Chapter 8, Chapter 2 - Language of the Marketplace Concludes & Chapter 3 - Popular & Festive Forms Begins Summary and Analysis

Chapter 3 begins after Friar John has been introduced. Here, Friar John appears again. He uses a Catchpole to release some of his own abusive feelings, fulfilling some kind of need. The Catchpole is literally a person, normally a grown man, who makes money by enduring being abused by anyone who will pay him. Friar John is not above using a Catchpole, and his victim is reasonably content. The other thematic image which emerges is that the battle scenes confronted by men have their parallel counterpoint in the kitchen, where the lives of other species are destroyed, dismembered and put together into the cooking pot where they will serve others as sustenance. From this perspective, which...