THERE wasn't room to swing a dead parrot in a University College Dublin theatre yesterday afternoon - an unusual situation when the venue is hosting a lecture own middle English.
But then the lecturer was Terry Jones, one time star of the TV comedy show Monty Python. His presence in the arts building attracted students in the sort of numbers usually confined to events promoted over the words "free bar".
Jones is well known for hid part in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a film which set back the study of medieval history by decades. But delivering a talk on "The Meaning of Chaucer's Knight" yesterday, he was deadly serious.
Well, nearly. The scholarship was serious but the hour long lecture was performed with little gravitas. Jones stalked the stage like a madman as he described the political and social background to Chaucer's work.
He even climbed the lectern in a recreation of a scene from the 14th century Siege of Alexandria. And although the theme was middle English, he also employed a great deal of contemporary, though unprintable, language in getting his meaning across.
His thesis - it causes violent arguments among the sort of people to whom this matters - is that Chaucer's knight was a ruthless, greedy mercenary, like many knights of his day.
In his apparently heroic treatment of the knight, Chaucer was - in the medieval term - taking ye piff.
These professional soldiers - many of them English - rampaged around 14th century Europe, raping, sacking and pillaging as they went. Knowing readers of Chaucer's time would have been familiar with the type and would certainly have got the joke, argues Jones.
It is a sobering thought that in future centuries, academics may have to search the works of Jones and John Cleese for evidence of their real meaning: Could it be that the parrot is so obviously dead that the pretence of the petshop owner that it is still alive is ridiculous? Might a contemporary audience have laughed at the "sketch?" Discuss, supporting your answer with reference to the text.
After his lecture, Jones packed away his projector slides and turned his thoughts to his next project - a children's book. True to the eternal Python promise: and now for something completely different.
