Answer to Question #298807 in English for roseflower

Question

1. Diagram the structure of Chaucer's "Pardoner's Prologue and Tale."
2. Diagram and label the structure of Morte D' Arthur.
3. Diagram and label the structure of "Sir Patrick Spens."

Answer 1

1.

Apparently deeply affected by the Physician's sad and gruesome tale of Virginia, the Host praises the Physician by using as many medical terms as he can muster. However, he rejects the Physician's moral to the tale and substitutes one of his own: Thus the gifts of fortune and nature are not always good ("The gifts of Fortune and Nature have been the cause of the death of many a person"). Thinking that the pilgrims need a merry tale to follow, the Host turns to the Pardoner. The more genteel members of the company, fearing that the Pardoner will tell a vulgar story, ask the Pardoner for a tale with a moral.

The Pardoner then explains to the pilgrims the methods he uses in preaching. His text is always "Radix malorum est cupidatis" ("Love of money is the root of all evil"). Always employing an array of documents and objects, he constantly announces that he can do nothing for the really bad sinners and invites the good people forward to buy his relics and, thus, absolve themselves from sins. Then he stands in the pulpit and preaches very rapidly about the sin of avarice so as to intimidate the members into donating money.

2.

Our narrator's got a lot of ground to cover if he's going to get through the entire story of Arthur's rise and fall, including the full tales of many of his knights. Maybe for that reason, he doesn't waste time on smooth transitions between the parts of his story. Most adventures begin with a simple "Now turn we to the tale of Sir So-and-So" and end with the straightforward, "Here ends the tale of Sir So-and-So." And there are a ton of these kinds of transitions to deal with, because Le Morte D'Arthur is episodic.

3.

Ballads may or may not have some basis in fact. According to Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, other versions of “Sir Patrick Spens” suggest it may be combining three historical events. In 1281, Scottish King Alexander III’s daughter Margaret was married to Norway’s King Eric, but on her voyage home, the ship sank and all perished. Eric and Margaret were survived by a daughter, also named Margaret. She was to be married to a son of England’s King Edward I, but died while sailing from Norway. There is no historical link between Sir Patrick Spens and these events, though chronicles indicate that there was a Spens and that he may have been a Captain, not a Lord. Finally, there was a famous shipwreck off the coast of Aberdour near Papa Stronsay Island, which claims to be the burial place of Sir Patrick Spens. Though it is unlikely the events in this poem are true in the historical sense, we can see that they may refer to these actual events. More importantly for us, these events help explain a bit about why the king ordered Spens to sail at such a dangerous time of year.