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Remembering Father Chaucer

By Leola Hausser '52M.A.

It was the summer of 1947, the war was over and the University's campus was again open for summer classes that would (after five years) lead me to a master's degee.

Father Paul E. Beichner, CSC, was our instructor for Chaucer I. He always arrived early, cassock-clad, carrying his bulging leather briefcase. We later learned he was fresh from Yale University, where he'd gotten his Ph.D. At this time he headed the grad school and the English Department. We Sisters in the program later dubbed him Father Chaucer, and many of us signed up for Chaucer II the following summer.

In the five summers I spent at the University I found Father Beichner a fine instructor; later my thesis director and a kind and good friend. University policy then was for grad students in the English department to select two areas of specialization: a combo of writers or periods. I chose Chaucer and Shakespeare. Before being officially admitted into the department we were also to pass the Graduate Record Exam and the Foreign Language Test. To get the coveted M.A., we had to pass a written exam in American and English literature, an oral exam (half an hour on Chaucer and Shakespeare for me) before a board of four professors, 24 credit hours of classes, and a master's thesis on a hitherto unexplored topic. My thesis eventually evolved into "Chaucer and Gower as Narrators in The Legend of Good Women and the Confessio Amantis." Father B. directed my thesis but I recall he initially suggested "Chaucer's Oaths in the Canterbury Tales," but I assured him it didn't at all appeal to me.

Our classes were in the Administration Building, the weather was a typical 90 degrees or so most summers and of course all of us Sisters were still wearing the traditional religious habit. Somehow we survived it all because Father Beichner made Chaucer, Middle English and life in Medieval England come vividly alive for us. Painstakingly and patiently he corrected our Middle English accents as we read aloud in class from Troilus and Criseyde (which he declared was really Chaucer's masterpiece), laughed at the humor of Chanticleer in the Nun's Priest's Tale and the cunning of the Pardoner and Miller in their tales. I recall my very first paper was "portraiture in the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales" on which I received a half page of commentary by Father B. Some of his remarks centered on the absence of a unifying thesis in the paper. Perhaps humor could have been missing principle. He mentioned such examples as "hat as big as a target," "beard as broad as a spade." His last sentence: "You would probably end up with a conclusion that Chaucer is as much concerned with the humor of his description as he is with accuracy or anything else."

Our sessions on his directing the chapters of my thesis were unforgettable times for me. He was a patient, demanding and exacting mentor. My journalistic style of short breezy sentences had to give way to a more scholarly style. To expose me to a more scholarly style he recommended I read articles from publications like PMLA and Speculum. Finally after I'd submitted chapter two he exclaimed, "Now it's beginning to jell."

He was also helpful in the planning of my courses. He suggested I take only one course during the summer I was to spend writing my thesis; only one during the summer I was to study for my orals and comps. I'd signed up for the Victorian novel. "Drop it," he said, "you'll never have time for reading Victorian novels and writing your thesis."

It was during our sessions of critiquing my slowly evolving thesis that I grew to know and appreciate Father Beichner, and as I look back after 50y years I realize I was also getting a course in research paper writing. He steered me to Chaucerian scholars Patch, Coghill, and Lowes. This was the era of the new critics, Brooks, and Warren. All of this was of course invaluable when I later faced the professors of my half hour orals on Chaucer. He also suggested that I ask my Shakespearean professor for a list of the latest Shakespeare critics to read prior ro my orals.

Through it all, classes in the plays of Shakespeare, literary criticism, Romantic poetry, Elizabethan poetry occupied my five summers, plus the Chaucer classes. I labored at my thesis, meeting regularly with Father Beichner. His own classes gave all of us not only a lifelong love for Chaucer but an unforgettable dip into medieval manuscripts. His classes were always challenging and interesting, never stodgy nor stuffy. We were given a list of topics from which to choose our oral class presentations, with Father Beichner whimsically remarking to the men in the class -- there were priests and Brothers also -- "Are you men going to leave the fabliaux topics for the Sisters?" Everyone was advised to read that great medieval masterpiece, The Romance of the Rose, which he said contained the essence of medieval courtly love.

In his last letter to me concerning my thesis in 1950 he said, "It looks good, and if I were you I would take it for granted that everything is correct . . . take it for granted that it will be accepted."

A few years after graduating in 1952 (in absentia) with 1,300 men, I had occasion to visit Father Beichner during a workshop at the University. He was still teaching and writing, and he gave me a copy of an article he had had published in Spectrum, "The Grain of Paradise, based on the Prioress's tale. This was to be our last visit. Recently while at the 1998 and 1999 Elderhostel sessions at the University I learned Father Beichner was in very poor health. I wrote to him but never received an answer, hence this late tribute to one of the unforgettable profs in my life who enriched me with a segment of literature I'd not ever have experienced. Blessings to you Father B. in your retirement years.

(After teaching high school and college I retired to our community center six years ago where I am doing some freelance writing.)