TESTING THE LIMITS OF “LIBERAL EDUCATION”
Chaucer scholar Dolores Cullen has found that new ideas aren’t always welcome in the Academic Establishment.
Dolores Cullen first encountered Geoffrey Chaucer as a middle-aged college student at California State Polytechnic University. The wife of a math professor and the mother of four grown children, she had put off having a college education for decades, but when she enrolled in the English Department at California State Polytechnic College, she entered the academic world with both feet, eager to learn.
What she learned was a passion for a whole new—actually a whole old—language, Middle English. And she found joy in the stories told by Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the first and most beloved poets and storytellers in that language.
Another thing Dolores Cullen learned was the thrill of discovering new ways of understanding Chaucer’s tales. These new interpretations thrilled her. They did not thrill her professors and advisors, who pointed out that these ideas had never been noted before by “established” scholars, and therefore must be wrong. Cullen’s new ideas were consistent with the theology and cosmology of Chaucer’s medieval society; but since they didn’t come from within the club, they weren’t worthy of academic respect.
Undaunted, Cullen developed her ideas and eventually wrote and published three groundbreaking books positing (for example) that the Host in The Canterbury Tales, who is the leader of the pilgrimage, is Christ himself; that “The Tale of Sir Thopas,” told by the Pilgrim Chaucer, is a disguised (and bawdy) apology for Chaucer’s sexual exploits; and that the whole troupe of Pilgrims are allegorical representations for the heavenly bodies and constellations so important to medieval astrology.
In her newest book, Ensnared by His Words: My Chaucer Obsession, Dolores Cullen tells the story of her academic odyssey, with all its rewards and all its frustrations. It is also a very human memoir of a long and well-lived life. And it delivers important messages, including: enjoy your education, stand up for your ideas, and (her own motto) Celebrate Chaucer!
Dolores L. Cullen is the author of three books offering a bold, new approach to the study of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, as well as Who’s Afraid of Middle English: A Booke of Lystes. She lives and writes in Claremont, California
Order Cullen's Chaucer Trilogy & Get Her DVD!
|
