Looking to Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th century satirical writer, for marriage advice sounds about as ridiculous as picking up the comic section of the Sunday newspaper to gain insight into true love. Laden with jokes and humor as they are, how could they possibly reveal wisdom about anything?
Yet, when we stop to think about the likes of Charles Shultz, the cartoonist of the beloved Peanuts comic strip, it becomes clear that wisdom does in fact speak through playfulness and even foolishness at times. Consider, for example, Linus’s famous testimony on the meaning of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Likewise, pick up just about any Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterson and you’ll find his cartoon characters engaged in rather profound dialogue.
Sometimes, we need to hear something a little differently, perhaps with childlike simplicity or humor, to really get it.
Chaucer understood this, too. In The Canterbury Tales, he uses satire, which is a type of ridiculously exaggerated humor, to reveal Truth. Ironically, it can be easier to see Truth when intentionally and skillfully “openly-hidden” in falsehood. It becomes a game of sorts to unpack. We know something is off. Once we pinpoint what it is, we instinctively try to figure out the way it really should be.
Chaucer challenges readers to play his “satire game” over and over again, forcing them to look deeply at a wide range of enduring topics from income inequality, to education, to Church authority, and more. The unit I teach my middle school students revolves around Chaucer’s “Marriage Set.”
Yes, that does seem like somewhat of a distant topic for my age group, but it is nonetheless very enjoyable, formative, and even applicable. Students end up reflecting on the marriages of their parents and other adult models, but we take the topic much further to look at family life in general. After all, the bond between a husband and wife mirrors many relationships, most importantly that of us between God.
In this series, I am going to share my classical approach to teaching the “Marriage Set.” Here is the outline I will follow.
II. Characters and Caricatures
I hope it will be enjoyable, informative, and inspiring from a literary as well as a theological standpoint.