Traister, Barbara Howard. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984.
I only read the first chapter at present, since the other chapters focus particularly on portrayals of plays I still need to get around to reading. Anyway, just a few notes here.
The first part of the chapter discusses the philosophical lineage of magic - natural magic being often adopted by Neoplatonists, particularly in Italy. The earlier generation of Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus recognized it, and three practitioners were around in the 16th century - John Dee, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and Giordano Bruno. They often insisted on the positve potential of magic, even if it had little practical application beyond summoning an angel or demon.
There is also a romantic lineage to magic. The spellcasters in the romances are mostly evil or absent, used to throw difficulties into the plot, but good ones occasionally appear. If they do though, they are usually paired with an evil caster, like Merlin-Morgan.
The author doesn't distinguish a third lineage well, but it is stated - there were village healers and the like who were around. I insist on separating the popular literary and nonliterary.
One more thing, with particular pertinence to Renaissance drama:
"The disguises, of course, are associated with role-playing; in many ways the magician is an actor. Even more, however, he is a director, a presenter of spectacular shows for the discomfort, edification, or entertainment of spectators" (24).
This might explain the seemingly random appearance of the Conjuror in The White Devil as he shows Brachiano the murders of Camillo and Isabella that he has just arranged. These are accompanied by dumbshows on stage. Thus, the conjurer turns into the director who is embodied for this scene.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Thornton Manuscript Mishaps
So, I was searching on a popular search engine for information on the Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91, also known as the Thornton manuscript. I search "Thornton MS" and come up with Thornton, Mississippi. "Lincoln Thornton" turned up a lot of information on the 1855 debate between Abraham Lincoln and Anthony Thornton. I then found Robert Thornton's Facebook page, which is his Wikipedia page with a trawl for anyone who mentions Robert Thornton, including one woman who requests that her son Robert Thornton fix her voicemail.
Next time, I'll take the little bit of extra time to go where I know the information is.
Next time, I'll take the little bit of extra time to go where I know the information is.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Sir Isumbras
This is a rather crazy one. Again, I'll tell it as briefly as I can, and list some features that really popped out. (My notes here and elsewhere are not of a form to do a just treatment here.)
So, Isumbras is a lord and knight who is fair, doughty, and strong, and he has a similarly fair wife. One day while hunting, he comes across a bird that tells him that he has sinned in pride. It asks him whether he would rather atone while he is young, or suffer while he is old. He chooses the former, because he'll be strong enough to take it then. The bird flies away, and both his hawk and hounds scatter. Then a servant finds him to report that his holdings have burned down, but that his wife and three children are fine. Then a herdsman reports that the herds are scattered. This isn't Isumbras's best day.
He goes home to find a burnt home. His wife and kids are all naked. He gives his mantle to his wife, and his vest to his three kids to keep them clothed, and they decide to journey forth. Pretty soon a lioness takes one kid and a leopard takes a second. Then, begging food, they come across a ship in a port. The ship happens to be the sultan's, and he is intrigued that such fair complexioned people should be wandering about hungry and ill-clothed. He takes them in, and first asks for them to convert. Isumbras refuses. Then the sultan is stricken by Isumbras's wife's angelic features, and first offers to buy her with red gold. When Isumbras refuses, the Sultan forces the transaction, beats Isumbras blue, and takes the wife away. They get one last meeting, where the wife urges him to take vengeance and swears her obedience in the plot. Then they must part. To add insult to injury, an eagle flies in and takes the gold, and a unicorn takes his third child.
So Isumbras must rebuild himself as a knight. He begs food from a smithy, and the blacksmiths ask that he work for it. So he does, for seven years. At that point he is well established as a smith, and is able to make his own knightly accoutrements, including armor. He soon goes to fight in a battle against Saracens. Though he requires the help of an earl once he loses his horse, he finally triumphs over both them and the Sultan. A Christian King, happy to be thus helped, enquires after the knight and offers him payment, the very things that originally led to his pride. Isumbras refuses both, confesses only to being a smith, and soon departs there on pilgrimage. It is only after seven more years, upon reaching Jerusalem, that an angel comes to him and forgives him of his sins.
At this point, Isumbras takes the habit of a palmer and goes to the court of a rich queen to beg. She takes him in and feeds him and the most destitute at a feast, but he is unable to eat for his tears of sadness. He spends some time there being pitied and pitiable. One day, he finds his mantle and the red gold at the top of a tree in an eagle's nest. He brings them back and puts them under his bed, but the queen and a servant find it. The queen realizes this is Isumbras, and soon the two are discovered to one another. (Yay!)
They decide to marry and become queen and king, but Isumbras's efforts to convert the Saracens causes an uprising of thirty thousand that they must quell in battle. Isumbras's wife decides to fight with him, but his men demur. In the midst of battle, the fighting gets intense until three knights show up, one on a lioness, one on a leopard, and one on a unicorn. It's the three sons come back! Together, they kill 20,003 of the Saracens. (The fate of the rest is unstated.) Then each son inherits some land, and Isumbras and his wife live happily until they die, and presumably ever after.
So, Isumbras is a lord and knight who is fair, doughty, and strong, and he has a similarly fair wife. One day while hunting, he comes across a bird that tells him that he has sinned in pride. It asks him whether he would rather atone while he is young, or suffer while he is old. He chooses the former, because he'll be strong enough to take it then. The bird flies away, and both his hawk and hounds scatter. Then a servant finds him to report that his holdings have burned down, but that his wife and three children are fine. Then a herdsman reports that the herds are scattered. This isn't Isumbras's best day.
He goes home to find a burnt home. His wife and kids are all naked. He gives his mantle to his wife, and his vest to his three kids to keep them clothed, and they decide to journey forth. Pretty soon a lioness takes one kid and a leopard takes a second. Then, begging food, they come across a ship in a port. The ship happens to be the sultan's, and he is intrigued that such fair complexioned people should be wandering about hungry and ill-clothed. He takes them in, and first asks for them to convert. Isumbras refuses. Then the sultan is stricken by Isumbras's wife's angelic features, and first offers to buy her with red gold. When Isumbras refuses, the Sultan forces the transaction, beats Isumbras blue, and takes the wife away. They get one last meeting, where the wife urges him to take vengeance and swears her obedience in the plot. Then they must part. To add insult to injury, an eagle flies in and takes the gold, and a unicorn takes his third child.
So Isumbras must rebuild himself as a knight. He begs food from a smithy, and the blacksmiths ask that he work for it. So he does, for seven years. At that point he is well established as a smith, and is able to make his own knightly accoutrements, including armor. He soon goes to fight in a battle against Saracens. Though he requires the help of an earl once he loses his horse, he finally triumphs over both them and the Sultan. A Christian King, happy to be thus helped, enquires after the knight and offers him payment, the very things that originally led to his pride. Isumbras refuses both, confesses only to being a smith, and soon departs there on pilgrimage. It is only after seven more years, upon reaching Jerusalem, that an angel comes to him and forgives him of his sins.
At this point, Isumbras takes the habit of a palmer and goes to the court of a rich queen to beg. She takes him in and feeds him and the most destitute at a feast, but he is unable to eat for his tears of sadness. He spends some time there being pitied and pitiable. One day, he finds his mantle and the red gold at the top of a tree in an eagle's nest. He brings them back and puts them under his bed, but the queen and a servant find it. The queen realizes this is Isumbras, and soon the two are discovered to one another. (Yay!)
They decide to marry and become queen and king, but Isumbras's efforts to convert the Saracens causes an uprising of thirty thousand that they must quell in battle. Isumbras's wife decides to fight with him, but his men demur. In the midst of battle, the fighting gets intense until three knights show up, one on a lioness, one on a leopard, and one on a unicorn. It's the three sons come back! Together, they kill 20,003 of the Saracens. (The fate of the rest is unstated.) Then each son inherits some land, and Isumbras and his wife live happily until they die, and presumably ever after.
Athelston
This is a treat of a medieval romance, written sometime in the late 14th century. I don't really know quite what to do with it. Rather like the romance before, I'll write an impression of the story without looking at the original.
So, the story starts out with a group of four messengers who grow quite close from working with one another. They decide after some time passes to become brothers, and are able to do so in a ceremony that is often referred to as "weddynge."
One of these brothers, Athelston, wins the equivalent of the lottery and becomes king of England through some pretty odd luck. He acts the good brother and doles out some positions. To Egelond he gives the earldom of Stone, to Wymound the earldom of Dover, and to Alric the bishopric of Canterbury. For a time all goes pretty smoothly.
However, pretty soon Wymound gets jealous of the close relations between Athelstan and Egelond. They confer with one another a lot, and he's envious. So he decides to frame Egelond with treasonous plots that bring him under suspicion. So Egelond and his pregnant wife Dame Edyff are both taken into prison, even though there are concerns that she is too pregnant to travel.
Meanwhile, Athelston shows that he has gone off of his rocker by first refusing the queen's request to give Dame Edyff some relief and then kicking her and killing their own unborn child. The child gets born, a pretty, fair, white and red child. All noble, except for the small problem of being stillborn. It's quite affecting, so much so that the queen then writes to the Archbishop Alric in order to plead for intercession. The messenger here gets considerable detail devoted to him, losing his horse in the effort to ride quickly. Rather baldly, he's the true messenger in contrast to the king, a messenger who's lost his way.
So the Archbishop finds the king in prayer, and attempts to urge a trial. Athelston refuses and disinvests him. In return, Alric excommunicates the king and slams England with an interdiction. Alric then leaves, and while walking through the city, must explain to a knight why he can no longer perform his church functions. This leads to a popular upswelling that forces Athelston to listen. They reach an accord to attempt a doom, or a trial by ordeal. They heat up several (nine?) plowshares and have the earl, his wife, and their previous children traverse them. Each pass over them unscathed. The wife enters labor while walking over them, and the result is Saint Edmund!
Anyway, once they do this, the messenger is asked to deliver a message to the Earl of Dover, telling him that the traitors have been killed and urging him to come. When the Earl does, he must undergo the trial. He is revealed to be a liar, is drawn and hung, and so the tale ends.
So, the story starts out with a group of four messengers who grow quite close from working with one another. They decide after some time passes to become brothers, and are able to do so in a ceremony that is often referred to as "weddynge."
One of these brothers, Athelston, wins the equivalent of the lottery and becomes king of England through some pretty odd luck. He acts the good brother and doles out some positions. To Egelond he gives the earldom of Stone, to Wymound the earldom of Dover, and to Alric the bishopric of Canterbury. For a time all goes pretty smoothly.
However, pretty soon Wymound gets jealous of the close relations between Athelstan and Egelond. They confer with one another a lot, and he's envious. So he decides to frame Egelond with treasonous plots that bring him under suspicion. So Egelond and his pregnant wife Dame Edyff are both taken into prison, even though there are concerns that she is too pregnant to travel.
Meanwhile, Athelston shows that he has gone off of his rocker by first refusing the queen's request to give Dame Edyff some relief and then kicking her and killing their own unborn child. The child gets born, a pretty, fair, white and red child. All noble, except for the small problem of being stillborn. It's quite affecting, so much so that the queen then writes to the Archbishop Alric in order to plead for intercession. The messenger here gets considerable detail devoted to him, losing his horse in the effort to ride quickly. Rather baldly, he's the true messenger in contrast to the king, a messenger who's lost his way.
So the Archbishop finds the king in prayer, and attempts to urge a trial. Athelston refuses and disinvests him. In return, Alric excommunicates the king and slams England with an interdiction. Alric then leaves, and while walking through the city, must explain to a knight why he can no longer perform his church functions. This leads to a popular upswelling that forces Athelston to listen. They reach an accord to attempt a doom, or a trial by ordeal. They heat up several (nine?) plowshares and have the earl, his wife, and their previous children traverse them. Each pass over them unscathed. The wife enters labor while walking over them, and the result is Saint Edmund!
Anyway, once they do this, the messenger is asked to deliver a message to the Earl of Dover, telling him that the traitors have been killed and urging him to come. When the Earl does, he must undergo the trial. He is revealed to be a liar, is drawn and hung, and so the tale ends.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
An Excerpt from Thomas Culpeper, The English Physician
"THE VINE.
The Leaves of the English Vine (I do not intend to send you to the Canaries for a Medicine) being boyled make a good Lotion for sore Mouths, being boyled with Barley Meal into a Pultis, it cools Inflamations of Wounds, the droppings of the Vine when 'tis cut in the spring, which Country people call Tears, being boyled into a Syrup with Sore Mouth, Inflamations, Womens Longing, Stone, Teeth black. Sugar and taken inwardly, is excellent to stay Womens longings after every thing they see, which is a Disease many Women with Child are subject too; the Decoction of Vine Leaves in white Wine doth the like: also the Tears of the Vine drunk, two or three spoonfuls at a time, breaks the Stone in the Bladder: This is a very good Remedy, and it is discreetly done to kill a Vine to cure a Man, but the Salt of the Leaves is held to be better. The Ashes of the burnt Branches will make Teeth that are as black as a coal to be as white as snow if you do but every morning rub them with it."
I was searching for this in order to find out more about coal-black characterizations, because they often get used with other black objects to describe racial bodies. But, bonus, there's this little bit on women's longings that I would have never known otherwise. Is this about a woman craving pickles and ice cream? Sex? Everything?
Monday, October 18, 2010
A Summary of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun
I recommend that you read it if you get any glee at reading the quirky details of violence and custom that go into many medieval romances. This is one of the better ones, because it goes all through Bevis's life. It really could have stopped at several points, but it doesn't, though the author often says things like, "Well, I'll summarize here." So here's a brief, if less well-written, synopsis.
So, there once was a king of Hampton, whose wife was princess of Scotland.
She had a son named Bevis of Hampton.
The king was old, and she was young. So she soon developed a taste for her former love, the German emperor. She tells him to ambush the king and murder him. The king is set upon during a hunting trip, and though his retinue of fifteen is slaughtered, he manages to kill hundreds before he is finally subdued. O, if only he were at his full strength.
Now, before the body is cold, the two marry and have lots of sex. Bevis, all of seven years old, is now disinherited. So he goes up to his mom and calls her a filthy whore. She is scandalized, and orders her retainer Saber to kill him. Saber forbears, smears some pig’s blood on him, and calls it a day. She soon sees through this ruse, and Saber must hide the boy away, promising him a pastoral upbringing. But Bevis’s big mouth ruins it again, as he goes to visit the emperor and berate him. When he returns to Saber, Saber sends Bevis off into exile, pretending to have sold him. He ends up in the hands of the king of Armenia, Ermin, and his daughter Josian.
So Bevis gets raised and trained to fight with spear, sword, shield, and horse, as any good (Armenian?) knight does. Ermin asks Bevis to convert, which he refuses. The king respects this, but some knights don’t. Bevis slays these Saracens and nearly earns the contempt of the king, but gets off the hook. Eventually he ends up receiving Arondel, a true horse, which will only obey him.
Soon after, Bevis goes to kill a boar. There’s more violent bloodbathing in that fight. Shortly, a corrupt steward challenges the weary Bevis with lots of men, but ends up being overcome. Rather than exposing the treachery directly to the king, he presents the boar’s head first, because one discusses honor before treachery.
Anyway, soon after that there’s a challenge to Josian’s purity issued by Brademond, an assaulting king. Bevis sets him straight in war. Josian gets a liking for Bevis, but he refuses until she agrees to convert to Christianity. (It’s cool because she’s fair, and so is he.) Anyway, a chamberlain that Bevis forgave ended up betraying him by lying about Josian and Bevis hooking up to the King. Ermin sends Bevis to Brademond with a letter saying that Bevis should be condemned to death, though he doesn’t know it. Following a Judas-bear-hug, Bevis is imprisoned for seven years at the bottom of a pit, where he gets a meager amount of food (half a loaf once every two days, or something like that). Josian meanwhile gets traded off in marriage, and must preserve her chastity from King Yvor. The guy’s fairly inept; Arondel makes an ass of him when the king tries riding him. So the horse ends up in chains. Lo, the dark point of the romance.
Bevis finally escapes by luring a guard down, overcoming him with a club which he previously used to keep the evil adders and other symbols for evil away, and then calling down to the other guard and putting a knot in the rope to disrupt his descent. Then Bevis equips himself as a guard and slips out of the place after a three day fast and some help from Jesus. He has trouble getting away, but ends up praying so that he can ride his inferior steed across the water. Bevis then overcomes a Saracen giant and orders the lady of the castle to feed him, which she does. Then he swings by Jerusalem and visits the patriarch there. The patriarch urges Bevis to only marry a pure maiden – she can’t have had sex before. “Ooookay,” Bevis replies. Then he disguises himself as a pilgrim seeking alms. Josian comes out to give the alms, knows him without knowing him, and invites him in. Bevis’s disguise is discovered when they go to see the horse, and the horse responds by being calm and docile.
They hatch a plan of escape, but Bevis’s rather lame plan gets overturned by Boniface, Josian’s servant, who comes up with a plan to fake a message to a distant castle, so that King Yvor must leave to take care of it. He does, but not before leaving another king, Garcy, to watch over them. Garcy knows “nygromancy,” that is, black magic. On the other hand, Josian knows how to drug him up. He wakes up a day later from his trip, realizes they’re gone by looking into his ring, and pursues. They can’t find the escapees, so Garcy sends Ascopard the ambiguously evil giant to go take care of it. Meanwhile, while Bevis goes out to hunt for food, lions attack. Boniface is killed, and Josian is under dire threat when Bevis returns. Bevis gets batted about, but manages to take one of the three lions. Josian tries to wrestle a second one so that Bevis can slay it, but he refuses, because this would be a way for Josian to tease him once they were married. Ever the man, he takes one on. Josian again offers to hold the other, but Bevis insists that she not. Then she throws him his shield instead and calls it a day.
So then Bevis fights Ascopard, wins, and makes him his squire. They’re all baptized, including Ascopard, for whom a special font is required. Then they go off and come across a dragon that is assaulting Cologne, where Saber is now bishop. They go to attack the dragon, but Ascopard is too scared to. Bevis nearly dies here, but through pain and overuse of the virgin-bathing healing well, he manages to triumph over even the dragon’s poison. From there, they concoct a plan to take over his inheritance. Eventually, they decide to send a messenger to the emperor claiming that Bevis is some other knight that wants to fight for him against Bevis. This happens; they sail across the ocean and kill many of the Emperor’s knights by deception, and Bevis sends a second messenger to tell of the deceit. The Emperor in a rage tries to fling a dagger at the messenger, but due to the copious amounts of sex his aim is off and he hits his son instead.
While all this has been going on, Josian was left at home. She gets an offer to marry from Miles. Ascopard, who should have guarded her, was tricked into going out and was trapped in chains. So Josian marries Miles, but on the wedding night pleads modesty so that everyone will leave her alone in bed with Miles (oh, they would’ve watched). When alone, she hangs Miles from the bedrails. For this act, the townspeople decide to burn her in a barrel, but Ascopard escapes and Bevis gets there first.
After that, the climactic battle with the king of Scotland and the Emperor occurs, and both fall, the former to the giant and the latter to Bevis. Bevis begs his inheritance of the king, who grants it. Josian and Bevis marry (finally). There’s a race, where Bevis wins against cheaters who start two (out of seven) miles ahead. But the good fortune isn’t to last. A king’s son covets Arondel and tries to steal him, but the horse kicks his brains out literally. King Edgar orders Bevis to die, though the barons dissuade him from it. Bevis says, “Screw this,” and absconds with his wife, horse, and Saber’s son Terri.
Josian goes into labor in the woods, but refuses to have men about. They stray too far, and Ascopard comes across them. Ascopard has been paid off by King Yvor because he had too many money problems. His retinue take Josian and whip her with naked swords. The two children are left behind when Bevis and Terri return. They immediately realize what Ascopard has done, with no apparent evidence. The two sons are given to foster parents, Guy (after his grandfather) to a forester and Miles (after his mother’s near lover?) to a fisherman. Bevis can’t find Josian, and so settles in this kingdom where a tournament is held. Terri was intended to win the hand of the princess, but Bevis does better. He promises to marry her if Josian doesn’t show up in seven years, and if Josian does show up, the princess can marry Terri instead.
So Josian knows medicine from great teachers in Armenia. She uses her talents to make herself appear like a leper. The king sees her and sends her away. Eventually she’s rescued by Saber, whose men cut up the giant. Josian becomes a traveling minstrel to earn her way, a skill she also knew from great teachers in Armenia. Eventually she does get to Bevis – in seven years, in fact. So they’re back together, and they go and take back Armenia. Thus taken, they convert it to Christianity, kill King Yvor when he refuses to convert to Christianity, redeem the disinherited son of Saber, Robaunt, who was ruling Hampton, and then go on a farewell journey setting each son in his rightful place: Miles gets England by marrying King Edgar’s daughter, Saber gets Hampton, Terri got his Aumberthe, Guy got Armenia, and the couple return to Mombraunt, where King Yvor ruled.
The two rule in peace for a long time, twenty years, but finally Josian is about to die. Bevis goes to see his horse, which is dead in the stable. He comes back to find Josian dead, and he dies in Josian’s arms.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis
Okay, I feel more accomplished today. One whole book and the remainder of Shakespeare's Sonnets (later!) down. It was 223 pages, too, no small feat even if I suspect the type is smaller in today's books (it was published in 1964).
Overview
C.S. Lewis calls this book an introduction to medieval literature spun from his lectures. He does this by invoking (constructing?) a medieval Model of how the world worked, and then demonstrated how the authors of the medieval world (a) got the ideas and (b) used them. The first couple of chapters give a general overview of the medieval situation, followed by detailing the most important sources for medieval literature outside the Bible, Ovid, and Virgil. Then he details the medieval conception of the universe, including the Spheres, the Longaevi (fay), living creatures, reason, history, and so on. Then he closes by stating how the Model functioned, particularly in comparison to the model we have now.
Observations
1. The Model is an example of the most accessible view of medieval life that we possess. It is an intellectual view that is present even in such works as the South English Legendary. Lewis acknowledges its limits (I think in the Reservations chapter, Chapter 2). The best poets often were aware that the model could be defied, and the most common ones often didn't concern themselves with the model much at all.
Yet it is important to state the limits of the model anyhow. Lewis constructs it around the high cultured man, either of the aristocracy, the church, or the bureaucracy that was robust by the 15th century. Of course he does, since Lewis's project is a literary one, and the literary even in this period is rooted in the written tradition, which has a traceable trajectory that Lewis studies very well. I could clamor for the alternative viewpoints to be uncovered, those of the commoner, but that road is difficult and usually small in scope, delving in traces that often have little that can firmly be placed. It's like trying to find references to the Peasants' Rebellion in Chaucer. Oh, maybe that's one! That sounds like it, but maybe he's just good at describing a clamour in Troilus!
The other option is that perhaps there was not as much unity as the Model proposed. Here the criticism of late Lewis is the same as early Lewis - taking a tendency, making it into a rule, and failing to acknowledge that any exceptions could form a separate school. This isn't to blame him. I love his work, I think he gets the rule right, and he does as much with the rule as he conceivably could have. But he misses the other traditions and other lines of influence that I think are there. I don't know, for example, how the model would address the Christian mystics. Or the seemingly independent tendency in France and England around 1400 to start the querelle des femmes. Again, Lewis is excused, since he was going for a general view. I don't challenge the view, but only ask, as a career-long question, what other eddies of influence might characterize the medieval period, and why we imagine that Lewis's model is the true medieval quintessence? The first question is firmly medieval, and the second will have to take recourse in the Renaissance, to the 19th century, and beyond. That is, for example, my reason for delving into the 15th century, because something changes there (is changing?), or becomes manifest (manifests?), that leads to the rupture of the Renaissance, but which still feels continuous with what came before.
2. I love his summaries of selected materials that got adapted by the medievals. His summaries of the philosophers is particularly useful, since I doubt that I'll have recourse to return to Chalcidius, Macrobius, or Pseudo-Dionysius before my exams.
3. I should pay close attention to his discussion of the Longaevi, since this is the bit that gets at the pagan tradition from a classical angle. Perhaps the angle is more the way that they could have been explained, while the folk influences adopted the mode of the fay. Would it be too obvious to say that something magical happens here through the influence of the popular tale and the romance? This would be a second Model, or the rudiments of one.
4. On p. 142 and following, there's a discussion of maps and conceptions of geography.
5. On p. 162, Lewis lays down the distinction between the five senses and the five wits. I'd heard of the wits, and later today ran across the Shakespeare sonnet (141) that mentions them:
"But my five wits, nor my five senses can / Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee." (9-10)
The wits incline inward, and are Memory, Estimation, Imagination, Phantasy, and Common Wit. Estimation detects the practical parts of a situation (it's intentiones). Phantasy and Imagination are similar, though Phantasy is the higher faculty of the two. Imagination retains what is perceived, according to Albertus Magnus. Phantasy separates and unites it. Finally, Common Sense (Wit) is that which tells us we are sensing, and puts together the senses so that judgments and other conceptions can then be judged. It's the moderator of senses.
6. I would find 185 interesting in studying temporality, since Lewis deals with the ways of looking at time. The view then - that things were once better. I'd challenge that this was the only view, but would agree that the views are more optimistic than are often construed.
7. Look to 191 and following for an introduction to rhetoric.
8. p. 214 - I leave this, as a definition of literature: "Literature exists to teach what is useful, to honour what deserves honour, to appreciate what is delightful. The useful, honourable, and delightful things are superior to it: it exists for their sake; its own use, honour, or delightfulness is derivative from theirs. In that sense the art is humble even when the artists are proud; proud of their proficiency in the art, but not making for the art itself the high Renaissance or Romantic claims."
Overview
C.S. Lewis calls this book an introduction to medieval literature spun from his lectures. He does this by invoking (constructing?) a medieval Model of how the world worked, and then demonstrated how the authors of the medieval world (a) got the ideas and (b) used them. The first couple of chapters give a general overview of the medieval situation, followed by detailing the most important sources for medieval literature outside the Bible, Ovid, and Virgil. Then he details the medieval conception of the universe, including the Spheres, the Longaevi (fay), living creatures, reason, history, and so on. Then he closes by stating how the Model functioned, particularly in comparison to the model we have now.
Observations
1. The Model is an example of the most accessible view of medieval life that we possess. It is an intellectual view that is present even in such works as the South English Legendary. Lewis acknowledges its limits (I think in the Reservations chapter, Chapter 2). The best poets often were aware that the model could be defied, and the most common ones often didn't concern themselves with the model much at all.
Yet it is important to state the limits of the model anyhow. Lewis constructs it around the high cultured man, either of the aristocracy, the church, or the bureaucracy that was robust by the 15th century. Of course he does, since Lewis's project is a literary one, and the literary even in this period is rooted in the written tradition, which has a traceable trajectory that Lewis studies very well. I could clamor for the alternative viewpoints to be uncovered, those of the commoner, but that road is difficult and usually small in scope, delving in traces that often have little that can firmly be placed. It's like trying to find references to the Peasants' Rebellion in Chaucer. Oh, maybe that's one! That sounds like it, but maybe he's just good at describing a clamour in Troilus!
The other option is that perhaps there was not as much unity as the Model proposed. Here the criticism of late Lewis is the same as early Lewis - taking a tendency, making it into a rule, and failing to acknowledge that any exceptions could form a separate school. This isn't to blame him. I love his work, I think he gets the rule right, and he does as much with the rule as he conceivably could have. But he misses the other traditions and other lines of influence that I think are there. I don't know, for example, how the model would address the Christian mystics. Or the seemingly independent tendency in France and England around 1400 to start the querelle des femmes. Again, Lewis is excused, since he was going for a general view. I don't challenge the view, but only ask, as a career-long question, what other eddies of influence might characterize the medieval period, and why we imagine that Lewis's model is the true medieval quintessence? The first question is firmly medieval, and the second will have to take recourse in the Renaissance, to the 19th century, and beyond. That is, for example, my reason for delving into the 15th century, because something changes there (is changing?), or becomes manifest (manifests?), that leads to the rupture of the Renaissance, but which still feels continuous with what came before.
2. I love his summaries of selected materials that got adapted by the medievals. His summaries of the philosophers is particularly useful, since I doubt that I'll have recourse to return to Chalcidius, Macrobius, or Pseudo-Dionysius before my exams.
3. I should pay close attention to his discussion of the Longaevi, since this is the bit that gets at the pagan tradition from a classical angle. Perhaps the angle is more the way that they could have been explained, while the folk influences adopted the mode of the fay. Would it be too obvious to say that something magical happens here through the influence of the popular tale and the romance? This would be a second Model, or the rudiments of one.
4. On p. 142 and following, there's a discussion of maps and conceptions of geography.
5. On p. 162, Lewis lays down the distinction between the five senses and the five wits. I'd heard of the wits, and later today ran across the Shakespeare sonnet (141) that mentions them:
"But my five wits, nor my five senses can / Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee." (9-10)
The wits incline inward, and are Memory, Estimation, Imagination, Phantasy, and Common Wit. Estimation detects the practical parts of a situation (it's intentiones). Phantasy and Imagination are similar, though Phantasy is the higher faculty of the two. Imagination retains what is perceived, according to Albertus Magnus. Phantasy separates and unites it. Finally, Common Sense (Wit) is that which tells us we are sensing, and puts together the senses so that judgments and other conceptions can then be judged. It's the moderator of senses.
6. I would find 185 interesting in studying temporality, since Lewis deals with the ways of looking at time. The view then - that things were once better. I'd challenge that this was the only view, but would agree that the views are more optimistic than are often construed.
7. Look to 191 and following for an introduction to rhetoric.
8. p. 214 - I leave this, as a definition of literature: "Literature exists to teach what is useful, to honour what deserves honour, to appreciate what is delightful. The useful, honourable, and delightful things are superior to it: it exists for their sake; its own use, honour, or delightfulness is derivative from theirs. In that sense the art is humble even when the artists are proud; proud of their proficiency in the art, but not making for the art itself the high Renaissance or Romantic claims."
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Allegory of Love
Well, my summer has most definitely been a summer break. Anyhow.
C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love. 1936. Amazing what a memory will conjure up.
This book is a tour de force through the history of allegory, starting about as early as it could (Greek and Roman writings) and continuing through Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
There are probably three centers where the book is of key importance or interest to me. The first is in its focused study of The Romance of the Rose. Here, Lewis is best at demystifying the process of allegory. Instead of looking at it as some sort of double-step, where an extra veil is drawn on one's eyes or an extra level of interpretation is required (as with a symbol), I should read working allegory as a story that functions on two levels of action - what literally happens, and what is represented by the action. The personifications are real versions of abstract qualities. For The Romance of the Rose, the characters can be regarded as figures of the lover, figures of the loved, or figures of both. Fair Welcome is a figure of the loved, as is the castle itself, and the other people there. My interest in Fair Welcome is partially relieved and partially revitalized. It isn't significant that the lover treats with Fair Welcome as a substitute for the Rose, because Fair Welcome is a part of that loved woman. I still think there is something going on with gender assignation, but it isn't as simple as, to use a quote I've overheard, "There's something gay going on there."
Two is the interstitial period, and particularly figures like Chaucer and Langland that tend to fill the middle line of allegory, where it develops and gets adapted to other genres (like the romance), or where it is developed enough to become a mere veneer for other work (rather like the 19th century Gothic architecture as compared to its 12th century roots). One point that is laughable here - how Lewis judges poems and poetry. Besides his other humorous disparagements and praises, he frequently draws the distinction between a poet and poetry (from Shelley or Wordsworth, for instance?). I think he struggles here with a form of the intentional fallacy that would soon emerge. What is best - a poet that realizes his talents and produces the greatest art intentionally, for intended meaning is more poignant (if not more meaningful) than accidental meaning. What many poets (and non-poets, in his parlance) produce - poetry, that which can delight and excite both the intellect and its sentiments, which has rhythm, structure, and intangible ectasy. I think I could learn from him how to judge quality in writing. At the same time, I see how silly such pursuits sound now. This is a day where we demonstrate the worth of a text through more subdued means. (I realized that the spots I observed were between poems and poetry, but both differences abound. His bias in the latter case is between what qualifies a full poem structurally, and the bits that strike him as good in any work.)
He reads the poets quite well, and I'll have to return to him when I'm done with Chaucer. He also gives a brief travel through the 15th century that is more a light skip, but which may be useful for summaries when I don't want to read a 24,000 line poem once, let alone twice.
Three is The Faerie Queene. He provides a diligent allegorical reading for each book, while being careful to distinguish those elements that do not cleanly fit his allegorical reading well. For Lewis, there is an allegorical core to every book, and then the spiraling adventures that can serve as examples or exemplars of the central theme but which cannot be read in the allegorical manner - they are fantasy, or romance, without much superstructure. Mutabilitie is the core without the dressings. Lewis is also good at distinguishing between the Italian epic tradition, with works like Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, where Spenser borrows obviously in great volume, and the English allegorical tradition, from which Spenser borrows a less provable mood and intention.
My discussion thus far must include one other factor, the role of courtly love. He traces that through ancient writing like Ovid, through early medieval Latin texts, and to Andreas Capellanus. Helen Cooper's criticism of Lewis here is fresh in my mind, of how he hallowed Andreas's exemplification of adulterous love as a rule by which to read other books by. I think, contrary to Lewis and with Cooper, that love can (and did) happen frequently in marriage in the romantic tradition, so that FQ, with its frequent marriages and the figure of amorous marriage, isn't the glorious exceptional endpoint to courtly love's common practice. At the same time, Lewis chose his texts well, and there seem to be these two parallel discourses of love, depending on whether one is reverent of or irreverent of marriage. Certainly marriage is no necessity for love, but the lack of it is not a necessity either.
Now for my notes:
(116) - Good explanation of allegory - the two realms of action here are the inner and the outer world. If I can distinguish between the two using the significatio, I can read the allegory.
(140) - The most relevant treatment of Fair Welcome in RotR. He depicts the breakdown in allegory, where Fair Welcome is treated as a young woman by the Old Woman, rather than a young bachelor as he appears. Lewis, typically, attributes this slip to clumsiness.
(142, 222, prior) typical places where poem/poetry dichotomy occur.
(163) A still relevant critique of Chaucerian study - we look too much to the "mocking" Chaucer, and not the serious Chaucer.
(185) He reads Criseyde spot-on here. Criseyde is driven by fear from the start, and seeks above all protection. All her actions can be read in this way, including her betrayal of Troilus.This makes her out to be a sympathetic character, one who ultimately fails the test of courtly love but gains pardon in a court of human emotion.
(220) tergiversation - the act of turning one's back on another.
(233-4) Lewis can only justify studying the 15th century by looking forward, though at points he shows that medievalist glint of really liking what he reads.
(247) He uses Occam's razor to determine that the author of a poem is a woman because the speaker is. While such a process is rather generous, it lies uneasily with me, because women will frequently write narratives for men (Marie de France the first to leap to mind), and men will write in women's voices (The Earl of Surrey the first to mind this time.) I suppose, if one must use an author's gender for any purpose, it is better that it is female?
(270) - Ah, this point made me wonder about age and bad intentions and gender. That's really all I have to say - why are aged women so often the evil party?
(297) Here's where the italian epic (in reference to FQ) comes up.
C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love. 1936. Amazing what a memory will conjure up.
This book is a tour de force through the history of allegory, starting about as early as it could (Greek and Roman writings) and continuing through Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
There are probably three centers where the book is of key importance or interest to me. The first is in its focused study of The Romance of the Rose. Here, Lewis is best at demystifying the process of allegory. Instead of looking at it as some sort of double-step, where an extra veil is drawn on one's eyes or an extra level of interpretation is required (as with a symbol), I should read working allegory as a story that functions on two levels of action - what literally happens, and what is represented by the action. The personifications are real versions of abstract qualities. For The Romance of the Rose, the characters can be regarded as figures of the lover, figures of the loved, or figures of both. Fair Welcome is a figure of the loved, as is the castle itself, and the other people there. My interest in Fair Welcome is partially relieved and partially revitalized. It isn't significant that the lover treats with Fair Welcome as a substitute for the Rose, because Fair Welcome is a part of that loved woman. I still think there is something going on with gender assignation, but it isn't as simple as, to use a quote I've overheard, "There's something gay going on there."
Two is the interstitial period, and particularly figures like Chaucer and Langland that tend to fill the middle line of allegory, where it develops and gets adapted to other genres (like the romance), or where it is developed enough to become a mere veneer for other work (rather like the 19th century Gothic architecture as compared to its 12th century roots). One point that is laughable here - how Lewis judges poems and poetry. Besides his other humorous disparagements and praises, he frequently draws the distinction between a poet and poetry (from Shelley or Wordsworth, for instance?). I think he struggles here with a form of the intentional fallacy that would soon emerge. What is best - a poet that realizes his talents and produces the greatest art intentionally, for intended meaning is more poignant (if not more meaningful) than accidental meaning. What many poets (and non-poets, in his parlance) produce - poetry, that which can delight and excite both the intellect and its sentiments, which has rhythm, structure, and intangible ectasy. I think I could learn from him how to judge quality in writing. At the same time, I see how silly such pursuits sound now. This is a day where we demonstrate the worth of a text through more subdued means. (I realized that the spots I observed were between poems and poetry, but both differences abound. His bias in the latter case is between what qualifies a full poem structurally, and the bits that strike him as good in any work.)
He reads the poets quite well, and I'll have to return to him when I'm done with Chaucer. He also gives a brief travel through the 15th century that is more a light skip, but which may be useful for summaries when I don't want to read a 24,000 line poem once, let alone twice.
Three is The Faerie Queene. He provides a diligent allegorical reading for each book, while being careful to distinguish those elements that do not cleanly fit his allegorical reading well. For Lewis, there is an allegorical core to every book, and then the spiraling adventures that can serve as examples or exemplars of the central theme but which cannot be read in the allegorical manner - they are fantasy, or romance, without much superstructure. Mutabilitie is the core without the dressings. Lewis is also good at distinguishing between the Italian epic tradition, with works like Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, where Spenser borrows obviously in great volume, and the English allegorical tradition, from which Spenser borrows a less provable mood and intention.
My discussion thus far must include one other factor, the role of courtly love. He traces that through ancient writing like Ovid, through early medieval Latin texts, and to Andreas Capellanus. Helen Cooper's criticism of Lewis here is fresh in my mind, of how he hallowed Andreas's exemplification of adulterous love as a rule by which to read other books by. I think, contrary to Lewis and with Cooper, that love can (and did) happen frequently in marriage in the romantic tradition, so that FQ, with its frequent marriages and the figure of amorous marriage, isn't the glorious exceptional endpoint to courtly love's common practice. At the same time, Lewis chose his texts well, and there seem to be these two parallel discourses of love, depending on whether one is reverent of or irreverent of marriage. Certainly marriage is no necessity for love, but the lack of it is not a necessity either.
Now for my notes:
(116) - Good explanation of allegory - the two realms of action here are the inner and the outer world. If I can distinguish between the two using the significatio, I can read the allegory.
(140) - The most relevant treatment of Fair Welcome in RotR. He depicts the breakdown in allegory, where Fair Welcome is treated as a young woman by the Old Woman, rather than a young bachelor as he appears. Lewis, typically, attributes this slip to clumsiness.
(142, 222, prior) typical places where poem/poetry dichotomy occur.
(163) A still relevant critique of Chaucerian study - we look too much to the "mocking" Chaucer, and not the serious Chaucer.
(185) He reads Criseyde spot-on here. Criseyde is driven by fear from the start, and seeks above all protection. All her actions can be read in this way, including her betrayal of Troilus.This makes her out to be a sympathetic character, one who ultimately fails the test of courtly love but gains pardon in a court of human emotion.
(220) tergiversation - the act of turning one's back on another.
(233-4) Lewis can only justify studying the 15th century by looking forward, though at points he shows that medievalist glint of really liking what he reads.
(247) He uses Occam's razor to determine that the author of a poem is a woman because the speaker is. While such a process is rather generous, it lies uneasily with me, because women will frequently write narratives for men (Marie de France the first to leap to mind), and men will write in women's voices (The Earl of Surrey the first to mind this time.) I suppose, if one must use an author's gender for any purpose, it is better that it is female?
(270) - Ah, this point made me wonder about age and bad intentions and gender. That's really all I have to say - why are aged women so often the evil party?
(297) Here's where the italian epic (in reference to FQ) comes up.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Cleanness
I sometimes wonder why a lot of people treat medieval poems as structurally inferior, as if the structure just isn't there. I suppose part of it might be that a lot of it has a paratactic structure, a term that is often bandied about by my mentors and other scholars as a prime structure of oral literatures. Short, simple sentences are combined with simple conjunctions, with a larger structure that might appear to be a list of events.
Perhaps in justification, to preserve the idea that many of these works are far more enriched than the generalization might imply (since "simple" too often becomes the one-word prescription for it, when one is being generous and not using the collocation "bad"), I like searching for deeper structures, or alternately finding deep ambiguities even at the surface, to use an opposition that implies that there is a depth to explore. (Deleuze is on my mind.) This is why I play with puns often, or revert to close reading to make a point. I'm very good with these methods. It's making the large, grand claim where I could use some development.
I say these two paragraphs because my first reaction on finishing this is that it was tough to see the structure. Maybe this was due to the language. I have been reading middle english for a while now, but sometimes alliterative poetry just defeats me. I understood the bulk of it, but a few passages, and several shorter units were very difficult to make out. I chose to read on rather than spend a significant amount of time consulting different dictionaries. My edition has a helpful glossary, but there were a few times when my curiosity would have taken it way further than that.
The poem has what I would call four main parts.
1. Introduction and the Feast Parable
2. Noah
3. Abraham and Lot
4. Babylon
The basic message, to condense it in a trite sentence, is: "God likes cleanliness of body and spirit, and abhors anyone who allows themselves to become impure." Homilies are easy like that.
There are some tentative connections between this poem and the others. For example, between the third and the fourth part, the transition features a pearl, which stands for the purity and salvation that the poem is trying to communicate, and may draw on the prior poem Pearl for much of its power. The form is similar to the later poems, being an alliterative verse with four beats per line. There is no stanza form here. I can't comment much more until I've read Patience, but I expect the two to be similar.
A few things that interested me:
So much about Cleanness relies on having proper sexual relationships. Note that sex is not dismissed outright - it is proper with one's wife, in private (esp. 697-708). God taught it to people. In contrast, the men in Sodom insist on having the two angels come out, in a passage that is rather more gruesome than the Bible, if I recall correctly. Cleanness also concerns itself a lot with pride, especially in the last story, but it is interesting that the two biggest sins here seem to be that and lechery.
The word (yogh)yender as a variant to yonder. I found it quite interesting when used because it looked at first like it could be a corruption of gender, a word already in use at the time in the Latinate sense of genus, generis. The passage is at line 1617; reading it again, it clearly makes sense with yonder, a delightful misunderstanding would give this modernization: "And though the matter is murky that is marked gender..." Har. Doesn't make as much sense.
The reason it doesn't seem to at first hold together well, at least for me, is the event in the beginning, the dinner party. That combined with the emphasis on one's appearance strikes me, someone who has always learned that what's on the inside matters far more than what's on the outside, strange. I think part of the emphasis comes from class structure (oh, of course it does). The entire poem is preoccupied with the relationship between lords and servants. The word wyg(yogh) recurs many times, as do others, sometimes for Lot's servants (890s) and sometimes for the servants of the queen of Babylon (1587), just to give a few examples. If one dresses appropriately for one's position, and one's worth is reflected in the quality and station of the clothing available to her, then appearing slovenly before a lord when one could dress better is a strike against her. Then again, does this mean that peasants are worth less morally because they are unable to dress up? Perhaps the causation isn't there, but the general point remains - one unable to afford such clothes would be morally suspect as compared to the honor of a lord. So what does this poem say about those relations, and how does the emphasis on lord and servant translate here when the preoccupation with clothing is so important? What's the likely theological message? How does it converse with other theologians, whether Thomas Aquinas or Julian of Norwich?
Perhaps in justification, to preserve the idea that many of these works are far more enriched than the generalization might imply (since "simple" too often becomes the one-word prescription for it, when one is being generous and not using the collocation "bad"), I like searching for deeper structures, or alternately finding deep ambiguities even at the surface, to use an opposition that implies that there is a depth to explore. (Deleuze is on my mind.) This is why I play with puns often, or revert to close reading to make a point. I'm very good with these methods. It's making the large, grand claim where I could use some development.
I say these two paragraphs because my first reaction on finishing this is that it was tough to see the structure. Maybe this was due to the language. I have been reading middle english for a while now, but sometimes alliterative poetry just defeats me. I understood the bulk of it, but a few passages, and several shorter units were very difficult to make out. I chose to read on rather than spend a significant amount of time consulting different dictionaries. My edition has a helpful glossary, but there were a few times when my curiosity would have taken it way further than that.
The poem has what I would call four main parts.
1. Introduction and the Feast Parable
2. Noah
3. Abraham and Lot
4. Babylon
The basic message, to condense it in a trite sentence, is: "God likes cleanliness of body and spirit, and abhors anyone who allows themselves to become impure." Homilies are easy like that.
There are some tentative connections between this poem and the others. For example, between the third and the fourth part, the transition features a pearl, which stands for the purity and salvation that the poem is trying to communicate, and may draw on the prior poem Pearl for much of its power. The form is similar to the later poems, being an alliterative verse with four beats per line. There is no stanza form here. I can't comment much more until I've read Patience, but I expect the two to be similar.
A few things that interested me:
So much about Cleanness relies on having proper sexual relationships. Note that sex is not dismissed outright - it is proper with one's wife, in private (esp. 697-708). God taught it to people. In contrast, the men in Sodom insist on having the two angels come out, in a passage that is rather more gruesome than the Bible, if I recall correctly. Cleanness also concerns itself a lot with pride, especially in the last story, but it is interesting that the two biggest sins here seem to be that and lechery.
The word (yogh)yender as a variant to yonder. I found it quite interesting when used because it looked at first like it could be a corruption of gender, a word already in use at the time in the Latinate sense of genus, generis. The passage is at line 1617; reading it again, it clearly makes sense with yonder, a delightful misunderstanding would give this modernization: "And though the matter is murky that is marked gender..." Har. Doesn't make as much sense.
The reason it doesn't seem to at first hold together well, at least for me, is the event in the beginning, the dinner party. That combined with the emphasis on one's appearance strikes me, someone who has always learned that what's on the inside matters far more than what's on the outside, strange. I think part of the emphasis comes from class structure (oh, of course it does). The entire poem is preoccupied with the relationship between lords and servants. The word wyg(yogh) recurs many times, as do others, sometimes for Lot's servants (890s) and sometimes for the servants of the queen of Babylon (1587), just to give a few examples. If one dresses appropriately for one's position, and one's worth is reflected in the quality and station of the clothing available to her, then appearing slovenly before a lord when one could dress better is a strike against her. Then again, does this mean that peasants are worth less morally because they are unable to dress up? Perhaps the causation isn't there, but the general point remains - one unable to afford such clothes would be morally suspect as compared to the honor of a lord. So what does this poem say about those relations, and how does the emphasis on lord and servant translate here when the preoccupation with clothing is so important? What's the likely theological message? How does it converse with other theologians, whether Thomas Aquinas or Julian of Norwich?
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The English Romance in Time: More Thoughts
When I had initially typed it up, I lacked my notes. Now I have a few, mainly a list of points where I was particularly interested and wanted to later return.
Women and the quest
I had some disagreement with the claim that Cooper makes on page 53, in the midst of discussing the quest and pilgrimage. She dismisses the female quester: "The outside world is masculine space, where few women venture willingly. ... Apart from a few women warriors - Grisandol in the prose Merlin, the eponymous Silence, Yde in Huon of Bordeaux, Ariosto's Bradamante and Spenser's Britomart - women who find themselves in a situation analogous to the hero's quest in romance are most often victims rather than agents, compelled to leave the safety of their own homes and at other people's mercy. The lone woman at large in romance is more likely to be cast adrift in a rudderless boat than to choose to follow the call of adventure" (53). Now, Cooper has undoubtedly read more romance than me. That was a frustrating point of this book, that I didn't have the context to always be able to knowingly agree with the generalizations. Sometimes I granted it to her on faith.
But, and maybe I've read the romances that are exceptional to this, I think the opposition between agent and victim is a false one. Women are often empowered through the quest, and often undertake a line of action that can be considered a quest. I think of the frequent times that women accompany and initiate quests in Le Morte Darthur. If the space they traverse is dangerous, it is not masculine, since they often show themselves to be better at reading the landscape than the males are. Reading women's journeys as quests in fact alleviates the interpretive problems with some romances, since it allows one to recover senses of motive and development that remain lost when the assumed quester remains a man.
For example, The Weddynge of Sir Gawayne and Dame Ragnell only became fruitful for my studies when I realized that the questing figure here is as much Dame Ragnell as King Arthur. Choice isn't a qualification for questing either - neither Dame Ragnell, Arthur, nor Gawain choose the situations they find themselves in. Instead, a quest is about seeking an end that might be unknown, which promises development and worship to the successful pursuant. Ragnell seeks a reversal of the curse that renders her sexuality into a lewdness that then gets displayed in all of her features. To do this, she must find a husband that will grant her her own sexual autonomy, what women in the poem really want. The curse is perhaps a reflection of the common claim that women could not be trusted or virtuous if they were unchaste, and the related claim that no woman can be unchaste in spirit. The hag is the feared reflection of this paranoia, the representative of unrestrained sexuality improperly applied. Gawain is offered the choice of whether she should be ugly during the day or ugly at night. When her own choice is respected, her sexuality is not a cause for lewdness at all, and she is no longer subject to the misogynistic claims that her sexuality is both inevitable and dangerous. Because she is trusted with the decision by her husband, she is truthful, and her beauty shows for Gawain and for everyone at court. The quest logic forms an instantiation in this case of a querelle des femmes debate that relates indirectly to Christine de Pisan and directly to Chaucer, particularly his Wife of Bath, who tells a similar tale after a lengthy prologue that refutes many misogynistic claims. Where the Wife of Bath walks the line of sincerity and parody (though a flawed character could be right in sentiment and wrong in action), Weddynge strikes me as supporting the women's side of the debate.
That's an easy example, because the question is built right into the poem. I think that the woman's quest is often obscured because it is conflated with magic. Quests often get defined by the tools that are used in them, sword and shield and lance and horse and helm and armor and the rest. Magic also forms an important tool, though one that too easily falls into the background. Magic often gets treated as a suspected art, which is used to support or hinder a knight's quests, often without motivation outside of mischief. Think of Morgan le Fay in Malory, showing up to entrap Lancelot randomly. Lyonet is not remembered for her sagacity in guiding Gareth towards the proper way to be a knight, but for the weird magic she pulls that preserves her sister's and his chastity. When women are involved in a quest, they are often wielders of magic. If we interpret their concerns as the material for a quest though, I think that magic and enchantment combine with a more general skill, that of knowledge and sagacity in general. Reading, even reading a situation, is after all a form of magic - grammar, glamour, and grimoire all having the same root.
So, summarily, I agree with most of Cooper's arguments in the book, but she touched a sore point here. I think that women are more agents than victims in many cases, and quite often a combination of both that really renders them worthy of neither name. In some cases, I would even say that the woman quester is the one that earns the most success and renown. (Perhaps Ragnell had to die so that Gawain would remain the most renowned unattached knight.)
Saint's Life and Romance
I liked her tendency on pages like 124, in the chapter on sea voyages, of comparing legendaries and hagiographies to the romance. I don't really have anything deeper to say here, except that I think the common points between the two are far more common than is typically allowed, particularly in the motifs they tend to trade. They might be somewhat restricted in the different context, but I feel like saints' lives are set aside because we want to mark a distinction between the miraculous and the fictional that may not have been a firm boundary back then.
Women and Enchantment
Whoops, guess I returned here again after getting a lot of my fire out at first. The page I noted (160) discusses perceptions of witchcraft before shifting to a history of Morgan. I wonder why here Cooper is perfectly willing to delve into heroines and their history, but elsewhere is reluctant to conflate such heroines with the quest as an archetypal narrative function. But when I do write on enchantment, I want to return here. Best point: "Witchcraft in the Middle Ages was taken to be an act, not a state, and it was an act that was at least as likely to be performed by men as by women" (160).
Rapacious Sexuality and Antifeminism
Okay, so my notes really did follow a common trajectory. I just liked the example given by Tom a Lincoln of disruptive sexuality on 391. I also liked the example of suspicion given a little later on 398, from The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Faguell, except this time the husband's jealousy is unfounded, and ends when he makes his wife die after she eats her best friend's heart. And on that note...
One More Note: C.S. Lewis
Wow, the guy really doesn't get any favor in this book. Mainly it is his depiction of love that is at dispute, one that assumes that an affair must happen extramaritally for there to be a relationship of love. In other words, C.S. Lewis assumes that Andreas Capellanus is the normative influence int he medieval period, when that might not be the case.
Women and the quest
I had some disagreement with the claim that Cooper makes on page 53, in the midst of discussing the quest and pilgrimage. She dismisses the female quester: "The outside world is masculine space, where few women venture willingly. ... Apart from a few women warriors - Grisandol in the prose Merlin, the eponymous Silence, Yde in Huon of Bordeaux, Ariosto's Bradamante and Spenser's Britomart - women who find themselves in a situation analogous to the hero's quest in romance are most often victims rather than agents, compelled to leave the safety of their own homes and at other people's mercy. The lone woman at large in romance is more likely to be cast adrift in a rudderless boat than to choose to follow the call of adventure" (53). Now, Cooper has undoubtedly read more romance than me. That was a frustrating point of this book, that I didn't have the context to always be able to knowingly agree with the generalizations. Sometimes I granted it to her on faith.
But, and maybe I've read the romances that are exceptional to this, I think the opposition between agent and victim is a false one. Women are often empowered through the quest, and often undertake a line of action that can be considered a quest. I think of the frequent times that women accompany and initiate quests in Le Morte Darthur. If the space they traverse is dangerous, it is not masculine, since they often show themselves to be better at reading the landscape than the males are. Reading women's journeys as quests in fact alleviates the interpretive problems with some romances, since it allows one to recover senses of motive and development that remain lost when the assumed quester remains a man.
For example, The Weddynge of Sir Gawayne and Dame Ragnell only became fruitful for my studies when I realized that the questing figure here is as much Dame Ragnell as King Arthur. Choice isn't a qualification for questing either - neither Dame Ragnell, Arthur, nor Gawain choose the situations they find themselves in. Instead, a quest is about seeking an end that might be unknown, which promises development and worship to the successful pursuant. Ragnell seeks a reversal of the curse that renders her sexuality into a lewdness that then gets displayed in all of her features. To do this, she must find a husband that will grant her her own sexual autonomy, what women in the poem really want. The curse is perhaps a reflection of the common claim that women could not be trusted or virtuous if they were unchaste, and the related claim that no woman can be unchaste in spirit. The hag is the feared reflection of this paranoia, the representative of unrestrained sexuality improperly applied. Gawain is offered the choice of whether she should be ugly during the day or ugly at night. When her own choice is respected, her sexuality is not a cause for lewdness at all, and she is no longer subject to the misogynistic claims that her sexuality is both inevitable and dangerous. Because she is trusted with the decision by her husband, she is truthful, and her beauty shows for Gawain and for everyone at court. The quest logic forms an instantiation in this case of a querelle des femmes debate that relates indirectly to Christine de Pisan and directly to Chaucer, particularly his Wife of Bath, who tells a similar tale after a lengthy prologue that refutes many misogynistic claims. Where the Wife of Bath walks the line of sincerity and parody (though a flawed character could be right in sentiment and wrong in action), Weddynge strikes me as supporting the women's side of the debate.
That's an easy example, because the question is built right into the poem. I think that the woman's quest is often obscured because it is conflated with magic. Quests often get defined by the tools that are used in them, sword and shield and lance and horse and helm and armor and the rest. Magic also forms an important tool, though one that too easily falls into the background. Magic often gets treated as a suspected art, which is used to support or hinder a knight's quests, often without motivation outside of mischief. Think of Morgan le Fay in Malory, showing up to entrap Lancelot randomly. Lyonet is not remembered for her sagacity in guiding Gareth towards the proper way to be a knight, but for the weird magic she pulls that preserves her sister's and his chastity. When women are involved in a quest, they are often wielders of magic. If we interpret their concerns as the material for a quest though, I think that magic and enchantment combine with a more general skill, that of knowledge and sagacity in general. Reading, even reading a situation, is after all a form of magic - grammar, glamour, and grimoire all having the same root.
So, summarily, I agree with most of Cooper's arguments in the book, but she touched a sore point here. I think that women are more agents than victims in many cases, and quite often a combination of both that really renders them worthy of neither name. In some cases, I would even say that the woman quester is the one that earns the most success and renown. (Perhaps Ragnell had to die so that Gawain would remain the most renowned unattached knight.)
Saint's Life and Romance
I liked her tendency on pages like 124, in the chapter on sea voyages, of comparing legendaries and hagiographies to the romance. I don't really have anything deeper to say here, except that I think the common points between the two are far more common than is typically allowed, particularly in the motifs they tend to trade. They might be somewhat restricted in the different context, but I feel like saints' lives are set aside because we want to mark a distinction between the miraculous and the fictional that may not have been a firm boundary back then.
Women and Enchantment
Whoops, guess I returned here again after getting a lot of my fire out at first. The page I noted (160) discusses perceptions of witchcraft before shifting to a history of Morgan. I wonder why here Cooper is perfectly willing to delve into heroines and their history, but elsewhere is reluctant to conflate such heroines with the quest as an archetypal narrative function. But when I do write on enchantment, I want to return here. Best point: "Witchcraft in the Middle Ages was taken to be an act, not a state, and it was an act that was at least as likely to be performed by men as by women" (160).
Rapacious Sexuality and Antifeminism
Okay, so my notes really did follow a common trajectory. I just liked the example given by Tom a Lincoln of disruptive sexuality on 391. I also liked the example of suspicion given a little later on 398, from The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Faguell, except this time the husband's jealousy is unfounded, and ends when he makes his wife die after she eats her best friend's heart. And on that note...
One More Note: C.S. Lewis
Wow, the guy really doesn't get any favor in this book. Mainly it is his depiction of love that is at dispute, one that assumes that an affair must happen extramaritally for there to be a relationship of love. In other words, C.S. Lewis assumes that Andreas Capellanus is the normative influence int he medieval period, when that might not be the case.
Pearl
Introduction:
Pearl is a dream vision that is the first of four poems in the Pearl Manuscript. The other poems include the homiletics Cleanness and Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The manuscript was written in the late fourteenth century,and first prepared for print by Richard Morris in 1864. (Only Sir Gawain had been printed earlier.)
Pearl is only somewhat different from Cleanness and Patience, and of course Sir Gawain is different from all three. This poem is stanzaic, with each stanza having twelve lines with four stresses each, and rhyming ababababbcbc. It's pretty intricate. The stanzas are in groups of five, thus making each group 60 lines long. The last lines of one group are refrained in the first line of the following stanza, a technique known as concatenatio (Andrew, 34). So think of the structure as a sort of chain, both beginning and ending in the garden. Similarly, there is the Terrestrial Paradise, and then the vision of New Jerusalem at the two poles of the poem. The debate is sandwiched in the middle, and has its own logic of doubt and explanation, parable, and application. Because of the stanzaic regularity, this is a poem that rewards numerological study.
Breakdown of Sections:
Introduction
I. The mourning of the loss of the pearl - setting - connection with scent, Christ, and nature
Dream-Vision - Description of Dream-Garden
II. adubbemente = adornment - description of the dream-setting, complete with the waters of life, though unidentified as of yet.
III. Sees the river, tries to cross it to get to the other side. The crossing, however, is difficult. At the end, he sees a fair maiden resembling the pearl in description.
IV.Further description of the maiden and her adornment, the narrator's reluctance to approach - the supposition "Ho watz me nerre (th)en aunte or nece" implying she is the narrator's daughter or mother or sister.
Debate Part I - Clarification
V. The narrator asks whether she is who he lost, and she reproaches him for thinking the jewel lost when it is set in better surroundings. He is also reprimanded for wanting to cross the water, which he mayn't do.
VI. sorquydry(g)e = pride - She reproaches him for not believing the commandment of God and trusting only to his eyes. He doesn't understand why he must lose the pearl in this lifetime, now that he's found her. She upholds love of God.
VII. He asks forgiveness, and then she accepts it. She demonstrates her marriage to the Lord.
VIII. fonge = find, perceive, notice - He expresses surprise - isn't Mary the queen of heaven? Yes, she replies, but all are king and queen there, though she rules over even them.
Debate Part 2 - The Parable of the Vine
IX. Queen, he asks, but you've never done anything! She gives the parable of the vine, which is incomplete yet, but implies that keeping oneself busy in service is what matters, and he is quick to have more work.
X. She finishes the parable by demonstrating how those who worked were all paid equally, no matter hwen they came. She was late, as a child, but she came. He disagrees, assuming that serving longer implies salvation instead.
Debate Part 3 - Elevation
XI. She sets up the story of the fall of man, and then the salvation through the grace of God.
XII. God will save the rightwise and the harmless men. Followed by a description of the rightwise, and then a story about Jesus allowing the children to come to him despite his disciples.
XIII. She describes herself as coming forth as a child, and being given her might and beauty in mystical marriage. The narrator is still incredulous that she would have attained the top spot.
XIV. Maskelles = spotless, flawless. She claims she never did say she was the top queen, and cites the 140,000 (so it says in Apocalypse) other brides, before going into a description of Jerusalem and Christ's sacrifice, evoking also the spiritual city where the Pearl now resides.
XV. vus ~ eche. She works her way to answering his objection fully, again citing Revelations. It ends with a placated speaker beginning to state another question
Dream Vision - New Jerusalem
XVI. WHere does she live? Jerusalem, she replies, though there are two of them, the city of God and the city of peae, a distinction that must have confused the narrator. He asks to go there, but she says God would not permit him...except she gets the permission.
XVII. He sees the city, in a passage that repeatedly harps on the authority of the "apostel John." He especially sees the twelve gems used in its construction, its cubic shape, its size (12 furlonge space), and so on.
XVIII. More details - 12 gates, and so on. More details, more shock and awe.
XIX. The speaker sees the inhabitants, all glorious as described. They celebrate the Lord coming among them as the Lamb, the angels serving as heralds. The speaker sees the little queen and has "luf-longyng in gret delyt," language that echoes te spiritual tradition of longing for Christ and salvation.
Return to Earthly Garden
XX. Impetuously the speaker tries to leap the river, but fails and wakes up. Humbled by his lack of restraint, he resolves to live well and serve him as his pearls do.
Questions
Repetition of purpose - what does it mean? (185, 267, 508, etc.)
There are many other studies that could be done with particular words. More generally, what I wonder is how this fits in with other dream visions, and with similar genres. For example, a related genre to which this might be relevant is the lapidary, a description book of the powers of various gems. There nearly is a magic overtone to the pearl, and this is exacerbated when the city is described being decorated in twelve jewels, which are subsequently listed (group XVII).
Also the repetition of twelve is intentionally reduplicated in the form. But there are possible flaws. One group has six stanzas, XV. There are other points that one could pick on.
Pearl is a dream vision that is the first of four poems in the Pearl Manuscript. The other poems include the homiletics Cleanness and Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The manuscript was written in the late fourteenth century,and first prepared for print by Richard Morris in 1864. (Only Sir Gawain had been printed earlier.)
Pearl is only somewhat different from Cleanness and Patience, and of course Sir Gawain is different from all three. This poem is stanzaic, with each stanza having twelve lines with four stresses each, and rhyming ababababbcbc. It's pretty intricate. The stanzas are in groups of five, thus making each group 60 lines long. The last lines of one group are refrained in the first line of the following stanza, a technique known as concatenatio (Andrew, 34). So think of the structure as a sort of chain, both beginning and ending in the garden. Similarly, there is the Terrestrial Paradise, and then the vision of New Jerusalem at the two poles of the poem. The debate is sandwiched in the middle, and has its own logic of doubt and explanation, parable, and application. Because of the stanzaic regularity, this is a poem that rewards numerological study.
Breakdown of Sections:
Introduction
I. The mourning of the loss of the pearl - setting - connection with scent, Christ, and nature
Dream-Vision - Description of Dream-Garden
II. adubbemente = adornment - description of the dream-setting, complete with the waters of life, though unidentified as of yet.
III. Sees the river, tries to cross it to get to the other side. The crossing, however, is difficult. At the end, he sees a fair maiden resembling the pearl in description.
IV.Further description of the maiden and her adornment, the narrator's reluctance to approach - the supposition "Ho watz me nerre (th)en aunte or nece" implying she is the narrator's daughter or mother or sister.
Debate Part I - Clarification
V. The narrator asks whether she is who he lost, and she reproaches him for thinking the jewel lost when it is set in better surroundings. He is also reprimanded for wanting to cross the water, which he mayn't do.
VI. sorquydry(g)e = pride - She reproaches him for not believing the commandment of God and trusting only to his eyes. He doesn't understand why he must lose the pearl in this lifetime, now that he's found her. She upholds love of God.
VII. He asks forgiveness, and then she accepts it. She demonstrates her marriage to the Lord.
VIII. fonge = find, perceive, notice - He expresses surprise - isn't Mary the queen of heaven? Yes, she replies, but all are king and queen there, though she rules over even them.
Debate Part 2 - The Parable of the Vine
IX. Queen, he asks, but you've never done anything! She gives the parable of the vine, which is incomplete yet, but implies that keeping oneself busy in service is what matters, and he is quick to have more work.
X. She finishes the parable by demonstrating how those who worked were all paid equally, no matter hwen they came. She was late, as a child, but she came. He disagrees, assuming that serving longer implies salvation instead.
Debate Part 3 - Elevation
XI. She sets up the story of the fall of man, and then the salvation through the grace of God.
XII. God will save the rightwise and the harmless men. Followed by a description of the rightwise, and then a story about Jesus allowing the children to come to him despite his disciples.
XIII. She describes herself as coming forth as a child, and being given her might and beauty in mystical marriage. The narrator is still incredulous that she would have attained the top spot.
XIV. Maskelles = spotless, flawless. She claims she never did say she was the top queen, and cites the 140,000 (so it says in Apocalypse) other brides, before going into a description of Jerusalem and Christ's sacrifice, evoking also the spiritual city where the Pearl now resides.
XV. vus ~ eche. She works her way to answering his objection fully, again citing Revelations. It ends with a placated speaker beginning to state another question
Dream Vision - New Jerusalem
XVI. WHere does she live? Jerusalem, she replies, though there are two of them, the city of God and the city of peae, a distinction that must have confused the narrator. He asks to go there, but she says God would not permit him...except she gets the permission.
XVII. He sees the city, in a passage that repeatedly harps on the authority of the "apostel John." He especially sees the twelve gems used in its construction, its cubic shape, its size (12 furlonge space), and so on.
XVIII. More details - 12 gates, and so on. More details, more shock and awe.
XIX. The speaker sees the inhabitants, all glorious as described. They celebrate the Lord coming among them as the Lamb, the angels serving as heralds. The speaker sees the little queen and has "luf-longyng in gret delyt," language that echoes te spiritual tradition of longing for Christ and salvation.
Return to Earthly Garden
XX. Impetuously the speaker tries to leap the river, but fails and wakes up. Humbled by his lack of restraint, he resolves to live well and serve him as his pearls do.
Questions
Repetition of purpose - what does it mean? (185, 267, 508, etc.)
There are many other studies that could be done with particular words. More generally, what I wonder is how this fits in with other dream visions, and with similar genres. For example, a related genre to which this might be relevant is the lapidary, a description book of the powers of various gems. There nearly is a magic overtone to the pearl, and this is exacerbated when the city is described being decorated in twelve jewels, which are subsequently listed (group XVII).
Also the repetition of twelve is intentionally reduplicated in the form. But there are possible flaws. One group has six stanzas, XV. There are other points that one could pick on.
The English Romance in Time, Helen Cooper
The whole subtitle reads, "Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare." To be clear, the motifs themselves are transforming with the shift in time. The book does not purport to change them.
Helen Cooper is an author I've seen a lot in medieval scholarship. I'm familiar with her Chaucer writings secondhand. I chose this book because it was written in the past ten years, and seemed to be a general, thematic treatment of the medieval romance, one that made nothing of crossing between the medieval and Renaissance (a linchpin I want to study in more detail).
I like her approach. It is a basic one - pick out several of the motivating memes of different romances, and trace them as they progress through time. How do they develop? For what reasons are they appropriated at a particular time? Do their valent associations change through time? Do the tropes cross genres, as for instance with tragedy and comedy? In other words, what is the convention developed with the audience, how is it regularized, and in what ways is it broken? (21-22). Finally, what does all this mean for the work and its audience?
She emphasizes the word meme rather than trope in order to get at the social significance I was hinting at in the last few questions. A trope can be interpreted as something that exists in the literature, that is primarily static and formal. A meme is more fluid, dependent on social currency and spreading rather like a virus. Certainly the terms are interchangeable in this case, but it changes the determination.
The memes/tropes she focuses on include (copped with paraphrase from the Table of Contents):
Pilgrimage and questing - think of motifs of traveling, with its parallels with interiority in direction, motivation, setting, and so on.
Providence and the sea - "So we set this ship into the water, gave it no means of orientation or propulsion, and let God sort it out."
Faulty magic - "I got this cool ring but never got to use it," or "I tried using this ring but it didn't work," or "I guess the magic worked, but it was totally incidental and misleading."
Fairy rulers and so on - What happens when you ride the liminal line between the benign supernatural and the diabolic?
Desirable desire - is women's desire a good thing in different works? How does its motif get treated?
Women on trial - Pretty much about what it sounds like, with particular focuses on alleged and proven adulteries, and the normally supernatural interventions that attest the truth.
The Rightful Heir - inheritance, the Fair Unknown, the dangers of lacking an heir (ELIZABETH!!!)
Unhappy Endings - what happens when the typically happy romantic ending doesn't happen?
The book also comes with an extremely useful appendix listing the romances that were current in England after 1500. I don't trust the list as exhaustive, but it's sufficiently detailed that I've written down a lot of pertinent information from it.
To say one interesting focus that comes out of this, her approach to romances demonstrates something that I've thought to be true since I first sat down with Le Morte Darthur: one of the key subjects of romance, which one avoids only to the subtraction of one's work, is women. Women's place in chivalric order, in feudal order, in inheritance, in desire, in magic, in the quest, in trial (you can see I'm picking out the major memes of the book), all these are often far more progressive than one might expect, and are even interesting when they turn out to be antifeminist.
I can expand that to include gender. I think that the romance is a rather amorphous genre that often includes works due to superficial reasons like, "Well, the magic in that is kinda funny," or, "Well, she went on a quest of sorts, nevermind that it was spiritual and totally a pilgrimage." In its collection of memes or tropes, every romance has the parts that don't fit the others, the part that gives the whole renown because it defies expectations in a way that is nonetheless desirable. Now, one place where expectations can be played with is gender. There is the woman who wields a sword, whether or not she uses it. There is the trope of disguise, whether as a man or as a woman. One can also be mistaken, without intention, as is the case in Le Morte Darthur when Lancelot falls asleep in a pavilion only to have another man snuggle up with him, because he thinks that Lancelot is his beloved lady. Even in more general terms, the romance often struggles with the question, "What makes a man the ideal man? What makes a woman the ideal woman?" Virtue, faith, fidelity, reason - whatever the guidelines, what happens when they succeed? Still worse, what happens when they fail?
And an observation - many times the criteria for men and women are actually quite similar. To say that men quest and women are rescued is far too simplistic. To say that women are punished for unchastity and men aren't is likewise reductive. Now, perhaps these are just true enough to become generalizations, but the rules are often broken. Sometimes the markers of assumed gender fall away, in such a way that it would be worthwhile to study a few romances in parallel to see how gender might have functioned. A theoretical structure for such a work might be to figure out whether the romance was a place where one could experiment with gender, or whether such flexibility was inherent in the society? Is this flexibility, or is it simply that we see flexibility as compared to what we think the past would hold gender to be? Perhaps its boundaries are different, its intersections different.
Helen Cooper is an author I've seen a lot in medieval scholarship. I'm familiar with her Chaucer writings secondhand. I chose this book because it was written in the past ten years, and seemed to be a general, thematic treatment of the medieval romance, one that made nothing of crossing between the medieval and Renaissance (a linchpin I want to study in more detail).
I like her approach. It is a basic one - pick out several of the motivating memes of different romances, and trace them as they progress through time. How do they develop? For what reasons are they appropriated at a particular time? Do their valent associations change through time? Do the tropes cross genres, as for instance with tragedy and comedy? In other words, what is the convention developed with the audience, how is it regularized, and in what ways is it broken? (21-22). Finally, what does all this mean for the work and its audience?
She emphasizes the word meme rather than trope in order to get at the social significance I was hinting at in the last few questions. A trope can be interpreted as something that exists in the literature, that is primarily static and formal. A meme is more fluid, dependent on social currency and spreading rather like a virus. Certainly the terms are interchangeable in this case, but it changes the determination.
The memes/tropes she focuses on include (copped with paraphrase from the Table of Contents):
Pilgrimage and questing - think of motifs of traveling, with its parallels with interiority in direction, motivation, setting, and so on.
Providence and the sea - "So we set this ship into the water, gave it no means of orientation or propulsion, and let God sort it out."
Faulty magic - "I got this cool ring but never got to use it," or "I tried using this ring but it didn't work," or "I guess the magic worked, but it was totally incidental and misleading."
Fairy rulers and so on - What happens when you ride the liminal line between the benign supernatural and the diabolic?
Desirable desire - is women's desire a good thing in different works? How does its motif get treated?
Women on trial - Pretty much about what it sounds like, with particular focuses on alleged and proven adulteries, and the normally supernatural interventions that attest the truth.
The Rightful Heir - inheritance, the Fair Unknown, the dangers of lacking an heir (ELIZABETH!!!)
Unhappy Endings - what happens when the typically happy romantic ending doesn't happen?
The book also comes with an extremely useful appendix listing the romances that were current in England after 1500. I don't trust the list as exhaustive, but it's sufficiently detailed that I've written down a lot of pertinent information from it.
To say one interesting focus that comes out of this, her approach to romances demonstrates something that I've thought to be true since I first sat down with Le Morte Darthur: one of the key subjects of romance, which one avoids only to the subtraction of one's work, is women. Women's place in chivalric order, in feudal order, in inheritance, in desire, in magic, in the quest, in trial (you can see I'm picking out the major memes of the book), all these are often far more progressive than one might expect, and are even interesting when they turn out to be antifeminist.
I can expand that to include gender. I think that the romance is a rather amorphous genre that often includes works due to superficial reasons like, "Well, the magic in that is kinda funny," or, "Well, she went on a quest of sorts, nevermind that it was spiritual and totally a pilgrimage." In its collection of memes or tropes, every romance has the parts that don't fit the others, the part that gives the whole renown because it defies expectations in a way that is nonetheless desirable. Now, one place where expectations can be played with is gender. There is the woman who wields a sword, whether or not she uses it. There is the trope of disguise, whether as a man or as a woman. One can also be mistaken, without intention, as is the case in Le Morte Darthur when Lancelot falls asleep in a pavilion only to have another man snuggle up with him, because he thinks that Lancelot is his beloved lady. Even in more general terms, the romance often struggles with the question, "What makes a man the ideal man? What makes a woman the ideal woman?" Virtue, faith, fidelity, reason - whatever the guidelines, what happens when they succeed? Still worse, what happens when they fail?
And an observation - many times the criteria for men and women are actually quite similar. To say that men quest and women are rescued is far too simplistic. To say that women are punished for unchastity and men aren't is likewise reductive. Now, perhaps these are just true enough to become generalizations, but the rules are often broken. Sometimes the markers of assumed gender fall away, in such a way that it would be worthwhile to study a few romances in parallel to see how gender might have functioned. A theoretical structure for such a work might be to figure out whether the romance was a place where one could experiment with gender, or whether such flexibility was inherent in the society? Is this flexibility, or is it simply that we see flexibility as compared to what we think the past would hold gender to be? Perhaps its boundaries are different, its intersections different.
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Romance of the Rose, Jean de Meun
I've taken a longer hiatus than I had hoped.
I have just finished reading Jean de Meun's version of the poem. I should call it an addendum. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.
One fair point is that he uses the allegory differently. Guillaume de Lorris is not inclined to long speeches. His allegorical characters are significant in their dress, behavior, and how they act to each other. Jean de Meun keeps these aspects somewhat, but deluges them in the very long speeches that many of his figures (like Friend, Reason, Wealth, the Old Woman, Nature, and Genius) give. They speak for long periods of time, such that it becomes difficult to remember that it isn't just the narrator speaking. This leads to delightful confusions, like being confused about why the main character hates women so.
I needn't repeat the allegorical figures, since they are largely the same as Guillaume's, with shifts in their qualities. It is similarly difficult to summarize each speech, but I will attempt to do so.
We left Guillaume (hereafter the name of the speaker) when he was despairing over never entering the castle. He gives a fair summation of the current predicament. Then Reason comes along. In this version, she presents a separate allegory, featuring such figures as Youth, Old Age, Delight, Death, Travail, and Suffering. This leads into a long discussion on love, and particularly a debate between what loves are appropriate and inappropriate. The speaker is unconvinced, though, because the pure loves that Reason speaks of are irrecoverable after the fall. He misses the point of holding such a pure love, one outside of Fortune's domain, as an ideal. After a long turn into a debate about Justice, a concept that ties into Love through Christian theology, and then to Fortune and its mishaps at greater length, Reason abandons Guillaume.
Then Friend comes, again reflecting the order of the original. After his advice of ways to reach the rosebud, he then speaks at length about courtship. His main contention, which has several other parts, is that there is no such thing as a good woman. His contradictory advice vacillates between recommending that they should be avoided, and counseling him on how to handle women when the seemingly inevitable hitch occurs. Like Reason, Friend brings to mind a postlapsarian view of life in his own allegory, with Fraud, Sin, Misfortune, Pride, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Poverty, Larceny, Faint Heart, and Lady Laverna (goddess of thieves) overtaking Contentment. Quite a rabble. To the fallen men and women, little bits of good advice emerge, like not restraining women, correcting them kindly in the case of jealousy, and so on, pieces of advice that might double as willful but fortunate blindnesses.
Soon they assemble an army of Love. Again, they have the trouble of False Seeming and Constrained Abstinence (who will in the course of time have the Antichrist?!?). False Seeming, while convincing them that he should be there, delivers a sermon of his own that is duplicitous, though I don't recall the details. He marches a contingent to confront Evil Tongue, and after a debate between them, they fight and Evil Tongue is killed with all of his Norman soldiers. The tongue is cut out, and he is cast into a ditch. Perhaps the only way to quell the lashes of unfair rumors is to appear more virtuous than the tongue can attack, though such seeming will be false.
Then comes Old Woman, who gives plenty of advice as a woman who had once lived the life of a lady swindling her way through men. Fair Welcome and she have a discussion, as she urges him to wear the chaplet that Guillaume has given for him. He finally does, but she seems always to be egging him on to admit of some greater affection, one of the points that I suspect the work keeps male-male sexual tendencies uneasily alongside the allegory that places those affections as towards the rosebud. As for Old Woman's speech, she loved but one man, who swindled her. In the trading of gifts for the goods (if not the affection) of love, she emphatically preaches for trickiness and wariness in all dealings between the sexes. Her ultimate caution is to not wait too long - his youth will turn to age someday.
After the speech, Fair Welcome reiterates his honorable friendship with Guillaume, and they soon meet (with Pleasant Looks accompanying). Fear, Shame, and Rebuff prevent an extended reunion, and thus the assault on the castle picks up steam. At this point, the crux of battle, arround lines 15105 and 15165, Jean de Meun makes an important disclaimer. He doesn't want to offend men, or especially women by the following account. The words are intended only to instruct. His defense of his own conduct partly foists the blame on other authors that report the same thing, and (where it is true, I suppose) begs leave to tell truth for the sake of instruction. Talk about seeking suitors.
Then Nature and Genius come after the battle, and the account is nearly done. They talk between each other for a while, Nature then gives a confession in which she admits the power that she has and its one limitation towards the sinfulness of man. Genius hears the confession, absolves her, and excommunicates all of those who work against Nature's commands to procreate, in metaphors of plowing, writing, and so on.
Finally, Guillaume takes up his place, puts a staff in a hole, breaks the barrier in the aperture, and gains access to the rosebud. And by all that, I think it means they have sex. :P
Overall Observations
It's painfully obvious now why there is not a plot summary on Wikipedia. The introduction of this book attempts one, but acknowledges its own inadequate brevity. It is just not an easy thing to summarize, especially when many of the events happen twice, allegory depends on the details imparted to its characters, and much of the second part consists of speeches that often constitute stories and tangents of their own. Only a schematic plot description is possible if one wants to spend less than an entire day on doing just that.
I can imagine that this poem was read in installments on evenings to a particularly refined audience that would have been intimate witness to the contemporary allusions of Jean de Meun or Guillaume. Each poet's rendition perhaps appealed to its own time, but certainly Jean de Meun's work was only an addition rather than an adaptation based on how it occurs after Guillaume's in manuscripts. So Guillaume's version had not lost much if any currency. Instead, much like the new Star Wars movies did to the old, perhaps Jean's version capitalized on the first one's fame while itself appearing as a product of its time, with better special effects and the same dressings of the original wrapped in somewhat worse dialogue.
This is the classic example of medieval allegory. It does not descend into a simple allegory of virtues and vices. Wealth, Love, Shame, Jealousy, Reason, and False Seeming each have their own advantages and disadvantages, light sides and dark sides and rather gray sides that emerge in their actions. No post-Capellanus lover would argue that Jealousy was unnecessary to Love. No lover would argue that Love was always fair to them. The same with Reason, the Boethian complaint against some of Reason's attempted consolations foremost in my mind when Guillaume refused Reason's advice. This is an allegory that seeks to imprint itself in the bustle of things, amongst humanity, and the need to reproach men and women both for their behavior is a needed reproach against the subjects of such allegorical realism. Of course allegory appears prior to and after this, and not nearly always in this mode. But I think that religious and political allegories both owe something to this example. I wonder what those terms are.
I have just finished reading Jean de Meun's version of the poem. I should call it an addendum. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.
One fair point is that he uses the allegory differently. Guillaume de Lorris is not inclined to long speeches. His allegorical characters are significant in their dress, behavior, and how they act to each other. Jean de Meun keeps these aspects somewhat, but deluges them in the very long speeches that many of his figures (like Friend, Reason, Wealth, the Old Woman, Nature, and Genius) give. They speak for long periods of time, such that it becomes difficult to remember that it isn't just the narrator speaking. This leads to delightful confusions, like being confused about why the main character hates women so.
I needn't repeat the allegorical figures, since they are largely the same as Guillaume's, with shifts in their qualities. It is similarly difficult to summarize each speech, but I will attempt to do so.
We left Guillaume (hereafter the name of the speaker) when he was despairing over never entering the castle. He gives a fair summation of the current predicament. Then Reason comes along. In this version, she presents a separate allegory, featuring such figures as Youth, Old Age, Delight, Death, Travail, and Suffering. This leads into a long discussion on love, and particularly a debate between what loves are appropriate and inappropriate. The speaker is unconvinced, though, because the pure loves that Reason speaks of are irrecoverable after the fall. He misses the point of holding such a pure love, one outside of Fortune's domain, as an ideal. After a long turn into a debate about Justice, a concept that ties into Love through Christian theology, and then to Fortune and its mishaps at greater length, Reason abandons Guillaume.
Then Friend comes, again reflecting the order of the original. After his advice of ways to reach the rosebud, he then speaks at length about courtship. His main contention, which has several other parts, is that there is no such thing as a good woman. His contradictory advice vacillates between recommending that they should be avoided, and counseling him on how to handle women when the seemingly inevitable hitch occurs. Like Reason, Friend brings to mind a postlapsarian view of life in his own allegory, with Fraud, Sin, Misfortune, Pride, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Poverty, Larceny, Faint Heart, and Lady Laverna (goddess of thieves) overtaking Contentment. Quite a rabble. To the fallen men and women, little bits of good advice emerge, like not restraining women, correcting them kindly in the case of jealousy, and so on, pieces of advice that might double as willful but fortunate blindnesses.
Soon they assemble an army of Love. Again, they have the trouble of False Seeming and Constrained Abstinence (who will in the course of time have the Antichrist?!?). False Seeming, while convincing them that he should be there, delivers a sermon of his own that is duplicitous, though I don't recall the details. He marches a contingent to confront Evil Tongue, and after a debate between them, they fight and Evil Tongue is killed with all of his Norman soldiers. The tongue is cut out, and he is cast into a ditch. Perhaps the only way to quell the lashes of unfair rumors is to appear more virtuous than the tongue can attack, though such seeming will be false.
Then comes Old Woman, who gives plenty of advice as a woman who had once lived the life of a lady swindling her way through men. Fair Welcome and she have a discussion, as she urges him to wear the chaplet that Guillaume has given for him. He finally does, but she seems always to be egging him on to admit of some greater affection, one of the points that I suspect the work keeps male-male sexual tendencies uneasily alongside the allegory that places those affections as towards the rosebud. As for Old Woman's speech, she loved but one man, who swindled her. In the trading of gifts for the goods (if not the affection) of love, she emphatically preaches for trickiness and wariness in all dealings between the sexes. Her ultimate caution is to not wait too long - his youth will turn to age someday.
After the speech, Fair Welcome reiterates his honorable friendship with Guillaume, and they soon meet (with Pleasant Looks accompanying). Fear, Shame, and Rebuff prevent an extended reunion, and thus the assault on the castle picks up steam. At this point, the crux of battle, arround lines 15105 and 15165, Jean de Meun makes an important disclaimer. He doesn't want to offend men, or especially women by the following account. The words are intended only to instruct. His defense of his own conduct partly foists the blame on other authors that report the same thing, and (where it is true, I suppose) begs leave to tell truth for the sake of instruction. Talk about seeking suitors.
Then Nature and Genius come after the battle, and the account is nearly done. They talk between each other for a while, Nature then gives a confession in which she admits the power that she has and its one limitation towards the sinfulness of man. Genius hears the confession, absolves her, and excommunicates all of those who work against Nature's commands to procreate, in metaphors of plowing, writing, and so on.
Finally, Guillaume takes up his place, puts a staff in a hole, breaks the barrier in the aperture, and gains access to the rosebud. And by all that, I think it means they have sex. :P
Overall Observations
It's painfully obvious now why there is not a plot summary on Wikipedia. The introduction of this book attempts one, but acknowledges its own inadequate brevity. It is just not an easy thing to summarize, especially when many of the events happen twice, allegory depends on the details imparted to its characters, and much of the second part consists of speeches that often constitute stories and tangents of their own. Only a schematic plot description is possible if one wants to spend less than an entire day on doing just that.
I can imagine that this poem was read in installments on evenings to a particularly refined audience that would have been intimate witness to the contemporary allusions of Jean de Meun or Guillaume. Each poet's rendition perhaps appealed to its own time, but certainly Jean de Meun's work was only an addition rather than an adaptation based on how it occurs after Guillaume's in manuscripts. So Guillaume's version had not lost much if any currency. Instead, much like the new Star Wars movies did to the old, perhaps Jean's version capitalized on the first one's fame while itself appearing as a product of its time, with better special effects and the same dressings of the original wrapped in somewhat worse dialogue.
This is the classic example of medieval allegory. It does not descend into a simple allegory of virtues and vices. Wealth, Love, Shame, Jealousy, Reason, and False Seeming each have their own advantages and disadvantages, light sides and dark sides and rather gray sides that emerge in their actions. No post-Capellanus lover would argue that Jealousy was unnecessary to Love. No lover would argue that Love was always fair to them. The same with Reason, the Boethian complaint against some of Reason's attempted consolations foremost in my mind when Guillaume refused Reason's advice. This is an allegory that seeks to imprint itself in the bustle of things, amongst humanity, and the need to reproach men and women both for their behavior is a needed reproach against the subjects of such allegorical realism. Of course allegory appears prior to and after this, and not nearly always in this mode. But I think that religious and political allegories both owe something to this example. I wonder what those terms are.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Romance of the Rose
Guillaume de Lorris wrote the first 4000 lines of this poem between 1225 and 1230. Jean de Meun wrote the remainder, feeling perhaps that the poem was unfinished, between 1269 and 1278. In total, the poem is about 22,000 lines long. Jean de Meun had a lot to say. The poem is preserved in over 200 manuscripts. (More than The Canterbury Tales.) Chaucer produced a translation of this poem.
I've read Guillaume's portion today, and the allegory is quite tasteful and pleasant. It is easiest to go through if I give a catalogue of character, a brief summary of the plot, and then a few observations.
Characters
After citing Macrobius's commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio (rather like one of Chaucer's heroes, though that hero is actually reading it), the Dreamer falls asleep. He soon dreams of coming across a walled garden in May, and sees the images on the walls, perhaps intended to keep people away that are old, hateful, covetous, and hypocritical. Then he searches for a door and finds only a small one. After he knocks, Idleness answers and lets him in. After wandering through the garden for a bit, he witnesses a dance, and is soon asked to join by Courtesy. A cavalcade of characters follows (not to be misleading though it alliterates - no horses are mentioned), encompassing the positive qualities of the garden, including pleasure, wealth, largesse, love, and youth.
Eventually the Dreamer is encouraged to wander again, and he comes across the Spring of Love, prefaced by the story of Narcissus and Echo. The Dreamer looks, sees the rose bushes and the most beautiful rose bud, and is immediately stricken by the five arrows of Eros meant to inspire love. He is then hunted and taken captive, until the Dreamer swears fealty to the Lover, sealed with a kiss on the mouth. The Lover then gives his commandments, which amount to suffering Love with the few consolations given the Dreamer - to think on his love, to talk about his love, and to see his love.
Dreamer then approaches the bushes, and is greeted by Fair Welcome, who is content to allow him to rest near the bud. When he asks to take the bud away, he is refused, and soon Rebuff and his cronies come by and kick Dreamer out. Disconsolate, he seeks a Friend for the solace of Pleasant Conversation. The Friend counsels diplomacy, which with the intervention of Pity and Generosity of Spirit softens Rebuff enough that he allows the Dreamer back in. He sits with Fair Welcome, who soon allows the Dreamer to kiss the bud.
Upon doing so, Evil Tongue spreads rumors about Fair Welcome and Dreamer. Soon, Jealousy is in on the act, and proclaims that they ought to build a tower around the bud, and keep Fair Welcome at the center of it. Once armed, garrisoned (with Norman soldiers!), and kept, Dreamer despairs, loving from afar both the bud and Fair Welcome.
Thoughts
First, homosocial. There is clearly an implied relationship between Fair Welcome and the Dreamer, and the Dreamer's responses to his absence indicate that, though the allegations might be salacious, it is less a fabrication of what isn't there than a misconstruing of what is. Fair Welcome serves as the point of access to the bud, a benevolent Pandarus-type character who indulges Dreamer in return for the pleasure of having given welcome. The two are warm, and in the earlier sense of the word intimate. The concluding speech by Dreamer indicates that he misses Fair Welcome more than he does the bud. It is nearly as if the rosebud is the object of Dreamer's affections, but Fair Welcome is its agency, a male duenna who receives the poet's advances. He does not restrict access altogether, but makes sure that such access is appropriate, within the strictures of courtliness that Love must be constrained to serve. In my mind, such agency could easily collapse into a Cyrano-like situation, where the Dreamer ends up loving the agent more than the pretty face, Cyrano over Christian. Could such a flip have happened then? I must think it could, having no evidence to the contrary.
And that goes without mentioning the kiss on the mouth that passes between the God of Love and the Dreamer. Certainly, they would have been less picky about such gestures than we are today, as we have turned a kiss into something erotic all the time. In this story, it may be an allusion of the sex that is to come. It could also be a greeting, or a seal of fealty. I think that we have more of an issue of the ambiguity between those statuses than they did. Either (the traditional assumption) the umbrage of the kiss depended on the situation such that categories didn't blend together, or (the generous assumption) there was a little swearing of fealty and eroticism in any kiss, no matter the primary context. I incline towards the latter. To do otherwise would be to ignore a key part of the context; would even a medieval man kiss the God of Love and not feel a little erotic about it?
Second, details. It's so funny to see the parenthetical explanations in places where I would never suspect that one was needed. For example, when Joy is described next to Pleasure, the poet quickly adds, "Who did not hate him in the least, but had given him her love when she was no more than seven years old" (14). Oh. Okay. I suppose that this is a jibe against those that would claim that Joy (with its exalted refinement) and Pleasure (with its earthly tones) are separate in theological grounds. Bodily pleasure serves as a distraction to salvation or happiness, while joy is the place where happiness takes its rest. The Thomistic view would disagree with Guillaume on this point, and though I don't know enough about other scholastic movements at the time, I suspect others would too.
Also, the details like dress and surroundings fascinate me. Why does it matter that Wealth is wearing a stone that protects against toothaches? (I wonder if anyone has ever cross-referenced this with lapidaries of the time, which also record these weird traits.) Do the many spices in the garden (cloves, liquorice, fresh cardamum, zedoary, anise, cinnamon, and "many delicious spices good to eat after a meal") make it more lavish? What are those spices good to eat after a meal? All I can think of is "dessert" or "after dinner mint." Oh, how impoverished my understanding is. This early tendency towards making lists is masterful compared to many later medieval poems, which turn these brief descriptive interludes into indulgent and obsessive fights over who can do so most lavishly.
Third, Arthurian allusion. Just a note that it does occur, including the company of Largesse, and an allusion to Kay and Gawain where the former comes off horribly and the latter quite well in courtesy.
Protect me! Tomorrow I plan to put a big dent in Jean de Meun.
(Note - I've also been reading through The English Romance in Time by Helen Cooper and The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I'm nowhere near finishing either, but I might post on them too when I feel less long-winded.)
I've read Guillaume's portion today, and the allegory is quite tasteful and pleasant. It is easiest to go through if I give a catalogue of character, a brief summary of the plot, and then a few observations.
Characters
- Dreamer - Rather self explanatory.Soon falls into a dream vision.
- The Images on the Walls of the Garden
- Hate - (f) woman wild with fury
- Cruelty - (f)
- Baseness - (f) immoderate scandalmonger
- Covetousness - (f) take and give nothing in return
- Avarice - (f) give nothing
- Envy - (f) hates the best, tears down all who do good
- Sorrow - (f)tormented
- Old Age - (f) aged, wrinkled, cold
- Religious Hypocrisy - (f) fearlessly commits any crime, though appearing religious
- Poverty - (f) naked, but for a sack.
- The Dance in the Garden
- Idleness - (f) opens the door for the Dreamer - enjoys amusements
- Pleasure - (m) intimate friend of Idleness, owns garden and built its walls
- Courtesy - (f) invites Dreamer into the dance
- Joy - (f) Pleasure's sweetheart
- God of Love - (m) ruler of lovers, humbler of the haughty, owner of two bows with five arrows each
- Beauty
- Simplicity
- Generosity of Spirit
- Company
- Fair Seeming
- Pride
- Baseness
- Shame
- Despair
- Inconstancy
- Beauty - (f) resplendent lady
- Wealth - (f) lavish lady, wearing the most distinguished jewelry, stones with magical properties
- Wealth's lover, unnamed - a well-kept man
- Largesse - (f) giver of goods
- The accompanying knight from Arthur's court, courageous and strong in tournaments
- Generosity of Spirit - (f)whiter than snow
- Youth - (f) the 12 year old lover, with a boy of the same age constantly kissing.
- Pleasant Looks - (m) carrier of the God of Love's equippage
- Parable of the Fountain
- Narcissus
- Echo
- Gifts of Love - to soothe the aching lover
- Pleasant Thought
- Pleasant Conversation
- Pleasant Looks
- The Rosebud - the object of Dreamer's desire, yet unopen and keeping a fresh, aromatic scent
- Chastity - (f) the keeper of the Rosebud
- Venus - (f) Chastity's mortal enemy, mother of the God of Love (Eros), goddess or fairy in appearance
- Fair Welcome - (m) son of Courtesy, intimate friend to Dreamer
- Keepers of the Bud
- Rebuff - (m) grouch
- Evil Tongue - (m) slanderer, alleges inappropriate relationshp between Fair Welcome and Dreamer
- Shame (f) - daughter by Reason and Fiend, conceived when Reason looked on Fiend
- Fear (f) - daughter of Jealousy, sent when Reason sent Shame to Chastity to help guard the rosebuds
- Reason - (f) counsels that one should forget love, rebuffed
- Friend - (m) hears Dreamer's complaints (in accord with Pleasant Conversation), and counsels diplomacy and patience
- Aid from Heaven - both seek understanding from Rebuff
- Generosity of Spirit - (f)
- Pity - (f)
- Jealousy - (f) argues for building the tower enclosing the buds
- Lechery, Lust - (m) enemies mentioned by Jealousy
- Fortune - (f) the keeper of the wheel that casts the Dreamer down
After citing Macrobius's commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio (rather like one of Chaucer's heroes, though that hero is actually reading it), the Dreamer falls asleep. He soon dreams of coming across a walled garden in May, and sees the images on the walls, perhaps intended to keep people away that are old, hateful, covetous, and hypocritical. Then he searches for a door and finds only a small one. After he knocks, Idleness answers and lets him in. After wandering through the garden for a bit, he witnesses a dance, and is soon asked to join by Courtesy. A cavalcade of characters follows (not to be misleading though it alliterates - no horses are mentioned), encompassing the positive qualities of the garden, including pleasure, wealth, largesse, love, and youth.
Eventually the Dreamer is encouraged to wander again, and he comes across the Spring of Love, prefaced by the story of Narcissus and Echo. The Dreamer looks, sees the rose bushes and the most beautiful rose bud, and is immediately stricken by the five arrows of Eros meant to inspire love. He is then hunted and taken captive, until the Dreamer swears fealty to the Lover, sealed with a kiss on the mouth. The Lover then gives his commandments, which amount to suffering Love with the few consolations given the Dreamer - to think on his love, to talk about his love, and to see his love.
Dreamer then approaches the bushes, and is greeted by Fair Welcome, who is content to allow him to rest near the bud. When he asks to take the bud away, he is refused, and soon Rebuff and his cronies come by and kick Dreamer out. Disconsolate, he seeks a Friend for the solace of Pleasant Conversation. The Friend counsels diplomacy, which with the intervention of Pity and Generosity of Spirit softens Rebuff enough that he allows the Dreamer back in. He sits with Fair Welcome, who soon allows the Dreamer to kiss the bud.
Upon doing so, Evil Tongue spreads rumors about Fair Welcome and Dreamer. Soon, Jealousy is in on the act, and proclaims that they ought to build a tower around the bud, and keep Fair Welcome at the center of it. Once armed, garrisoned (with Norman soldiers!), and kept, Dreamer despairs, loving from afar both the bud and Fair Welcome.
Thoughts
First, homosocial. There is clearly an implied relationship between Fair Welcome and the Dreamer, and the Dreamer's responses to his absence indicate that, though the allegations might be salacious, it is less a fabrication of what isn't there than a misconstruing of what is. Fair Welcome serves as the point of access to the bud, a benevolent Pandarus-type character who indulges Dreamer in return for the pleasure of having given welcome. The two are warm, and in the earlier sense of the word intimate. The concluding speech by Dreamer indicates that he misses Fair Welcome more than he does the bud. It is nearly as if the rosebud is the object of Dreamer's affections, but Fair Welcome is its agency, a male duenna who receives the poet's advances. He does not restrict access altogether, but makes sure that such access is appropriate, within the strictures of courtliness that Love must be constrained to serve. In my mind, such agency could easily collapse into a Cyrano-like situation, where the Dreamer ends up loving the agent more than the pretty face, Cyrano over Christian. Could such a flip have happened then? I must think it could, having no evidence to the contrary.
And that goes without mentioning the kiss on the mouth that passes between the God of Love and the Dreamer. Certainly, they would have been less picky about such gestures than we are today, as we have turned a kiss into something erotic all the time. In this story, it may be an allusion of the sex that is to come. It could also be a greeting, or a seal of fealty. I think that we have more of an issue of the ambiguity between those statuses than they did. Either (the traditional assumption) the umbrage of the kiss depended on the situation such that categories didn't blend together, or (the generous assumption) there was a little swearing of fealty and eroticism in any kiss, no matter the primary context. I incline towards the latter. To do otherwise would be to ignore a key part of the context; would even a medieval man kiss the God of Love and not feel a little erotic about it?
Second, details. It's so funny to see the parenthetical explanations in places where I would never suspect that one was needed. For example, when Joy is described next to Pleasure, the poet quickly adds, "Who did not hate him in the least, but had given him her love when she was no more than seven years old" (14). Oh. Okay. I suppose that this is a jibe against those that would claim that Joy (with its exalted refinement) and Pleasure (with its earthly tones) are separate in theological grounds. Bodily pleasure serves as a distraction to salvation or happiness, while joy is the place where happiness takes its rest. The Thomistic view would disagree with Guillaume on this point, and though I don't know enough about other scholastic movements at the time, I suspect others would too.
Also, the details like dress and surroundings fascinate me. Why does it matter that Wealth is wearing a stone that protects against toothaches? (I wonder if anyone has ever cross-referenced this with lapidaries of the time, which also record these weird traits.) Do the many spices in the garden (cloves, liquorice, fresh cardamum, zedoary, anise, cinnamon, and "many delicious spices good to eat after a meal") make it more lavish? What are those spices good to eat after a meal? All I can think of is "dessert" or "after dinner mint." Oh, how impoverished my understanding is. This early tendency towards making lists is masterful compared to many later medieval poems, which turn these brief descriptive interludes into indulgent and obsessive fights over who can do so most lavishly.
Third, Arthurian allusion. Just a note that it does occur, including the company of Largesse, and an allusion to Kay and Gawain where the former comes off horribly and the latter quite well in courtesy.
Protect me! Tomorrow I plan to put a big dent in Jean de Meun.
(Note - I've also been reading through The English Romance in Time by Helen Cooper and The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I'm nowhere near finishing either, but I might post on them too when I feel less long-winded.)
Friday, June 4, 2010
John Donne
Biography:
1572-1631. Born into a devout Catholic family. Distantly related to Sir Thomas More. Converted to the English church sometime in the 1590s. Participated in campaign against Cadiz and Azores in 1596-7 (Earl of Essex). Was secretary to Sir THomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Sal. But he secretly arried Ann More, Egerton's niece, in 1601, and lived insecurely in the country. Twelve children by her.
Donne eventually sought patrons for his works, writing things like Pseudo-Martyr for James I in 1610, Ignatius His Conclave in 1611 against Jesuits, the first two Anniversaries in 1611 and 12 for his patron Sir Robert Drury's dead daughter, and so on. Eventually, in 1615, Donne consented to take the King's offer to begin an ecclesiastical career - court preacher, reader in divinity at Lincoln's Inn, and dean of St. Paul's.
He often circulated his poems in manuscript. In 1633, Songs and Sonnets was published, and went through a second edition in 1635.
"The Flea"
aabbccddd, 3 iambic tetrameter nonets. A poem that compares the mingling of blood in the flea to a sexual act, as the speaker tries to convince his lover to give in. The flea itself stands as an indistinct third personage - for the resulting child? For "the marraige bed and marriage temple?" For the occurrence of sex itself? It is vaguely trinitarian. In the third stanza, the flea is killed, and the speaker changes tack to show how small a thing was killed, comparing once more its smallness to the honor that would be lost.
"The Good-Morrow"
ababccc, 3 iambic pentameter septets. The time before their meeting is treated as a dream of sleep and simple pleasures. Then he gives good morow, and plays with the figure and function of mapping in the remainder of the poem. The lover makes their room a whole entire world, and each other mapped mirrors or hemispheres of each other. The figure is somewhat unusual, but the point is that the two are able to be so perfectly mapped together or mixed that a balance exists, such that neither would die.
"Song: Go and catch a falling star"
irregular nonet, ababccddd. Starts with a series of impossible or unknowable things, like "who cleft the Devil's foot," before making the bold claim to "find / What wind / Serves to advance an honest mind." The second stanza expands the charge, only related by proximity, until he claims that none can find "a woman true, and fair." (Can only ugly women be true? Are true women rather like Laura, unfair?) The speaker in the last stanza makes rather a mockery of himself, first urging a doubter to find her, and then refusing to go see even if she is close, alleging that she would be false before he arrived. It's a rather coy and original appropriation of the misogynist voice.
"The Undertaking"
quatrains of abab rhyme in iambic tetrameter. The poem starts with the speaker claiming that he has done a braver deed than all the worthies (including, presumably, King Arthur). A yet braver thing is to not impart it. He implies that imparting it is futile, since the material has been lost, rather like the futility of "the skill of specular stone." What is to impart? That it is best to love someone for their inward qualities, rather than outward adornment. If one finds "Virtue attired in woman... / And dare love that, and say so too, / And forget the He and She;" well, great! I'm mystified by the last line - is it meant to forget common formal address? Is it wiping away gender altogether? That's the leap I want to make, but it might be a misunderstanding, almost as big as the profane men who would misunderstand this sort of love.
1572-1631. Born into a devout Catholic family. Distantly related to Sir Thomas More. Converted to the English church sometime in the 1590s. Participated in campaign against Cadiz and Azores in 1596-7 (Earl of Essex). Was secretary to Sir THomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Sal. But he secretly arried Ann More, Egerton's niece, in 1601, and lived insecurely in the country. Twelve children by her.
Donne eventually sought patrons for his works, writing things like Pseudo-Martyr for James I in 1610, Ignatius His Conclave in 1611 against Jesuits, the first two Anniversaries in 1611 and 12 for his patron Sir Robert Drury's dead daughter, and so on. Eventually, in 1615, Donne consented to take the King's offer to begin an ecclesiastical career - court preacher, reader in divinity at Lincoln's Inn, and dean of St. Paul's.
He often circulated his poems in manuscript. In 1633, Songs and Sonnets was published, and went through a second edition in 1635.
"The Flea"
aabbccddd, 3 iambic tetrameter nonets. A poem that compares the mingling of blood in the flea to a sexual act, as the speaker tries to convince his lover to give in. The flea itself stands as an indistinct third personage - for the resulting child? For "the marraige bed and marriage temple?" For the occurrence of sex itself? It is vaguely trinitarian. In the third stanza, the flea is killed, and the speaker changes tack to show how small a thing was killed, comparing once more its smallness to the honor that would be lost.
"The Good-Morrow"
ababccc, 3 iambic pentameter septets. The time before their meeting is treated as a dream of sleep and simple pleasures. Then he gives good morow, and plays with the figure and function of mapping in the remainder of the poem. The lover makes their room a whole entire world, and each other mapped mirrors or hemispheres of each other. The figure is somewhat unusual, but the point is that the two are able to be so perfectly mapped together or mixed that a balance exists, such that neither would die.
"Song: Go and catch a falling star"
irregular nonet, ababccddd. Starts with a series of impossible or unknowable things, like "who cleft the Devil's foot," before making the bold claim to "find / What wind / Serves to advance an honest mind." The second stanza expands the charge, only related by proximity, until he claims that none can find "a woman true, and fair." (Can only ugly women be true? Are true women rather like Laura, unfair?) The speaker in the last stanza makes rather a mockery of himself, first urging a doubter to find her, and then refusing to go see even if she is close, alleging that she would be false before he arrived. It's a rather coy and original appropriation of the misogynist voice.
"The Undertaking"
quatrains of abab rhyme in iambic tetrameter. The poem starts with the speaker claiming that he has done a braver deed than all the worthies (including, presumably, King Arthur). A yet braver thing is to not impart it. He implies that imparting it is futile, since the material has been lost, rather like the futility of "the skill of specular stone." What is to impart? That it is best to love someone for their inward qualities, rather than outward adornment. If one finds "Virtue attired in woman... / And dare love that, and say so too, / And forget the He and She;" well, great! I'm mystified by the last line - is it meant to forget common formal address? Is it wiping away gender altogether? That's the leap I want to make, but it might be a misunderstanding, almost as big as the profane men who would misunderstand this sort of love.
Thomas Campion
1567-1620. He was one of those jacks-of-all-trades, law student, ;physician, composer, and writer. He preferred Latin for poetic form. He has a sweet lyrical quality, even though his topic material is sometimes controversial - e.g., rape.
"My sweetest Lesbia"
Sextet of three couplets, iambic pentameter. The speaker urges the lover to "live and love" even though that might not be wise. A carpe diem sort of poem. Second stanza claims that those that war are the true fools, not those that love. Third stanza repeats the theme of death - people should celebrate after the speaker dies. Last two lines are confusing - does Lesbia die with him, or merely usher him into death?
"I care not for these ladies"
Balladic repetition - 10 lines per stanza, last four repeat. Resists noblewomen who demand so much wealth, turning instead to simple "kind Amaryllis, / The wanton country maid." Pun intended there. Trade of goods in second stanza - the speaker wants to receive goods, not have to give "golden showers." (Har.) Idyllic about Amaryllis. The last four lines repeat a story of seizure, refusal, and then relenting once "we come where comfort is." It's disturbing, as it suggests that he partly wants Amaryllis because she is easy to both love and to simply take.
"When to her lute Corinna sings"
Two sextets, couplet rhyme. Iambic tetrameter. Beautiful overflow at the end of the first stanza, "Ev'n with her sighs the strings do break," "Ev'n" evoking the overflow into mourning. Sympathetic reactions between player, music, and finally the listener, who is also the speaker, and perhaps seeking to impart a similar reaction by retelling it.
"Now winter nights enlarge"
ababcdcdefef, iambic trimeter with a pentameter skip at the penultimate lines of two 12-line stanzas. Unlike many poems that lament winter, this features the turning inward into pockets of warmth and human society. Talk, dally, dance, riddle, lyricize - "Though Love and all his pleasures are but toys, / They shorten tedious nights."
"There is a garden in her face"
ababcc, iambic tetrameter. Along with lyricizing the addressee's face, the poet also has the refrain, "Till 'Cherry ripe!' themselves do cry." Who are "themselves," the suitors judging the "fruit" to be done, or the maid herself, ready to become a woman? The ambiguity plays with the voice of the poet too - does he want to declare her ready? Does the London street vendor cry, ushered from her or their lips, empower her, sell her, or do something else entirely?
"Fain would I wed"
Fourteener - fourteen syllables, seven beats. In a young woman's voice. She longs to move, and seeks men to love and satisfy her, but she never is able to love for long. She will turn to a convent eventually, but wryly implies that first she will become a mother, just like her mother before her. Part cyclical, part unrestrained, the voice of the woman is not at all subdued as one might assume from his other prose. Not that this assumption is correct - one might imagine that this is now Campion's Amaryllis, given the additional dimension of choice. She, too, wants sex, but she changes her mind frequently about who tolove.
"My sweetest Lesbia"
Sextet of three couplets, iambic pentameter. The speaker urges the lover to "live and love" even though that might not be wise. A carpe diem sort of poem. Second stanza claims that those that war are the true fools, not those that love. Third stanza repeats the theme of death - people should celebrate after the speaker dies. Last two lines are confusing - does Lesbia die with him, or merely usher him into death?
"I care not for these ladies"
Balladic repetition - 10 lines per stanza, last four repeat. Resists noblewomen who demand so much wealth, turning instead to simple "kind Amaryllis, / The wanton country maid." Pun intended there. Trade of goods in second stanza - the speaker wants to receive goods, not have to give "golden showers." (Har.) Idyllic about Amaryllis. The last four lines repeat a story of seizure, refusal, and then relenting once "we come where comfort is." It's disturbing, as it suggests that he partly wants Amaryllis because she is easy to both love and to simply take.
"When to her lute Corinna sings"
Two sextets, couplet rhyme. Iambic tetrameter. Beautiful overflow at the end of the first stanza, "Ev'n with her sighs the strings do break," "Ev'n" evoking the overflow into mourning. Sympathetic reactions between player, music, and finally the listener, who is also the speaker, and perhaps seeking to impart a similar reaction by retelling it.
"Now winter nights enlarge"
ababcdcdefef, iambic trimeter with a pentameter skip at the penultimate lines of two 12-line stanzas. Unlike many poems that lament winter, this features the turning inward into pockets of warmth and human society. Talk, dally, dance, riddle, lyricize - "Though Love and all his pleasures are but toys, / They shorten tedious nights."
"There is a garden in her face"
ababcc, iambic tetrameter. Along with lyricizing the addressee's face, the poet also has the refrain, "Till 'Cherry ripe!' themselves do cry." Who are "themselves," the suitors judging the "fruit" to be done, or the maid herself, ready to become a woman? The ambiguity plays with the voice of the poet too - does he want to declare her ready? Does the London street vendor cry, ushered from her or their lips, empower her, sell her, or do something else entirely?
"Fain would I wed"
Fourteener - fourteen syllables, seven beats. In a young woman's voice. She longs to move, and seeks men to love and satisfy her, but she never is able to love for long. She will turn to a convent eventually, but wryly implies that first she will become a mother, just like her mother before her. Part cyclical, part unrestrained, the voice of the woman is not at all subdued as one might assume from his other prose. Not that this assumption is correct - one might imagine that this is now Campion's Amaryllis, given the additional dimension of choice. She, too, wants sex, but she changes her mind frequently about who tolove.
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