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.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
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.
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