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Conclusion

What was this class about?  What did I learn?

"Sampling Medieval Literature" was a class that walked us through some key texts in the English Middle Ages. These could range from religious texts, plays, romances, and shorter tales from anthologies. It allowed us to see the development of the written word over this 1000 year long stretch of time in history, and study a literary period that is not often considered in the contemporary age. The Medieval period tends to be shunned to the side, labelled "The Dark Ages", and prioritizing the Ancient texts or the works of the Renaissance onwards. Something really important that I think this class really sought to prove is that the Medieval period was certainly not a 'Dark Age', and it had so much interesting literary culture that is under appreciated in the academic world. I really enjoyed learning about different aspects of medieval culture, and seeing how that came out in different works. How we studied the texts in a linear fashion made it easier to contextualize, giving us a timeline of the development of medieval works and culture. My favourite piece that we studied was probably A Revelation of Love, because it gave me an entirely new perspective and interpretation of the Holy Trinity that I had never seen before, despite studying the Trinity extensively in my first year with the Foundation Year Program. It was one of the pieces that really exemplified for me how interesting the ideas of this period really are. All in all, I really enjoyed reading and learning about varying literature from this time period and I hope to further study this topic in the future.

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Morte D'Arthur

The final text we discussed in this class was Mallory's Morte D'Arthur, arguably one of the most popular textual interpretations of the King Arthur story. It covers Arthur's birth, which was a result of Uther sleeping with Igerna while in disguise as her husband, all the way to his death and the dissolution of the round table. Book 1 is for the most part an origin story for Arthur, describing his parentage, the sword in the stone, and him coming to be king. Book 8 tells how Lancelot and Guinevere's relationship is uncovered, and the following infighting within the round table, leading to near all the character's deaths. The Arthur story is so well known in contemporary culture, that there are hundreds of different interpretations of it. Here's a list of them.

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Mankind

This play is a morality piece, and has the cast of characters as directly representing concepts; Mercy, an agent of God. Mankind, who is standing to represent all of humanity. Mischief, Nowadays, Nought, and Tutivillus are the demons tempting Mankind away from God and Mercy with their various shenanigans. The work engages with a similar dramatic tool as the York Crucifixion play, where the audience is implicated in Tutivillus coming onstage, as the demons take up a collection in order to convince him. The part of the piece that sparkled to me was the excerpt about the corn and the chaff, and how the demons and Mercy interpret it in two different ways.

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Noah's Flood

Another medieval mystery play/cycle drama, Noah's Flood is, as the title suggests, a dramatization of the Flood story in the Bible. It provides a more contemporary (for the time) interpretation of the story, as did other cycle dramas of the period. The two main characters are Noah's Wife and Noah, who are in conflict for nearly all of the play. His wife laments about how she is not able to bring friends or family with them, showing God's cruelty. But in the end, God apologizes with a rainbow. The play uses the criticisms of the wife towards God as a way to show the audience's potential doubts and thoughts, and prove them wrong in the end while also acknowledging them. This piece made me think of the 'Biblically Accurate' Noah's arc museum in Kentucky, and here's an article about it:

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The Second Shepherds Play

The Second Shepherds Play, written by the Wakefield Master, is one of the many cycle plays performed, which would have commemorated the Feast of Corpus Christi. These would have been performed on wagons parading around town, and depicted various biblical stories. This play concerns the nativity story, but also provides a parallel nativity with a stolen sheep swaddled in a cradle, creating a liberalization of the metaphor of the 'Lamb of God', as that is what Jesus is often called. These bastardization of the nativity allows for a comedic moment for the audience, and also serves to strengthen the importance of the real nativity scene later in the play. Here is a performance of the play by Oxford University English students.

#Youtube

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The Book of Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe was another medieval mystic, one who, despite having less revolutionary views that Julian, was much more controversial. Mid life, after marriage and many children, she claimed to have received visions from God, and committed herself to chastity. She went on various pilgrimages, preaching and sharing her story, but as she was not held to any church authority, as Julian would have been, this made her quite badly received for the most part. Her book, in which she refers to herself as a 'wretched creature' throughout, describes her various pilgrimages, near scrape-throughs, interactions, and visions during her life. When I think about medieval mysticism, the piece that always comes to mind is The Ecstasy of St Teresa, a sculpture also by Bernini.

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A Revelation of Love

Julian of Norwich, an anchoress, wrote two pieces, the longer of the two being A Revelation of Love. In it she describes her personal religious visions of God, Jesus, and the trinity. In a revolutionary understanding of the three aspects, she comes to describe Jesus as the feminine aspect, instead of that being represented by the Holy Trinity. She compares Jesus's pain in his crucifixion to the pains of childbirth, and the blood from his wounds to be breastmilk, as it is drunk at communion. A painting by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini shows the blood of Christ being collected at his crucifixion.

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The Miller's Tale

The selection from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that we read was The Miller's Tale, a story of four characters; an old carpenter (John), his young wife (Alison), a scholar of the stars (Nicholas), and a parish clerk (Absolon). Nicholas loves Alison, and he plays a trick on John, saying that the stars predict a second biblical flood. He advises John to tie himself to a tub in preperation, allowing Nicholas and Alison a night together. When Absolon interrupts, demanding a kiss from Alison, she sticks her behind out the dark window, causing him to kiss her butthole. When he tries again, he only ends up kissing Nicholas's behind. This story is classified as a fabliau, a comedy tale in which youth and love are rewarded, and the opposite is punished. The only character who comes out of the story scot free is Alison, unusual for most medieval stories.

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The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is one of the most famous pieces of literature to come out of the medieval English literary canon. It describes the stories told by a group of pilgrims who are on a journey to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury, as a way to entertain each other. The general prologue is dedicated to describing each of these pilgrims in full detail, providing 'portraits' of both their physical and personality traits, giving us some sort of idea of what kinds of tales they will each tell later on. Here is a frieze by William Blake depicting all the pilgrims from the Art Institute of Chicago (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/117595/the-canterbury-pilgrims)

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

This romance tale, who's author is anonymous, tells the story of the knight Gawain, who serves at King Arthur's court. He is challenged to a 'beheading game' by a man who is entirely green, and when he attempts the first hit, the Green Knight survives losing his head. A year later, Gawain travels to the Green Knight and fails a second game, having agreed to hand over his bedroom spoils to the lord whose house he stayed in, but keeping the belt gifted by the lord's wife as it was promised to save him from death. The Green Knight spares his life despite this, and Gawain returns to court. It is supposed that the green girdle that Gawain wears, which prompts a tradition of the Round Table Knights wearing a similar garment, is the origin of the "Order of the Garter", whose information is listed below, and still survives today.

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Sir Orfeo

The Breton lay, Sir Orfeo, is similar in style to that of Lanval, and reminiscent of Pwyll's plot structure, as it combines romance elements and fairytale aspects, as those two other pieces do. It tells of Sir Orfeo, who's wife is taken to the fae realm, and he must rescue her. It is a retelling of the tale of Orpheus, and directly parallels it, with the fae realm being a replacement for the Greek underworld. The biggest difference is in the fact that it does not end in tragedy, as Orfeo manages to rescue his wife, where Orpheus looks back and has to leave her behind. The song 'Orpheus' by Shawn James tells the original story.

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Middle English Lyrics

The Middle English lyrics are a series of short poems and pieces of verse. It is also the first piece we have read as a class that is not a translation of Old English, or translated from another language, but is in unaltered Middle English. My favourite aspect of these pieces is their imagery, but specifically the nature imagery that they manage to invoke. Despite the more nature-centric ones being those that I preferred, I found reading the ones of a more religious influence simpler, as I could catch on to the plot much more easily from previous knowledge.

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Ancrene Wisse

The Ancrene Wisse is a guide for future anchoresses, including some general rules and advice, ranging on what an anchoress is allowed to own to what sort of clothes they should wear. Anchorites and anchoresses were enclosed within a church and almost completely isolated from society, in order to dedicate their lives to the contemplation of God. Here is a picture of one of these enclosed spaces attached to a church.

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Lanval

With Lanval by Marie du France, one of the few named women writers we have/will encounter in this period, we return to the myth of King Arthur, by following the story of one of his Knights of the Round Table. The Knight Lanval falls in love with a fae woman, who states he must keep their love a secret. When Guinevere attempts to seduce him into an affair with her, he reveals the story of his love, resulting in his fabled misfortune as he is accused by Guinevere of trying to court her. At his trial, his fae lover comes to rescue him, and takes him with her the the Celtic Otherworld. This piece reminds me of the popular Irish folktale of Oisin and Tir Na Nog.

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The Mabinogi: Pwyll

The first branch of the Mabinogi tells the story of Sage, (or Pwyll in some editions). It takes the form of a Celtic fairytale, telling of how Sage travels to the 'otherworld' to compete in a duel against an enemy with magical powers, to how he sits upon a hill three times to see his future wife Rhiannon. It later goes on to describe how Rhiannon is falsely accused of eating her own child, and given a strange punishment in which she has to act as a horse and carry visitors to the castle on her back while she recounts the horror of her supposed crimes. Rhiannon is a figure in Celtic mythology, as a horse goddess, and also stars in a very popular song by Fleetwood Mac, as shown below.

#Youtube

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History of the Kings of Britain

This piece is a supposed 'historical' account of the line of kings in Britain, but upon reading it one realizes that this is not the case. It includes various mythological aspects, such as giants, and fictional kings, such as King Arthur, of which it was one of the first to tell the story in its most popular concept now, combining many characters from various tales into one, ie Uther, Arthur, Merlin, and Guinevere. Now, the story of King Arthur is one that immediately comes to mind for most when they think of the medieval British period, and is cemented in the public conscience. One of my personal favourite adaptations of the King Arthur story is from the 1975 movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Here's a clip where they use the 'Holy Hand Grenade' to defeat a killer rabbit.

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Battle of Maldon

The Battle of Maldon is a piece that describes a battle between British forces and a Viking invasion in the earlier medieval period. Byrhtnoth, a lord, leads the British in the attack. The battle takes place on two shores, a small island with a land-bridge that leads to the mainland. With the Vikings having landed on the island, and the British on the mainland, the only way for the Vikings to attack is by crossing this bridge, creating a very easy line of fire for the British forces. However, with the ideals of chivalry at the time, Byrhtnoth accepts the Viking's request to allow them space on the mainland as to make a more fair battle, leading to their eventual loss. An interesting aspect of this that was mentioned in class was how this piece, and Byrthnoth's actions, are interpreted by different readers, in relation to the use of the word "overmod", and whether that refers to an overconfidence or bravery. Was his choice wise or unwise, and was it motivated by chivalry, or to ensure the Viking's forces were spent and unable to attack other villages?