Medieval Texts

Here you'll find the Medieval Dream visions, Medieval Drama (with the exception of Mankind which is not easy to find) and the Arthurian material on our list (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the selections from Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur). I'll post this before I completely finish the study guides, so check back until they're complete. It's nice that some of these ideas I will return to in class next semester, which will give me a chance to blog about them again!

Questions, Directions for further thought, etc.

• The dream vision form is fascinating as it offers an exterior space in which to investigate interior struggles, yet is also a very public forum where the narrator's personal feelings (whether grief or insecurities or inexperience) are expressed. The Princeton Encyclopedia notes that these visions descend from either biblical visions (i.e. Revelations, Daniel, etc) or philosophical ones (Boethius, Scipio, etc) and that in visions such as The Parliament of Fowls there is a "double perspective, of past and present...that gradually coalesces...to make the dream vision a particularly self-conscious and reflexive form which calls attention to its status as imaginative fiction and expresses these poets' relatively new awereness of themselves as poets." (p. 311) Pearl belongs to the philosophical/religious dream vision category that is more "epistemological" and deals with fundamental questions about reality, appearance, etc. So where can we go from here?!
  
• The Pearl/Gawain-poet's use of form can at times be connected with the idea he expresses. I talk about this specifically with Pearl and the concern with death and resurrection continually be defined in terms of the grave and the pearl within that grave. This metaphor for a contained space that bursts forth (prevalent also in H.D.'s Trilogy) tropes the form of a structured stanza form with a repeating yet reinvented line concluding each stanza within a fitt.
• Speech acts and language enacting belief or ritual. How do the York Mystery plays demonstrate this, both in their use of language (Satan's fall, for example) and the use of the play genre? Also, what is the interaction between religious experience and audience participation -- is the audience a passive watcher? a spiritual "cloud of witnesses"? Is religious theatre "sacramental" as Martin Browne (one of the revivers of Medieval mystery plays in the 40's) posited. I think that genre is the issue for studying the Medieval Mystery Plays and have tried to point to that in some of my notes in the Study Guide. I found my notes for Everyman revolving around similar questions, as the Study guide reflects. While the York Mystery plays led me to wonder about the sacramental presence of a play, I was curious with Everyman about the staging and how it interacts with the meaning of the play: the gradual erasure of the character of Death and how the staging of allegorical characters enacts an actual community. This latter bit is particularly fascinating when considered in light of the tension between the interior mind and its exterior representation in the play and the juxtaposition of faith as an individual and corporate activity.
  
• In the Arthurian legends particularly, we find a critique of the narrative values championed by romance narratives of the time. Is this a critique merely of themes, or does it likewise extend to an insecurity over the role and influence of literature? Could we compare this to the use of dream visions that demonstrate the inability to merely read and observe, but that one must act in order to achieve the goal -- heaven, immortality, etc? In other words, do the Arthurian legends present an ambiguous portrait of their world as a mirror of the ambiguity of writing rather than acting? What evidence would we use to make such an assertion?
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Old English Poetry

When I started this post, I intended to post it alongside the rest of week 6's reading. That hasn't happened, so I've kept the questions, but am only going to post the Old English Poetry study guide.

• I'm particularly struck by the theme of exile in The Wanderer and Goldsmith's The Traveller. Exploring this should lead us to be able to consider how the two characterize human communities, their potential and their failings.
• I began reading Genesis B right after Beloved. A major theme in the novel considers how slavery restricts the individual -- even under "benevolent" masters. Paul D. struggles to determine whether he is a man because his only evidence for it is he was told he was by Mr. Garner. Slavery erases a person's past (no family, no heritage), but also leads to difficulty in establishing a consistent portrait of the individual. The freemen and women in the story all have to struggle with how to recapture their lives -- and for Sethe, her desire to be considered a human instead of an animal (along with her children) leads her to attempt to kill her family and herself. Anywhere we can go with this observation?
  

  Genesis B does not consider slavery, but the relationship between God and Satan reveals an analogous tension between labor, individuality and debts. Herbert's emphasis on the nothingness of man compared to the all of God also mirrors this concern with the nature of being. With Genesis B we also have the description of God as a warrior king who distributes gifts to his troop in exchange for fealty, which Satan refuses to pay; Herbert continues this theme by bewailing his duty ("The Collar") while recognizing that he is sinful. Satan, however, regards (especially in Milton's Paradise Lost) this service to God as servitude and desires a complete individuality -- the ability to wake up and choose what he wants to do that Baby Suggs cherishes.

• The Dream of the Rood opens up some exciting possibilities to talk about the use of dreams/visions and symbols. The space that is opened up in the dream, a sacred space separated from the secular world (whoohoo -- alliteration!), allows the symbol (which is normally silent and referential) to voice its nature and describe its history. What are some of the implications of this?! Particularly as the dreamer is still required to be an intermediary between the cross, which will become silent and the dream world, which will pass and the waking world where words dominate symbols. I guess, too, these thoughts surfaced because segments of this poem are actually inscribed on Anglo-Saxon crosses (the Ruthwell cross is one of them), which blurs the lines between symbol and explicit representation of an idea. You could go even further and consider the ultimate metaphor of Christ's body, which is called into being from the inanimate symbol and made flesh by the words of the priest...(but I digress)

Week 3: Pardoner's Tale & the Retraction

Here's the final study guide for the Canterbury Tales. I've updated the last two items and also very briefly addressed some overarching themes; finally, I added one and a half pages of questions from previous MA exams to help us think about the diverse ways we can approach the CT.

I'm most interested in continuing to explore the interactions between genre, narration & theme. The Canterbury Tales is an ideal place to do so as rival interpretations are presented and discarded, all within the wider control of a single narrator and a powerful author. Furthermore, not just the themes of a storyteller are adapted, but also the very genres themselves are pushed, played with, questioned, subverted and so forth. Even further (!), the frame narrative offers a deeper insight into each character, sometimes clarifying and other times mystifying the conclusions we might draw. These multiple levels provide ample opportunities for us to delve into that tricky category we've been avoiding!

Week 3: Chaucer "The Marriage Group"

Here's the updated Canterbury Tales study guide -- I've only updated stuff under the section "The Marriage Group."

Questions, Connections, etc

• old age and youth A major theme running through "The Marriage Group" (which I didn't include in the study guide) and a few other texts we've read (Middlemarch, some of Yeats' poems, Tennyson's Ulysses and Tithonius) is the relationship of old age to youth and the promises that old age can hold, but frequently does not. This is similar to the theme that Shakespeare's sonnets introduce about literature offering immortality, similar to an heir. So one thing we could consider is how literature grasps with mortality.
• We've been discussing how genre and form can help us elucidate themes more precisely and The Canterbury Tales are an excellent way to consider this. The frame narrative establishes a call and response amongst the pilgrims, the tales requite each other and themselves. In short, our understanding of a particular tale is called into question by evaluating how Chaucer has previously used a genre, or responded to an earlier tale. On the other hand, the polysemeous effect that is created might intentionally be denying the author's position of authority -- in a diverse society, rival versions of how one should live can be possible & Chaucer and his contemporaries are faced with a society that is widening everyday. In the study guide, I've tried to point towards a few of the places where genre and form seem to be worth looking at further. Where else can we push these ideas?

Coming next: The Pardoner's Tale & the Retraction, The Parliament of Fouls. I probably won't make it to Troilus and Criseyde before our Wednesday meeting. Am starting Tristram Shandy and am interested in how Sterne's use of a non-linear narrative might be compared to The Canterbury Tales and also their mutual interest in characterization above narrative so we'll see how that plays out!

Week 3: Chaucer Fragment A

As Chaucer is fairly long and detailed, I will be breaking my posts up into logical sections. This first post details Fragment A, which contains the General Prologue, The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Reeve's Tale & The Cook's Tale. (The latter is a fragment and we are not required to read it -- it is bawdy and ends abruptly. Paul Strohm has made an interesting connection for it considering the Peasant's Revolt.) Here's the Study Guide, which I will just add on to for the coming sections. I'm using Benson's The Riverside Chaucer which has different line numbers from other editions & is the standard -- the notes are excellent and comprehensive.

Preliminary Thoughts

• "The Miller's Tale" and the Mystery Plays During the prologue the Miller is described as raging like Pilate and the depiction of Noah in some ways resembles that of the York Mystery Plays, though in the plays, Noah's wife is a shrew and in the Miller's Tale she is false and perpetuating a lie. Both, however, take liberties with the Biblical story, which they follow in basic details, but add or twist the story to suit the narrative's needs. For the Miller's Tale, how does this flexibility compare to the narrator's emphasis on accurately reflecting his matter (as difficult as this is)? How does the Miller's Tale contribute to the overall discussion of auctoritee and the tension between tradition and innovation, especially when the authority is the Bible?
• Genre and Form The basic theme of Fragment A revolves around the nature of courtly love. "The Knight's Tale" is a quintessential romance, admired by all and rejected in the following two tales, which forefront sex instead of love. The most obvious way to account for this distinction is the class of the characters -- each speaks from his own environmental influences. However, the frame narrative provides more than just a connection between the tales -- it offers a critique in the back and forth that the characters embark on. So instead of isolated tales, or observations that one can make with knowledge about the "author," we must also take into account how its audience immediately receives a tale. (In later tales, audience members will even interrupt a tale, sometimes derailing it, other times seeking clarity.) Thus, Chaucer provides us with an additional meta-level to shape interpretation. Genre is intimately connected with theme, but also with questioning the nature of interpretation and authority. Do the later tales, then, challenge the Knight's tale or simply offer rivaling versions of it that can all coexist? What does this tell us about an approach to authority (which we can return to in greater detail with the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale)?

Week 1: Beowulf

I'm experimenting with the format for how to compose these blog posts so feel free to let me know what you find useful/unnyt. I've written quite a bit on Beowulf in the attached study guide, so won't include more here: Beowulf Study Guide

For a way to start comments, perhaps we should consider how some of these themes can be considered in light of other items we're reading.

• How about "othering" in light of Beowulf? There are: monsters (part human, part sin), tribal warfares, marginalization of women, questions of religion and so forth.
• Relationship to community is also crucial -- many later works establish a relationship between the public and the private, but the characters of Beowulf are presented only in terms of their public speeches and actions.
• I also think it would be interesting to evaluate how art is used -- the poet (I think, though this comes down on one side of a contentiously debated topic) adopts an oral style in writing; his whole story captures a time that has passed and is only a memory. Thus, viewing the scenes where we see scops singing songs or hear the songs of last survivors is a tightrope between imagination, history and residues in his own culture.
• Time (i.e. the reversal that I list as a theme) is important. The Shakespeare plays in particular deal with time, change (esp. exile/usurption and homecomings) and circularity in interesting ways. A Long Day's Journey Into Night setting is a single day where lives fall apart for the final time; but does restricting its focus to a day challenge a progressive notion of time?
• Richard II, A Winter's Tale and Beowulf all present portraits that participate in a debate on how rulers should lead their country and what happens when they rule badly. War could be an interesting point of comparision, too.

What else are people interested in discussing? Feel free to tackle an idea up here, or contribute your own!

NB: I've used Howell's Chickering's edition of Beowulf (it's a nice translation & has great notes) for references. Finally, if you're curious in hearing a translation that mimics the original meter as closely as possible, check out Richard Ringler's (of UW Madison) radio show reading. Prof. Ringler narrates the story and announcers from Wisconsin Public Radio join him to voice the individual characters!

Here's an audio link to the first fitt. It starts off with the waves in the background so wait for about 30 secs till the story begins. If the volume is too loud (it's just right on my computer), let me know, I can adjust its start volume.
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