• “With locks coal black and very neatly kept”
• “At dancing he so well, so blithely leapt”
• “But a pity it was, it seemed to me, that on his shin an open sore had he”

• Indirect
• the cook was a great at playing dice

“For there was no apprentice in the town Who better rattled dice and threw them down Than Perkin Reveler”

• he was the “apple” who would have ruined his master’s shop

"A rotten apple's better thrown away Before it spoils the barrel."

• His hygiene for his kitchen and himself is very bad

“For in your shop so many flies are loose”

• his food quality sickened whoever ate his food

“There's many a pilgrim wishes you Christ's curse”

Use of humor -

• There is one piece of humor with the cook, He is the one who makes and handles the people's food and he has a huge open sore and is known for being filthy and unsanitary.
• In describing the cook’s dancing Chaucer uses the term, “so blithely leapt” which would be like saying she was beautiful like a goat humorous for the vernacular of the time
• The sheer fact that a person who prepares food is so disgusting is itself funny, this is further highlighted by how he is indirectly described as a dirty wreck of a man which considering the humor of the time was as far as one could go without being burned at the stake
• “He was as ful of love and paramour as is the hyve ful of hony swete” If this is being understood correctly once again it is ironically pointing out some traits of the cook

Tone -

• The tone directed at the Cook is one of humor. Pointing out his physical flaws and making him look disgusting shows the author purposefully put him in the tales to just bash on him.
• The author tells the reader that his hygiene and cooking skills made people basically vomit in in his presence.
• This tone is borderline rude as it depicts how people would be toward a person with his same physical appearance, in essence the placement of the cook makes the tone a tad satirical

Collaboration between Hikaru Kasai, Michael Hall, Ephraim Rodriguez and Eric Jackson