B&W RESULT: #241 Black & White Challenge

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The lesson
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The parlement of the fowles, mostly cormorants in this case with a delegation of pelicans
(a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, circa 1381, and source of the line "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne")
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terse said:
View attachment 180955

The parlement of the fowles, mostly cormorants in this case with a delegation of pelicans
(a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, circa 1381, and source of the line "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne")
Photos, ACDSee Pro
Click to expand...
I've heard the quote, don’t know the poem: what connection is Chaucer making between birds and ‘it takes a long time to master a skill’?
 
zenjenny said:
I've heard the quote, don’t know the poem: what connection is Chaucer making between birds and ‘it takes a long time to master a skill’?
Click to expand...
Why thank you for asking!:lmao:

The poem's about love. (Wikipedia summary) A translation into modern English of the opening lines:

The life so short, the craft so long to learn,​
The assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,​
The fearful joy that slips away in turn,​
All this mean I by Love​
​
The narrator is one of Chaucer's typical goofy and unreliable ones. He says:

For although I know not Love in deed​
Nor know how he pays his folk their hire,​
Yet full oft it happens in books I read​
Of his miracles and his cruel ire.​

(In other words, "I have no experience and don't know what people get out of it, but I've read a lot.")

He spends the day reading an old book, falls asleep, and has a dream in which he's transported (eventually) to where Nature is presiding over a gathering of the birds as they choose their mates. Arguments ensue. The parliament ends, the birds fly off, and the narrator wakes and goes back to his books, hoping to read something to his advantage and generally missing the point of everything that's happened.

(You think I'm kidding about the goofy and unreliable narrator? Try The House of Fame, in which the narrator is carried off dangling from the talons of a giant eagle who wants to lecture him about the stars.)
 
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