From Greece to Oxford

The Canterbury tales, continues to show us the different points of view about life of each one of the characters that make part of this trip. Now our author juxtaposes love and honor with the Miller's tale which is practically a joke of what the Knight had just told the group.

The Miller's tale is just another way to see how author thinks about love. In this story love is multiplied by three in comparison to the same objective, the carpenter's young wife. Three men where after the same person which created some funny and tragic incidents in the little town they where living in. A broken arm, a broken heart and a carnal love that never gave fruit of what real love is about, from the point of view of the author.

For me the writer expressed how human kind mocks love and converts it in something dirty and erotic, which at the end juxtaposes with the image of a love full of happiness and true feelings. Although this, both stories have the common thing about their thoughts on love, and they get to the conclusion that love is sad and that love is cause of many pain and grieve.

We all know that, but have you ever been really broken hearted?

Gabriela

Tears Of Love

The Knight's Tale, is the first story this group of travelers tells us, the first story that present the type of people this travelers are and what they are accustomed to do. In the case of the knight tells us a love story that ends up on tears and death.

This story represents the knighthood and what a big deal it meant to be a knight in this time when gods where the kings and queens of the heavens and love was real and pure. This story can be seen as a comparison to the present days, by comparing the meaning of honor. At that time the word honor meant something totally different and today it is almost a vague resemblance to the fidelity a husband has for a wife, in which many cases it doesn't exist. In this story Honor is what controls every action of everyones daily life, specially knights.  Does the word honor means something in today's world? Does a man fights for a women's love and it does it with honor and dignity? or did we became a bunch of fighting nomads that dispute in the most inhuman ways?

The Canterbury tales, specially this one, has a renovated version of the true meaning of love, which that for those times can be seen in many ways, as a love so deep that it is confused with the one of the gods, and a love that it is present since the first sight.

    "For paramour I loved hire first er thow.

                   As a mistress I loved her first before thou.

1156          What wiltow seyen? Thou woost nat yet now

                   What wilt thou say? Thou knowest not yet now

1157          Wheither she be a womman or goddesse!

                   Whether she is a woman or goddess!"

This is the best example we can get from this tale, because we see here how Arcite one of the brothers, thinks that he loved her first because he thinks he loves her as a women and not like his brother which may be confusing his love with a vision from the gods. This implies that the author is trying to show us that even in the old days, love may be confused with other types of feelings like respect and sense of honor like for example in this case love and respect for the gods. 

Love and honor are two things inside this story that has shown that as time goes by it changes its significance and can be transformed into something really good or extremely bad.

Gabriela Arroyo

MIGRATIONS by Dorian Merina

  "Water rocks the hull of the ship and the dark night comes on the waves". With this small phrase the Dorian Merina starts her own explanation of the effects of the colonization in the Americas. They come and take, they raped our women and created the various races of people that are presently part of the American community.

  In this poem, Merinda takes us back in history to show us the different consequences of this events that occurred hundreds of years ago. One of them is the extraction of goods and resources found on this continent.

"On the boats come the goods that cross the waters

    like veins and blood rushing

the goods cross the waters"

   I want to share my personal thoughts about the meaning of this boats. In this piece, the author takes us to the boats used by the Europeans, the ones that take those resources that are now called limited. For me it is ironic how the Europeans took our goods on their boats that crossed the water, just after they where robbed by an Asian country which they controlled afterwards. The horrible effects of revenge had already taken International levels since the old times and maybe that is why our world is not as it is supposed to be. It is here where I can relate it to the poem. The Europeans in that time, created a road of "blood rushing" when they took our goods away and that started a story of violence that never had an end. 

"like veins and goods the blood comes

crossing the waters"

 

Here our authors twists the facts and with it, it shows us another big effect of the European invasion. She changes the phrase so that the goods that cross the water can become a complementary way to show us what else crossed with it, that other thing was blood. Although allot of killings took place, our author is not talking about it. As historians tells us daily on the History Planet, when they arrived they not only took things but people, specially women. They combined and created the vast races that we have today with us. They combined and created the different versions of Europeans, natives and black ones that each time created a new floor between the Native social class and the Europeans. Since a long time ago, social classes killed our society made it more violent and made more and more insecure, because you where never sure where you stood on that pyramid.

All this effects have one common fact  between one and another. All this effects where the cause of violence not only in countries like Colombia, but also in Brazil and Venezuela. They took our goods and made us fight for what it was left, and they made us insecure with all their rules and religions. At the end blood spilling always win as key factor of the violence that still goes on in Latino America, which creates more victims every day, and make this world look worst than what it already is.

Gabriela