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A Survey of Medieval and Early Modern Poetry

Poetry is grouped by genre:

 heroic poems (Beowulf, the long primary epic, The Battle of Maldon, The Battle of Brunanburh)
o are part of the common Germanic heritage: legends, verse making, style, verse form (4-stress
alliterative line)
 elegiac poems (The Seafarer, The Wanderer)
 meditative religious (The Dream of the Rood), like biblical paraphrases, verse saints' lives, charms.
 30,000 lines in 4 MSS (The Exeter Book, The Vercelli Book, The Beowulf MS = Cotton Vitellius A
XV., The Junius MS) mostly religious.
 poetic style: special vocabulary compounds, formulae, different syntax. .

Beowulf
 the longest complete Germanic primary epic poem from the early Middle Ages (3182 lines)
 preserved in: MS Cotton Vitellius A XV.
    
Sir Robert
manuscript emperor shelf 15th
Cotton
 theory of written composition: a clerical person (monk) familiar with traditional ways composed the
epic in its present form in writing, it shows features of oral style, although it is written
 events: to the early 6th century. Date of the composition: from the 8th c. late 10th c.
 the author: a refined, reflective, Christian Anglo-Saxon poet.
 aims: written records of historical events, life and fights of earlier heroes set an example, poems of
earlier heroes for the entertainment
 topics: desire of fame and glory; individual, aristocratic warrior heroes, boasting; Lord and his
retinue, kinship , feud, gift-giving
 fictional or legendary character inserted into the historical setting and into a legendary setting known
to the audience. (monsters, dragons, heroes of the Germanic past)
 Christian vs. pagan: poet wants to celebrate pagan heroes without endorsing their religious beliefs
o double perspective maintained: Wyrd (fate) pagan doom or Christian providence
 rituals are the guardians and guarantee civilization, over an untamed nature, full of destructive
forces.

Structure: the beginning and the end of a heroic life: the hero's rise and fall suggests that even a long life is
of fleeting brevity.
 patterns of climactic progression: Beowulf"s growing challenges
1. Beowulf  Grendel: fighting barehand in the society
2. Beowulf  Grendel’s mother: with a giant sword, under the water
3. Beowulf  dragon  snake = Satan: against the evil  both died
 love of contrasts and digressions, chronological leaps

Style: heavily ornamented, manneristic, with formulae, with elaborately decorated speeches, the verse form
with 6 variations
 compounding: endless lines of synonyms (warrior, sea, ship, sword, etc.)
 kenning: a form of compound in which at least one element is metaphorical
o hron-rad = whale road = sea; woruld-candel = world candle = sun
 variation: simple syntax in a sentence is loaded with synonyms - "wordum wrixlan" (to vary words)
 four-stress alliterative line: consisting of 2 half-lines with a caesura between them, alliteration
connects the 2 halves
Plot
 Hrothgar: king of Danes, builds a great mead-hall  Heorot: they have feasts here
 Grendel: the monster is jealous (hears the feast’s joy as he lives nearby) and kills people in the hall, for 12
years he chases them
 Beowulf: of the Geats (nephew of Higelac  king of Geats)
o comes over the see with 12 chosen to help Hrothgar
o feasting till night, bedtime: palace is in the charge of Beowulf (1 st occasion that it is given to anybody)
o while everybody sleeps Grendel kills a sleeping warrior
 Beowulf  Grendel: fights hand-to-hand, Beowulf tears Grendel’s shoulder  fatal wound
 Grendel goes back to his den and dies (his mother wants revenge and goes to Heorot)
o while Beowulf is sleeping, Grendel’s mom carries and eats his favorite cancellers
 Beowulf finds G’s mom near the sea bottom  she drags him but B. manages to kill her with a giant sword
and goes upwards carrying G’s head  gets treasures and promised to be the next liege lord
 Beowulf drives home  Higelac: “B. is hero” and is the king of Geats
 after 50 years of ruling a dragon attacked a neighbor village  B. and Wiglaf kill the dragon
 in the end B. dies and gets a memorial barrow in a cliff (every sailor can see it)

The poems of 'the Gawain-poet':

 4 poems survive in a single manuscript: MS Cotton Nero A. X, of the late 14th century, in North-
West Midlands dialect.
 Pearl, Cleanness (or Purity), Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
 were very presumably composed by the same author, the "Gawain poet," due to similarities of
dialect, style, diction, common topics and way of thinking.
 2 of them are didactic, homiletic poems: Patience and Cleanness

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

 earliest of the 4 poems (Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Night)
o unknown writer, but Latin was a male privilege
 a 2530 lines long romance  no religious topic
 verse form: rhyming section of 5 lines known as "the bob and wheel", in which the "bob" is a very
short line, sometimes of only 2 syllables, followed by the "wheel" longer lines with internal rhyme.
 for a sophisticated audience, capable of understanding the multiple games the structure offers but
also the multiplicity of games of meaning.
o ballads: lots of ballads survive, a great part have common topics with romances religious,
supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous
o many are about Robin Hood; some are about King Arthur and his knights: King Horn, Sir
Lionel, King Orfeo, The Marriage of Sir Gawain, etc.
 characteristics of the late romance: also deeply ironic, and realist at the same time.
o characterization is well-developed, shows a deep psychological sense as it presents the hero
in his fragility, the lesser characters are multi-faceted as well, no plain clichés.
o multiple suspense in the structure: combination of 2 stories (beheading game, temptations)
elaborated in a single adventure.
o symbolism and allegory: game of identities, nature of testing itself, etc.
 numbers: patterns of 3 (kisses, days) and 5 (temptations, hunts, pentangle, virtues)
o mingling of Christian frameworks and elements with Celtic mythology.

Plot
 Sir Gawain is a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table (his horse: Gringolet)
o New Year’s Eve: he was given a challenge by mysterious ‘Green Knight’  to strike him with an axe
 return in 1 year and 1 day  Gawain accepted it
 Gawain beheaded him but the G. N. picks up his head and remain G. of the time
  G. is reminded to keep his deal  prove chivalry and loyalty
o Christmas Day: he prays and sees a castle where he is welcomed ( lord, his lady, old woman)
 the lord is Bertilak and offers a deal : goes hunting and they exchange winnings  G. accepted
o 1st day: doe was hunted while lord’s wife tried to seduce G. and kissed him  end of the day: G.
kisses the lord at the evening
o 2nd day: boar was hunted while the wife kissed 2x  lord was given 2 kisses
o 3rd day: fox was hunted while the lady asks for lovemaking but was refused, mentions a green belt
(protects from death )  G. kisses the lord 3x but didn’t mention the belt
 New Year’s Eve: in the forest crevice G. finds the Green Chapel where the G. N greets him and after 3 blows
cuts a bit G’s neck
o then reveals his name (he is Bertilak) and G. wasn’t honest with the winnings
o the old lady was Morgen le Faye (G’s aunt)  changed G.N’s appearance
 G. is always reminded of his failure (his honor was questioned) going back to Camelot  every knight wears
the green belt to support him

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (1387 – 1400)

Chaucer's magnum opus, great work, extremely popular after his death, 83 extant manuscripts
 the first one is Hengwrt MS, the most elaborate with illustrations is the Ellesmere MS
 soon the tales appeared in print as well, Caxton printed them in 1478 and 1483.
 John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve (Chaucer's contemporaries) were the first critics to praise
the Tales for Chaucer's skill in "sentence and rhetoric".
 sources: Giovanni Boccacio's Decameron-parallels. Lots of sources for the individual tales, among
them the first to use Petrarch and Dante, the Vulgate version of the Bible
 audience: intended to be read aloud but also for private reading, by nobility, as he was a courtier
himself, but also for a mixed audience
 structure: collection of tales is set in the frame of a pilgrimage, tales ordered into 10 Fragments
 stories and the characters are not realistic: just give such an impression to the modern reader
 paired tales, literary variety also between tales of the same genre, poetic variety created even within a
single tale, can be contrasted among the tales with the same genre.

Various interpretations:
1. great literary achievement, a project by Chaucer, who composes in all contemporary genres.
2. social panorama with a great number of characters from Chaucer's world.
3. the Book of Life. Pilgrimage is a metaphor for life, in which we start from this sinful world, the inn
in London, and journey towards the heavenly world, Civitas Dei.
4. drama on the road. (inside the characters and the stories)

Complex relationships among the different parts of the work: the frame, the actions between the tales and
the tales themselves.
 tales are further characterizations of the characters themselves
 more recent criticism: tales are important on their own, in lots of cases there is no direct
correspondence between these or only a superficial one.
 disjunctions between the characters depicted in the General Prologue and what we get to know about
them in between the tales, from their own Prologues or from their later behavior, or from the tales
narrated by them

Style  basically oral: sententious, repetition with variation, metonymic rather than metaphoric, hyperbolic,
exaggerated in expression and story
 literacy: the fusion of orality with the more learned elements
 full of neologisms and abstractions with precise signification
  large new learned vocabulary, many words he adapted from French, e.g. surplus, tretis, report,
redempcioun, affeccioun, fantasies, president, affeccioun, fantasies, substaunce, casuel, passions,
argument, argument, felicité, etc.

Characters
 the narrator is unreliable and naive  allows Chaucer to avoid making judgements  no lesson
taught
 direct and indirect characterisation with subversive irony and gentle satire (by their actions / each
other)  Ecclesiastical figures are especially criticised
 people are not described as individuals  illusions of real figures, estate types. Different social types
and types of professions with individual touches.
 not criticised: Ploughman, Parson, Knight-- the pillars of medieval society. Laboratores (those who
work), oratores (those who pray), bellatores (those who fight).

Types of Tales: Romances, Comic, Pathetic tales, Exempla and Fables, No-Tales

Romances: are not typical of the genre, he does not like battle scenes, adventures, but prefers the love
elements, characterization, inner conflicts. In the "marriage group", which exceeds the limits of one genre,
he is tackling the issue of marital love. 2 have the same subject: The Wife of Bath's Tale and the Franklin's
Tale.
 Wife of Bath's Tale: fits the teller, but also is different from the figure of the Wife of Bath. Arthurian
Romance, but closer in genre to folk tales. Feminine world. Main problem: sovereignty in marriage.
o Bath: posh city, centre of cloth making
o she married 5 times (to old men with money): #5 is Johnny half of Wife of Bath age, problem
with him  he becomes controlling and demanding
o and had several lovers  expert of lovemaking, also has a gap between teeth ( sign of
lechery), wears huge hat and has big lips, uses anti-feminist tone

Wife of Bath's Tale ( ‘The Knight and the Hag’)

 King Arthur’s knight rapes a maiden and sentenced to death, but the queen wants him to tell her what
all women desire the most  gets a year and one day to answer it, but he couldn’t and returned
 in the woods he finds 24 maiden but when he goes there finds only an old hag  he asks his
question and the hag asks a favour in return which is to marry her
 in the court he tells the answer: sovereignty over their husbands
 he accepts the hag’s wish  in the bed the hag asks: which is better an ugly but loyal wife or a
beautiful one who cannot be trusted  according to the knight: the 1st one
 the knight kisses her and sees a beautiful young woman

Exempla and Fables

 exemplum: short narrative to illustrate and confirm a statement; often taken from life. Aim is to
support a doctrine and tell the truth in an easily understandable and acceptable way.
 fable: untrue story, fiction or taken from classical/pagan mythology. Interpreted as allegorical to see
what truth is behind. Subgenre: beast fable - characters are animals, with human traits of character,
they are parodizing human behaviour.
 Nun's Priest's Tale: beast fable  represents human weakness, moral of it: do not believe flatterers.
Parody of courtly and marital love. Parody also of registers: the cock and the hen are leading a
serious academic debate about the significance of dreams, with specialised vocabulary. Questions of
supremacy in marriage evoked again, with sympathetic, mild irony.

Nun's Priest's Tale

  settlement: on a farm in a poor widow’s house the only man is the cock
 talking animals  main character: Chantecleer (the cock) dreams about death and awakens Pertelote
(favourite one of his 7 wives) who laughs at him as C. is not a man if he’s afraid  chivalric code)
 Pertelote says it was only an illusion, a dream caused by overeating advises a diet (poisonous
herbs)
o dreams caused by overeating  Hippocrates
 blood – sanguine  passionate
 yellow bile – choleric  hysterical an upset in them  causes
 black bile – melancholic  melancholic symptoms
 phlegm – phlegmatic  passive
 C.’s interpretation: dreams are signs of the future, tells 2 stories about dreams coming true
 chicken yard: when the fox comes C. is not bothered and the fox wants C. to sing a song  C. sings
on tiptoe, eyes closed, stretched neck  the fox steals C. and run through the forest
 C. flatters the fox’s intelligence  fox opens his mouth and C. escapes and flies to a tree and does
not go down as he does not want to make the same mistake again

Alexander Pope
 well known for his humor and intelligence, considered the greatest poet of the Augustan Age
o George I wished to be the British Augustus
o this time, the nation had recovered from the English Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution,
and the regained sense of political stability led to a resurgence of support for the arts
o ancient Roman texts: translations, Renaissance
 gained his reputation as a major writer by translating Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but is now better
known for his satirical poems such as The Rape of the Lock
 later poems are more severe in their moral judgments and more acid in their satire (Essay on Man is a
philosophical poem on metaphysics, ethics, and human nature)

Rape of the Lock

 was written as an attempt to end a quarrel between 2 fashionable Roman Catholic families
o started when Lord Petre cut off a lock of hair, which he wished to ‘possess’, from the head of
Miss Arabella Fermor, the lady to whom he was engaged
 was originally published in a shorter version, which Pope later revised
o later version he added the “machinery,” the retinue of supernaturals who influence the action
as well as the moral of the tale.
 mock epic: poem that plays with the conventions of the epic to comment on a topic satirically
o recasts a petty high-society scandal as a mythological battle for the virtue of an innocent
o gentle satire on social pretension and vanity
 opening: questions, invocation, proposition  comparing it to major Classical epics like
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid
o Belinda can safely read it (women could not read: no education to protect their morals)
 title: 2 words with opposite content
o rape: very serious word, aggression, cruelty, crime
o lock: only a lock of hair but it is taken very seriously
 heroine: a beautiful young woman, her dream is described in the morning
o Ariel: Belinda’s guardian angel, warns Belinda that disaster is near
 Pope takes the trivial crisis of a spoiled society girl losing a piece of her hair to a rich boy's prank,
and makes it larger than life by adding in supernatural beings (the Sylphs, fairy-like critters who
oversee and comment on the action)
 obsessive poem
 o Belle's obsession with her own looks;
o Lord Petre's obsession with Belle's hair;
o Pope's obsession with showing off his mad poetry skills, imagination, and intellect
John Dryden (1631-1700)
 he was made Poet Laureate by King Charles II in 1668, and most of his poems are about national
events of his time
 started off as a playwright but only in 1680 did he discover his talent for formal verse satire - poems
tend away from the personal and are about events of public and historic interest

MacFlecnoe
 one of the 4 major satires of John Dryden
 Flecnoe was a voluminous Irish poet popularly considered to be very dull
o Dryden has no personal grievance against him, presumed that Flecnoe has numerous progeny
and therefore many contenders for the throne after him
o his choice falls on MacFlecnoe who is dullest of all.
 Dryden attacks his one time friend Thomas Shedwell as the right heir of Richard Flecnoe a recently
deceased playwright and poet
o Dryden mocks his victim, Shadwell, by depicting him as the lamest epic hero of all time: the
terminally dull, hopelessly witless poet-king of the "realms of Non-sense"
 written in heroic couplets (pairs of rhyming lines of iambic pentameter)
 incredibly rich, expertly crafted work of satire, layered in so much irony, sarcasm, and wit
 mock-epic style
o the poem takes after its heroic, grandiose, classical and modern epics (like Iliad and Paradise
Lost), except for that the whole thing is a massive joke
o all the machinery of the epic is utilized to exalt the “form” (high diction, lengthy similes,
heroic and kingly actions, archaic vocabulary and spelling)  content is debased, low, and
farcical
 Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Voltaire echo Dryden's own mock-epic, or mock-heroic style,
utilizing an extravagantly inflated tone to parody their subjects
 “To reign, and wage immortal war with wit;”  metaphor for writing: grand metaphor for a banal
thing, vocabulary: seems more important / grand than the topic  mock epic
o immortal: what you write down, becomes immortal

Mac Flecknoe
 Mac Flecknoe is the poet-king of the realm of nonsense, time for him to step down and chooses his son
Thomas Shadwell, a poet of unparalleled dreadfulness, as his successor
 Shadwell is the worst writer in all the land, and thus, the perfect man for the job
o upon arriving in the city of August (London), he is crowned king of the realm of nonsense
o Mac Flecknoe delivers a brief speech on his son's merits during the coronation
 at this point all the action stops, as the poem devolves into a thinly-veiled, full-force condemnation of
Shadwell's writing and character by the speaker
 end: crowned and ready to rule in his father's footsteps, Shadwell is poised to sink poetry to an even lower
level