Chaganti, Seeta. "'Merciless Beauty' and carceral justice." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/merciless-beauty-and-carceral-justice. [Date accessed].
"Merciless Beauty" and carceral justice
Introducing students to Middle English and the untimely juxtaposition.
“Merciless Beauty” is a poem written in a late 14th-century English that may or may not be Chaucer’s but is highly comparable to Chaucer’s usage. Several of its features make it an excellent poem to begin a Chaucer class that is reading the texts in Middle English. By asking students to translate the poem, they develop their skills for reading Middle English and become intimate with the formal structure of the rondel. Once they've gained an intimacy with the poem and feel comfortable with its language, the untimely juxtaposition is introduced: the film The Prison in 12 Landscapes. In this moment, students are asked to make connections between the poem and the film and their formal examinations of time, incarceration, and repetition.
Further learning
Recommended
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Spenser and his racializing influences
Comparing episodes from The Faerie Queene with episodes from the works that inspired Spenser, in particular excerpts from Ariosto’s and Tasso’s works, is a productive way to draw attention to how racialization travels and mutates across national traditions.
Blackness and Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare’s works at large, and early modern literature more broadly, all deal with constructions of race. Shakespeare’s sonnets are especially fruitful for considering how the languages of fairness and darkness are used in nuanced ways to develop particular understandings of race.
