Week 1: Floris and Blancheflour: (Romance Genre)

2 eponymous lovers

Testing of Hero He has to save his great love from the

High-ranking Characters (kings, knights, hands of the Emir. Chess match.
Dames) Kings, Emir, Princes
Little context in geography or time We dont know when or exactly where.
Magic/supernatural Just vague countries.
Chance/luck Magic well to test chastity. Tree of love.
Repetition Swooning
Exotic/fantastic settings Babylon
Concern with ideals Wont give up the helpers, pure love
Happy ending. Floris is pardoned, and becomes king of
spain.

Romance Genre/Middle English Romances

Originally Latin stories translated to French. (Latin Epics)

What was added:
o Much more description
o Focus on individual characters (named characters)
o Importance of the epic was love and female characters.
Flourished in 12th 13th century
o Verse -> later -> Prose
o Octosyllabic rhyming couplets
o Oral performance
o Courtly audience (although attempts have been later made to move away from this)
ROMANCE CHARACTERISTICS:
o Testing of Hero
o High-ranking Characters (kings, knights, Dames)
o Little context in geography or time
o Magic/supernatural
o Chance/luck
o Repetition
o Exotic/fantastic settings
o Concern with ideals
o Happy ending.
ROMANCE THEMES:
o Love
Sublime love (pure love -> not sexual)
A clash of private desire and knightly duty
Ultimate goal = marriage made for love
Woman = object of heros quest
o Feats of arms

Week 2: The Owl and the Nightingale: (Debate Poetry)

AUX VERBS:

Shulen = be obliged to, must (obligation)

Willen = wish, desire, intend (volition)
Mouen = be able, can, may (possibility) (or can also mean (permission) )
Moten = originally may (permission), but by mid-OE period also must (obligation)
Gan + infinitive/past participle: alternative to the simple use of the past tense. Absolon gan wype his
mouth (Absolon wiped his mouth)

DEBATE POETRY:

Influences from Scholastic disputation and flyting.

Philosophical dialogue
Legal argumentation

Debate between 2 opposites

Emotionally charged
Contrasting values and personalities, nature.
Used to teach rhetorical techniques
o Appealing to an authority
o Make the other angry and thus a mistake.

The Owl and the Nightingale

Iambic tetrameter
Octosyllabic

Nightingale
Insults the owls physique (ugly/unclean)
Insults the owls singing
(screeching/shrieks)
Owls active time of night = vice/hatred
Owls song = gloomy -> while she is
joy/beaty of the world.
Nightingale = also useful for churches ->
her song invokes glories of heaven.
Encourage churchgoers to be more
devout.
It is the nature of women to be frail, she
claims
the Owl is of no use except when dead,
since farmers use her corpse as a
scarecrow
the Wren descends to quiet the quarrel.
Week 3: Dame Sirith: Fabliaux
Owl
Proposes they continue civil/reasonably
Nightingale continuous noise is
excessive/boring
Nightingale = sing only in summer ->
mens mind is filled with lechery.
Nightingale has only 1 talent = singing.
Owl has many more valuable skills =
catching rats for churches.
Owl song = Her mournful, haunting song
makes them reconsider their decisions
Nightingales gay melodies can entice
women to adultery and promiscuity
Owl = she helps men even after death.
(Christ like)
They all decide to defer to Nicholas of Guildford
for the final judgement.
FABLIAUX: a brief comic tale in verse, usually scurrilous and often scatological or obscene

Style: simple, straightforward, vigorous Clear-cut characters:

Setting: real; urban, rural (not aristocratic)
Characters: lower and middle class (merchants,
peasants, monks, priests, students)
Plot: realistically motivated tricks and ruses,
usually related to sexual matters (love triangles)
Fabliau morality
fabliau justice
moral often misogynistic
amusement - more important than - moral
1. Beautiful young wife: often licentious,
usually cunning
2. Husband: often jealous (mari jaloux) or
old (senex amans), often tightfisted,
usually a fool
3. Priest: often with loose morals
Hero: often those society usually scorns; witty
Victim: usually those society respects
Willekin = the priest with loose morals
Margeri = beautiful young wife with strong
morals
Dame Sirith = wise person.

Plot = simple. Man desires a woman he cant

have.
The hero = a loose morale clerk, whom society
usually looks down on.
The victim = an honourable wife. Respected by
society.
http://www.unc.edu/~jwittig/51/sirith.htm

Parody:

A work that uses imitationof a genre, a particular work, an authorfor comic effect or ridicule

It mocks/parodies the courtly love.

the immorality of the pursuits of women.

It treats women as a mere object of affection, that it is okay to trick them into loving you even by
immoral means.

It shows us the secret desires of the clergy, and how immoral they are.

Fabliau:

often ideals of courtly love and the pretensions of the aristocracy mocked
 Week 4: The fox and the Wolf: Allegory

FW is a satire which incorporates the genre of the beast epic, as it does those of fable, epic, and, to a
lesser extent, several other prominent medieval genres such as the fabliau and even religious allegory

Literal (historical) what story actually says

Typological (allegorical) illustrates truths - what should be believed
Moral (tropological) what should be done
Anagogical (eschatological) how it relates to afterlife (Heaven, Hell, Death & Judgment),
eternity

Bestiary: collection of descriptions of animals and birds (plants and stones) + allegorical/moral
interpretation, used to explain Christian dogma

GENRES

FABLE A succinct story, in prose or verse

Features anthropomorphized animals
Illustrates a moral lesson (a moral),
expressed in a pithy maxim
Beast epic a lengthy cycle of animal tales
provides a satiric commentary on human
society
individual episodes may be drawn from
fables
beast epic longer in length than fables,
put less emphasis on moral
Protagonists more individualized; in
fables types (Tigges, 87)
Reynard the Fox. Trickster figure.
SATIRE The literary art of diminishing or
derogating a subject by making it
Fox and the wolf satire: ridiculous and evoking towards it
attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn
Satire on religion/clergy: fox = devil. Uses religion or indignation
for personal gain. (wolf confesses sins to fox
promises paradise and food/drink) to lure him derides, uses laughter and wit as a
down the well. weapon against a butt that exists outside
the work itself
Wolf = satire on the gullibility of the common
man, to believe authorities.
COMEDY evokes laughter as an end in itself
 Week 5: Robert Mannyngs The chronicle.

Medieval historiography:

Chronicles as indispensable sources of information: politics, successions, cultures, perceptions

of self, group identities

Modern objections:

Close association with theology

Stereotypical use of historical events for moral teaching
Little causal analysis (things just happened) not why/what caused it.
No sense of anachronism (that things arent chronological.)
Incorporates miracles.

Medieval Modern
Believes in mimicking what others have said/told opposite
and puts it down as history.
Great concern with correct order. Focusses more on finding causes and interpreting
events.
No source criticism. Chronicler is completely opposite
trusted.
 Week 6: Lyrics Troubadour

A troubadour was someone who composed and performed Old Occitan lyric poetry during
the High Middle Ages. They usually sing songs about knights and ladies who fall in love.
Courtly Love Courtly Lover
Literary conception of love; highly stylized Lover suffers physically: sleeplessness, no
Not practised within marriage appetite, turns pale
Courtly lover idealizes and idolizes lady Lover is faithful to the end
Lover becomes vassal, subjects himself to his Lover is ceremonious (courtly)
mistress
Lady is capricious, unapproachable
Consummation not necessarily the goal
Erotic and physical love is sublimated into
something higher, more noble and sublime
Emphasis on process of loving, suffering
involved. Religion of love.
Courtly love conventions MARIAN DEVOTION
LADY: Simple/standard/formulaic/non
descript. Veneration of virgin mary
LOVER: suffering/love-sick Marian lyric
Personification of emotions o Celebrates marys role in
Feudal relations (system where through Christianity
relationship people held land and had o Explores immaculate conception
power) o Speak to Marys role as an
intermediary between person
and god/jesus

Medieval Lyric

Around 2,000 poems, drawn from around

450 mss
Preaching and religious mss, household
collections
Mostly anonymous
Many more religious than secular lyrics
Little music survives
 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Alliteration

Romance elements

Aristocratic
Hero is tested
Emphasis on courtly behaviour/noble deeds
Supernatural events

Late Romance elements

Complex point of view

No perfect ending
Test of virtues (not just adventure)

Importance of numbers in Sir Gawain

NUMBERS 5 faultless senses

Gawains 5 fingers
The 5 fives. 5 wounds of Christ
5 joys of Mary

5 Virtues of Gawain

1. Franchise (nobility)
2. Fellowship
3. Cleanness
4. Courtesy
5. Pite (obedience to god)

Three 3 kisses/3 temptations/3 hunts/3

exchanges/3 blows
2 christmasses/2 new years/2 lords/2
Two heroes (Gawain/green knight)/2
beheadings.
Gawain shield -> Outside: reputation
Outside: Pentangle (5 virtues) Inside: Inspiration
Inside: Image of mary
FOLKTALE Beheading game
Temptation (Sir Bertilaks wife)
NATURE VS ORDER CAMELOT = Order
Wilderness = chaos
HAUTDESERT = Order

Civilization = Christianity
Colour Green knight
Green = Devil/death/rebirth Green girdle
Green chapel
 The wedding of sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle

Parody Political allegory

Of earlier romances and the loathly lady tale
The abuse of feudal power
The loathly lady represents territory/the
nation/knights sovereignty
ME versions discuss domestic conflicts
WSG = domestic + political
Starts with a land dispute between the Knight in
the forest and Arthur. Displaced by nepotism.

The monstrous =
Civilization vs chaos
Mora vs immoral
Appearance vs reality
Arthurs disregard for rights of others,
breaking of oath, and cowardice is
criticised
Gawains concern for appropriate
behaviour and for the rights of his wife
are upheld as a model
Ragnelles outward monstrosity mirrors
Arthurs inward monstrosity
Message: Misuse of power must be
controlled or it will harm society

Themes:

Gender roles
Beauty vs Ugliness
Male vs female power
Respect vs disrespect
Feudal relations
Oaths.