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| Ecclesiastical History of the English People: 'The Story of Caedmon' and 'Caedmon's Hymn' |
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Author: Bede Date: 731
Summary: Story of a monk who tended the animals in the monastery. Having no ability to sing, Caedmon falls asleep one night and dreams that someone asks him to compose a song. Caedmon awakes and writes the song from his dream, adding new lines. He then gives the song the abbess and becomes a successful poet and song composer in the monastery. He dies like a saint after receiving a premonition of his death. The 'Hymn' is one of Caedmon's compositions:
Now [we] must honour
the guardian of heaven,
the might of the architect,
and his purpose,
the work of the father of glory
— as he, the eternal lord,
established
the beginning of wonders.
He, the holy creator,
first created heaven as a roof
for the children of men.
Then the guardian of mankind
the eternal lord,
the Lord almighty
afterwards appointed
the middle earth,
the lands, for men.
Significance: Cædmon's Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God which he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry |
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Author: Anonymous/unknown Date: 10th century
Summary: The narrator first sees the cross covered in jewels and is aware how wretched he is in comparison. However, he notices how the gems are stained with blood. The cross then tells its story of Jesus' death: beginning with how the cross was cut down in the forest and carried away,the tree describes the agony of Jesus' death. The cross has a need to bow before Jesus, but must stand straight: "I quivered when the hero clasped me / yet I dared not bow to the ground." All of the earth agonizes over his death. The Lord and the Cross become one--they stand together as victors, refusing to fall, taking on insurmountable pain for the sake of mankind. It is not just Christ, but the Cross as well that is pierced with nails. The poem ends with the narrator praising the tree: "I prayed to the cross...Now my hope in this life / is that I can turn to that tree of victory /alone." The narrator also desires to fellowship with the rest of his comrades and the Lord "where the people of God are seated at the feast / in eternal bliss." The poem ends happily and hopeful as the narrator looks forward to the day he will join Jesus in the afterlife. He imagines heaven's glory and when his "king almighty God, entered his own country" victoriously returning from battle.
Significance: The poem is an illustration of how the conventions of Old English Heroic poems like Beowulf were adapted to the doctrines of Christianity: Christ's Passion--heroic sacrifice and young hero. genre: mixes heroic with elegiac. |
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| Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
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Author: Anonymous/unknown Date: 14th Century
Characters: Sir Gawain-the protagonist, King Arthur's nephew, reputation of being a great knight and pinnacle of the 5 points of chivalry (humility, piety, integrity, loyalty, and honesty-represented by the pentangle on his shield), whose only flaw is to wish to save his own life.
The Green Knight- he's green...wild looking, beardless, and huge, supernatural figure. Find out he is actually Bertilak (Gawain's Host) at the end.
Bertilak--the green knight and lord of the castle where Gawain stays at Christmas. The poem associates Bertilak with the natural world—his beard resembles a beaver, his face a fire—but also with the courtly behavior of an aristocratic host. He is Boisterous, powerful, brave, and generous.
Bertilak's Wife- Tries to seduce Gawain, she is clever and rhetorical.
Morgan le Faye- Main antagonist who plots against Gawain and King Arthur's Court. Disguises herself as an old woman in the castle.
Gringolet- Gawain’s horse.
Summary: At the peak of Kind Arthur's golden reign, the green knight storms in his court and demands a challenge that Sir Gawain accepts. Gawain chops off the Green knight's head and then the Green Knight magically rides off. A year later, Gawain must do the same. He travels to Bertilak's castle where he stays feasting for three days. Each day, Gawain and Bertilak must exchange their winnings of the day: for Bertilak, his hunting spoils, and Gawain's kisses from Bertilak's wife. On the third day Bertilak's wife gives him a magic girdle that will save his life, but he does not give this winning to Bertilak. Gawain meets the Green Knight who is really Bertilak. Because Gawain did not honestly exchange all of his winnings on the third day, Bertilak drew blood on his third blow. Nevertheless, Gawain has proven himself a worthy knight. Bertilak relates the whole plot (driven by Morgan la Fay), and Gawain must where the girdle as a reminder of his failure. |
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| The Second Shepherds Play |
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Author: Anonymous/unknown Date: 15th century
Characters: Mak- a thief that steels a sheep and disguises it as a baby.
Gill-Mak's wife who helps him.
Summary: The play is actually two separate stories presented sequentially; the first is a non-biblical story about a thief, Mak, who steals a sheep from three shepherds. He and his wife, Gill, attempt to deceive the shepherds by pretending the sheep is their son. The shepherds are fooled at first. However, they later discover Mak's deception and toss him on a blanket as a punishment.
At this point, the storyline switches to the familiar one of the three shepherds being told of the birth of Christ by an angel, and being told to go to Bethlehem, where they offer gifts to the Christ child. This interweaving of tales does not merely add the secular to the sacred; the story of Mak and Gill and their "lamb" invites comparison with the Nativity story and offers several parallels. |
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| The Book of Margery Kempe |
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Author: Margery Kempe life:1373-1439
Summary: She was married and she had lots of children. She would talk to anyone who would listen. She was not reclusive. Her vision comes in the midst of a postpartum madness. SHe tried to confess a secret sin and she can’t and goes mad. She is tied up for 8 months in the basement. She has a vision and comes back to reality. For Margery, visionary literature is a lifesaver. She writes a book on her spiritual experience. She was probably illiterate, so she dictated her book to a scribe. The book was rediscovered in 1934. Kempe was not as holy as Julian. SHe is like a real life Wife of Bath. After God called her to him, she started a couple of businesses, and then she started negotiating a chaste relationship with her husband. Hubby is not thrilled. She is given the gift of tears that shows her sympathetic suffering with Christ. She went to pilgrimages to Holy sites. She was interrogated as a heretic and she went to go see Julian of Norwich. She went around talking about God, she was accused of being an itinerant preacher because she was a woman. She will not; she says she is allowed to speak of God--as are they all. She gets off the hook and is allowed to resume her pilgrimages and her loud outbursts. We call this an autobiography, but is a modeled after a book about a Saint’s life or lives of contemporary visionary saints. Margery is really writing her own saintly text. She is presenting herself as a saint and writing her own life (hagiography).
The spiritual writings became a place for women to explore their inner life, interiority, and subjectivity. They are trying to empathize with Christ. They are creating a space to express their own interior, emotional life.
Terms:
Affective Piety: People were trying to experience the passion and suffering of Jesus in a very emotional way. Use your imagination to participate in the suffering of Jesus.
Gender paradigm: It gets a bit confused in the rise of affective piety at the tail end of the middle ages. Before, man is reason, woman is passion; man is the soul and woman is the body. But Christ gets wrapped up in this passion. Thus, Christ is feminized; gender roles get transferred and transformed. The suffering Christ appeals to the feminine notion of the body. The roles get blurred. The womb is spiritualized. Jesus is described a lactating breast which nourishes us.
Mystics: directly experience god bodily, ghostly, intellectual enlightenment. Any person who seeks by contemplation to understand God in ways that are beyond the intellect. |
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Old English heroic epic from as early as the 8th Century; Anonymous author.
Plot: The main protagonist, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and Grendel's mother with her own sword.
Later in his life, Beowulf is himself king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound. He attacks the dragon with the help of his thegns or servants, but they do not succeed. Beowulf decides to follow the dragon into its lair, at Earnanæs, but only his young Swedish relative Wiglaf dares join him. Beowulf finally slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded. He is buried in a tumulus or burial mound, by the sea.
Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. The poem also begins in medias res ("into the middle of affairs") or simply, "in the middle", which is a characteristic of the epics of antiquity. Although the poem begins with Beowulf's arrival, Grendel's attacks have been an ongoing event. An elaborate history of characters and their lineages are spoken of, as well as their interactions with each other, debts owed and repaid, and deeds of valour.
Characters: Beowulf; Grendel and Grendel's Mother; King Hrothgar and Heorot (the mead hall); Unferth; Wiglaf; Shield Sheafson; and the dragon.
Themes: Kinship; the Heroic Code and Value system; the role of women; bravery; the centrality of the mead hall; the tension between paganism and Christianity. |
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Geoffrey Chaucer; 1387; Middle English Period
Summary: The tales (mostly in verse, although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
Context: the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of the characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. In a departure from earlier literature, which tells the tale of heros, gods, and royalty, Chaucer samples the whole ranger of English society. Importantly, it was written in English and not French.
Form: Frame narrative and pilgrimage tale. |
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| The Knight in the Canterbury Tales |
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| The Knight rides at the front of the procession described in the General Prologue, and his story is the first in the sequence. The Host clearly admires the Knight, as does the narrator. The narrator seems to remember four main qualities of the Knight. The first is the Knight’s love of ideals—“chivalrie” (prowess), “trouthe” (fidelity), “honour” (reputation), “fredom” (generosity), and “curteisie” (refinement). The Knight has fought in the crusades. Ironically, though a soldier, the romantic, idealistic Knight clearly has an aversion to conflict or unhappiness of any sort. |
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| The Pardoner rides in the very back of the party in the General Prologue and is fittingly the most marginalized character in the company. His profession is somewhat dubious—pardoners offered indulgences, or previously written pardons for particular sins, to people who repented of the sin they had committed. Along with receiving the indulgence, the penitent would make a donation to the Church by giving money to the pardoner. Chaucer’s Pardoner is a highly untrustworthy character. He sings a ballad—“Com hider, love, to me!” The narrator is not sure whether the Pardoner is an effeminate homosexual or a eunuch (castrated male). After telling the group how he gulls people into indulging his own avarice through a sermon he preaches on greed, the Pardoner tells of a tale that exemplifies the vice decried in his sermon. Furthermore, he attempts to sell pardons to the group—in effect plying his trade in clear violation of the rules outlined by the host. |
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| One of two female storytellers (the other is the Prioress), the Wife has a lot of experience under her belt. She has traveled all over the world on pilgrimages. Not only has she seen many lands, she has lived with five husbands. She is worldly in both senses of the word: she has seen the world and has experience in the ways of the world, that is, in love and sex. Although she is argumentative and enjoys talking, the Wife is intelligent in a commonsense, rather than intellectual, way. Through her experiences with her husbands, she has learned how to provide for herself in a world where women had little independence or power. The chief manner in which she has gained control over her husbands has been in her control over their use of her body. The Wife uses her body as a bargaining tool, withholding sexual pleasure until her husbands give her what she demands. |
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Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . . |
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| Opening lines to The General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales |
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| Arcite and Mars fight Palamon and Venus for the love of Emily (who loves neither of them). Arcite wins but dies. Palamon gets to marry Emily. |
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| Stout and brawny, the Miller has a wart on his nose and a big mouth, both literally and figuratively. He threatens the Host’s notion of propriety when he drunkenly insists on telling the second tale. Indeed, the Miller seems to enjoy overturning all conventions: he ruins the Host’s carefully planned storytelling order; he rips doors off hinges; and he tells a tale that is somewhat blasphemous, ridiculing religious clerks, scholarly clerks, carpenters, and women. |
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| Described as modest and quiet, this Prioress (a nun who is head of her convent) aspires to have exquisite taste, making her materialistic. Her table manners are dainty, she knows French (though not the French of the court), she dresses well, and she is charitable and compassionate. She wears a brooch that says "Love conquers all." |
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| Like the Second Nun, the Nun’s Priest is not described in the General Prologue. His story of Chanticleer, however, is well crafted and suggests that he is a witty, self-effacing preacher. |
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| A Fable about Chaunticleer, a handsome vain rooster noted for his singing. The beautiful Perteltote, Chaunticleer's favorite hen; and sir Russell, a fox. Chaunticleer dreams that he'll be eaten by a fox. Perteltote shames him for being a coward and believing in his dreams. The fox comes along, and flatters Chaunticleer into singing with his eyes closed, then Sir Russell snatches him up and runs away. Just as the fox is about the swallow the rooster, he opens his mouth to gloat. THe rooster escapes and won't be fooled by the fox again. It is a mock-heroic that parodies some conventions of the Iliad. |
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| The Wife of Bath's Prologue |
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| She establishes herself as an authority on marriage, due to her extensive personal experience with the institution. Since her first marriage at the tender age of twelve, she has had five husbands. She says that many people have criticized her for her numerous marriages. he Wife of Bath has her own views of Scripture and God’s plan. She says that men can only guess and interpret what Jesus meant when he told a Samaritan woman that her fifth husband was not her husband. With or without this bit of Scripture, no man has ever been able to give her an exact reply when she asks to know how many husbands a woman may have in her lifetime. God bade us to wax fruitful and multiply, she says, and that is the text that she wholeheartedly endorses. After all, great Old Testament figures, like Abraham, Jacob, and Solomon, enjoyed multiple wives at once. She admits that many great Fathers of the Church have proclaimed the importance of virginity, such as the Apostle Paul. But, she reasons, even if virginity is important, someone must be procreating so that virgins can be created. Leave virginity to the perfect, she says, and let the rest of us use our gifts as best we may—and her gift, doubtless, is her sexual power. She uses this power as an “instrument” to control her husbands. Of her five husbands, three have been “good” and two have been “bad.” The first three were good, she admits, mostly because they were rich, old, and submissive. She laughs to recall the torments that she put these men through and recounts a typical conversation that she had with her older husbands. She would accuse her -husband of having an affair, launching into a tirade in which she would charge him with a bewildering array of accusations. If one of her husbands got drunk, she would claim he said that every wife is out to destroy her husband. He would then feel guilty and give her what she wanted. All of this, the Wife of Bath tells the rest of the pilgrims, was a pack of lies—her husbands never held these opinions, but she made these claims to give them grief. Worse, she would tease her husbands in bed, refusing to give them full satisfaction until they promised her money. She admits proudly to using her verbal and sexual power to bring her husbands to total submission. |
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“Wommen desiren to have sovereyntee
As wel over hir housbond as hir love,
And for to been in maistrie hym above.” |
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| From the Wife of Bath's Tale |
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| King Arthur's knight commits a rape. Tp escape sentencing, he must discover what women desire most. He marries an old witch for the answer: sovereignty; she then turns into a beautiful woman. |
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| John is jealous and highly possessive of his sexy eighteen-year-old wife, Alisoun. One day, the carpenter leaves, and young Nicholas and Alisoun begin flirting. She agrees to sleep with him when it is safe to do so. She is worried that John will find out, but Nicholas is confident he can outwit the carpenter. A merry, vain parish clerk named Absolon also fancies Alisoun. He serenades her every night, buys her gifts, and gives her money, but to no avail—Alisoun loves Nicholas. Nicholas tells John he has had a vision from God and offers to tell John about it. He explains that he has foreseen a terrible event. The next Monday, waters twice as great as Noah’s flood will cover the land, exterminating all life. icholas instructs John to fasten three tubs, each loaded with provisions and an ax, to the roof of the barn. On Monday night, they will sleep in the tubs, so that when the flood comes, they can release the tubs, hack through the roof, and float until the water subsides. Nicholas also warns John that it is God’s commandment that they may do nothing but pray once they are in the tubs—no one is to speak a word. As soon as the carpenter begins to snore, Nicholas and Alisoun climb down, run back to the house, and sleep together in the carpenter’s bed. In the early dawn, Absolon passes by and asks for a kiss. Absolon leaps forward eagerly, offering a lingering kiss. But it is not her lips he finds at the window, but her “naked ers [arse]” (3734). Nicholas, having gotten up to relieve himself anyway, sticks his rear out the window and farts thunderously in Absolon’s face. Absolon brands Nicholas’s buttocks with the poker. Nicholas leaps up and cries out, “Help! Water! Water!” (3815). John, still hanging from the roof, wakes up and assumes Nicholas’s cries mean that the flood has come. He grabs the ax, cuts free the tub, and comes crashing to the ground, breaking his arm. The noise and commotion attract many of the townspeople. The carpenter tells the story of the predicted flood, but Nicholas and Alisoun pretend ignorance, telling everyone that the carpenter is mad. |
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| Three immoral drunkards set out to find Death, who has taken one of their drinking buddies. THey are told to look for death under a certain tree, but instead they find a large pile of treasure. The three men manage to murder each other in trying to increase their share of the treasure. At the conclusion of the tale the pardoner tries to get the host to pay for the opportunity to handle some of the relics. The host responds that he'd rather have the pardoner's severed testicales so that he might bury them in pig shit. The Knight reconciles their argument. |
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The Firste Moevere of the cause above,
Whan he first made the faire cheyne of love,
Greet was th’effect, and heigh was his entente.
. . .
For with that faire cheyne of love he bond
The fyr, the eyr, the water, and the lond
In certeyn boundes, that they may nat flee. |
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| The Knight's Tale; Theseus's explanation of why Emily must marry Palamon. |
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15th Century English Morality Play by unknown author. Bookends the Medieval Period.
Themes: Everyman examines the question of Christian salvation by use of allegorical characters, and what Man must do to attain it. The premise is that the good and evil deeds of one's life will be tallied by God after death, as in a ledger book. The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind. In the course of the action, Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his account. All the characters are also allegorical, each personifying an abstract idea such as Fellowship, (material) Goods, and Knowledge. The conflict between good and evil is dramatized by the interactions between characters.
Summary: The play opens with a prologue, which takes the form of a messenger telling the audience to attend to the action to come, and to heed its lesson. God speaks, lamenting that humans have become too absorbed in material wealth and riches to follow Him. He feels taken for granted, because He receives no appreciation from mankind for all that He has given them. God commands Death, His messenger, to go to Everyman and summon him to heaven to make his reckoning. Death arrives at Everyman's side and informs him it is time for him to die and face judgment. Everyman is distressed as he does not have a proper account of his life prepared. So Everyman tries to bribe Death, and begs for more time. Death denies Everyman's requests, but will allow him to find a companion for his journey, someone to speak for his good virtues. Everyman encounters friends, kinsman, and his cousin who won't go with him. Everyman, who loved his material possessions, asks Goods to come with him, but Goods points out that her presence would only anger Good. But Good Deeds will come with Everyman, but she is too weak to go all the way. Knowledge comes and takes Everyman to Confession, where he repents. At this Good Deeds becomes stronger, and summons Beauty, Strength, Discretion and Five Wits (i.e. the five senses) to join them. after taking the sacrament, Everyman tells them where his journey ends, and again they all abandon him as they are all qualities that fade in age. Only Good Deeds is left and together they ascend to heaven, welcomed by the Angel. |
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Author: Julian of Norwich
Biography: 1342-14something; She was a contemporary of Chaucer. Her vision occurred when she was 30. Other people were present at the time of her vision. She became an anchoress (a reclusive nun). Anchorites create an artificial desert by separating yourself from the rest of the community. She walled herself up into a room into a little room at the side of the church. The only access you had to the outside world was through a window, through which food and water is passed. A life in death. She stayed there for the rest of her life. Name (Julian) because she was an anchoress of St. Julian. She has 15 revelations of one vision of God that she had when she was ill. The Book of Showings relate those visions.
he story of her vision: when she was young she desired to have a sickness to be like Christ. She prayed three times, she then had a desire to receive three wounds. Then she got sick, they all thought she was going to die. A priest comes and she sees a vision that she does not understand. She meditates on this vision for 16 different weeks. The result is her Showing. The full manuscripts that we have are copies. What is remarkable is the understanding of God as a mother figure. It is new in Julian’s writing because she transformed that relationship to the triparite God into this idea of God the father and Jesus the mother. It takes the medieval gender paradigm and really challenges it. At the time, the culture believes that women only gave a child organic matter to grow and the man was the one who gave the baby its soul and life force. But Julian writes that God is the natural father and the second person of the trinity is the god that is wise and he becomes the mother. She has a complex theology. She uses domestic images in her writing (the Hazelnut, seen from the point of view of God. It is the whole world in the palm of God’s hand.) It is a domestic image; women used hazelnut shell as domestic measurements for recipes. They are homely references. God himself is homely and intimate. She also uses some romantic images: Jesus is courteous (deferential). A word drawn from the literature of Romance.
Important: the women contributed the first prose in Middle English. |
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| Arthurian Literature and its Themes |
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Arthur is the most popular thing that came out of the Middle Ages. Two main themes: Courtly love and chivalry. He was everywhere between 1100 and 1500--many languages (French, German, English, and Basque). They were of mixed quality, some are poetry and some are prose. Origin of Arthur: He might have been a historical person. There is some evidence that he was a celtic battle king; if he lived, he would have been between 420 and 520. He becomes part of the founding figure of British history; he becomes legend. The best Arthurian literature are by Gawain poet and Chaucer. The Arthurian legend belongs to the genre of Romance (a story in a language derived from Latin--meant that you were writting in vernacular, not Latin). Romance genres: Rome (about Troy), France (Charlemagne), Briton (Arthur). Gradually, the term becomes associated with stories about chivalry and great deeds. There is a knight and a lot of wandering around. He has to commit a lot of errors before he becomes the moral hero. The quest and the test. Romance=jest(heroic deeds)+quest(wandering)+test(virtue measured). Arthurain characters went through an evolution. First, they could do no wrong; then they encountered crises; then they became criminals. In Gawain, there is starting to be some trouble. He will be replaced by Lancelot as the storied knight. Their characters evolve over the course of 400-500 years. Gawain is a traitor by the 16th century.
Arthur stories are associated with women and courtiness. There is the element of comitatus structure of Beowulf and the element of exchange of Old English.
Chivalry comes from the word horse, and those who ride a horse. It has to do with the idea of knightliness. It develops into a code word for knightly virtues. Truth (keeping your word or promise, also a pledge between lovers) and honor (good reputation) and freedom (generosity) and courtesy (courtliness or a reverence for rank or degree). Almost everyone of these virtues becomes challenged in these Romances, especially Gawain. How does he keep the truth throughout the story.
Courtly love is seen as an idealization of love, on the same model between the fidelity between a lord and a knight. Courtly love is not sexualized, love as a service that the knight owes his lady. It is outside of marriage and goes along with the idealization of the lady. The knight pledges to protect her honor like he does the lord. The lady is in complete control of the love relationship (did not correspond to actual practice; this is just literature). The knight’s love for the lady is an ennobling force to do great deeds to deserve her. There were great satires of courtly love at the time. Lit capitalizes on it and problematizes it. The lady is the ruler, so it turns the gender roles upside down, some sort of idolatry. |
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| (referring both the genre and the romantic language that they were for written). Courtly love was adopted into the vocabulary of two distinct traditions: the veneration of the virgin mary and the love poetry of Ovid (love psychology and erotic persuasion). Mariolatry: celebrates the perfection of woman and mother who compensates for the sense of Eve. The hero of the Green Knight is tested through courtly love and Mariol bravery. The evoltion of the Romance usually involves a ROmance and some start with a marriage and then complicit the virgin. Love is not the only subject of Romance. Love and war leads the hero into encounters with the uncanny, the marvelous and the taboo (supernatural elements). In Romances, the line between the mundane to the magical is highly permeable (all of a sudden there is magic). Chaucer makes fun of all this stuff. Romance is also a form of Romantic literture in which medieval society could acknolwege the transgressions of its own ordering pricipals: adultery, incest, martial violence. Often revisits areas of belief and imagination that offical culture has put aside (SGGK); they reach back to Pre-Christian figures and Irish-Welsh stories. |
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| Chaucer is called the father of English poetry. French was fading as the language of the aristocratic tradition. Chaucer was inspired to create a more robust poetry than just alliterative poetry. We had not middle class, but was a member of the working aristocracy. He was a court official. He was a page to a knight, a diplomat, etc. He was a working upper-class person. He achieved a high status in the court and was well traveled. He was well versed in French and Italian. He married the sister of John of Gaunt’s wife (next in line to the throne). He was well -connected. His works were meant to entertain the court. It was an elite group that would be reading Chaucer’s works. He is the only medieval poet that visited Italy and was exposed to the Renaissance. We think that he was familiar with Dante and Dante’ s efforts to write in Italian as the vernacular. If we are looking at literature in the English tradition from Beowulf on, there is not much written in English, but rather French. He avoids alliteration. He invents English poetry as he goes on. He early works are in 8 syllable couplets, then he went to Rhyme Royal verses, and then he moved to iambic pentameter (which he basically invented). He obviously caught on. He had lots of 15th C. imitators. They strove to associate Chaucer’s poetry with a burgeoning sense of English nationalism, but that really came after him. It probably wasn’t his intention to be a nationalist. But then, by the time we get to Shakespeare, many other people in the Renaissance could not read MIddle English so Chaucer drops off the radar until Dryden, who calls him the father of English poetry. Dryden compared him to Homer. “Here is God’s plenty”: The tagline for The Canterbury Tales, as dubbed by Dryden. |
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| Social and Literary Context of Chaucer |
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| The primacy of the Catholic Church in the middle ages. There was no diversity of religion. The jews had been expelled from England in 1290; Crusades fought against the Muslim people and were driven out of Southern Spain. There were no alternative lifestyles allowed. They believed in spiritual punishment: hell, damnation; if you didn’t follow the dictates of the church, you were excommunicated. The only variety was the diversity of different monastic orders. Monk, friar, canon, parson (in charge or parishioners), hermit or anchorite. In the older middle ages, priests were allowed to get married at the lower orders, which gradually went out of fashion. There was a rigid social structure. Three states: priests (spiritual rulers), the knight (the figure for the temporal ruler), then the workers (everybody else). They thought about the body politic. The king is the head, the priest is the soul, and everyone else is a body part. How does this apply to the story? There was a genre of literature about the three estates which developed about the 12th C. Chaucer plays around with this, and questions what standards people should be held to and what standards they are living to. How are they meeting their social roles? By the 14th C., the three estates were divided up into subcategories, especially of the workers. There were lots of criticism of those roles--and Chaucer works from those satirical looks at society (“estate satire”). We can then figure out his stance. The plowman is good but the merchant is bad. What is his political stance? If we wanted to assign a genre to the general prologue, is part of the estate literature. He complains about women, about friars, and monks. Sometimes, as with the plowman, he goes against the stereotype. There is also a question of order in the general prologue: Pope, Bishop, Monk, poor priest, then temporal rulers (knight, nobleman), then workers, then women (wife or virgin). But in Chaucer, the pilgrims are not in the normal social order. Chaucer makes himself one of the company. The character of Chaucer the pilgrim is tricky--we are never sure of his position or point of view. Medieval Iconography: there is a symbolic and allegorical meaning in works or art or historical figures. For example, the saints always appear with their emblems. Those emblems were instantly recognizable to people in the middle ages. Chaucer uses this in the Canterbury tales. For example, “Discord” is personified as a wrestler or as playing the bagpipes. Iconographical figures pop up in the prologue (“The Miller”). Also, the hare was associated with lechery in the middle ages. When the monk is described as enjoying the hunting of rabbits, it is a double entendre; it was a symbol of lechery. Chaucer must be read symbolically, and he combines it with a very realistic approach to detail. The mixture between the two gives it complexity. Some people say that Chaucer invents psychological interiority (Dryden thought so). He invents the idea, for the first time in English literature, of the unreliable narrator. He invents the idea of making the tale and teller of the tale intertwined. The stories comment on each other. We have to see the connection between the tale and the teller. |
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| Long narrative poem about serious topics, usually of political and national importance. |
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| Pagans thought that the world was determined by Fate/Destiny/Wyrd. The poet that put the poem into its current form was Christian and inserted Christian themes. Beowulf references the Old Testament, and God is listed as the Creator, but it also gives credence to the pagan concept of Wyrd. Although the poem is English in origin, it does not deal with Englishmen (not even in England), but of their Germanic forbears: the Danes and the Gaets (takes place in Daneland and Sweden). The historic period in which is it is set (about the 6th C) is centuries before it was written down. The audience might have considered themselves of the same heroic stock as Beowulf. Why is it English? The poem looks back on national heritage. It is a tribute to the ancestors and a tribute to the pagan heritage. Christianity brings literacy, but it can’t quite break from the pagan heritage. Also, the Danes had invaded England after King Alfred (but before the Norman Conquest), the Danes conquered and there was a Danish king: Knut. Perhaps the Danes were looking back on their past in their new country of England. The scholars are still debating. But the conflict between the old Pagan England and the new Christian England is evident in the text. Did Beowulf die because he was too boastful or was it his fate? Some people think that the narrator is firmly Christian and is commenting ironically on the plot of the story. Also, Grendel is described as a descendent of Cain. But there is no reference to the New Testament (no Jesus), which is the real basis of Christianity. And the text doesn’t really resonate as a Christian text, but as a heroic text: Germanic thirst for vengeance as opposed to the Christian emphasis on forgiveness. It evokes the pagan, ancient society. Conclusion: Christianity had not eradicated earlier pagan beliefs. England clung to some of their ancient traditions. |
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| Latin for company, armed group. A principle of kinship and loyalty that is evident in many of the Medieval texts. It seemingly starts to disintegrate by The Faerie Queene |
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