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- The Wanderer
- Anglo-Saxon poem using Elegiac mood
- Preserved only in the Exeter book, a manuscript of about 975, which is the largest collection of poetry from this time
- Man lost his lord, and he’s trying to find purpose
- Switches between past and present
- Important Line: Therefore no one is wise without his share of winter’s (Line 64)
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- Medieval social theory
- Nobility
- Church
- Everybody else
- Estate Satire- “Sets out to expose and pillory typical examples of corruption at all levels of society” (From book).
- Chaucer served as a justice of the peace and knight of the shire for the county of kent
- Physiognomy – belief that a person’s character is made evident through their physical features
- The Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue
- Characters
- Narrator- Geoffrey Chaucer
- The Knight- Ideal participated in no less than 15 crusades
- The pardoner- Forgives people for a price, greasy yellow hair
- The prioress- Runs a convent. Modest, quiet, good taste and has impeccable table manners
- The miller- Stout, threatens hosts notion of propriety
- The Monk- Doesn’t obey the rules completely. Very loud
- The friar- Accepts bribes from people
- Th squier- The knight’s son. Curly haired
- The Yeoman- A commoner who is the military servant of the Knight
- The clerk- A student at oxford. Spends money on his books and school supplies. Very quite but intellectual
- Sergeant of Law (Lawyer)- Very smart know all laws. Commissioned by the king
- The Miller’s Tale
- Begins a genre known as the Fabliau- A short story in verse that deals satirically, often grossly and fantastically with intrigues and deceptions about sex and money
- Characters
- Nicholas- Oxford student
- John- Friend of Nicholas was a carpenter and was married
- Alisoun- Wife of John, 18-yrs old
- Absolon- Another lover of Alisoun, he is a parish clerk
- Summary
- Alisoun and Nicholas agree to sleep together while her husband John has left. In order to get them alone they must think of a plan to get her husband away. Nicholas tells John that he got a vision that the great flood is coming and he must prepare.
- Edmund Spenser
- Aspired to be the great English poet of his age
- Received an education from Merchant Taylors school then Pembroke college and Cambridge
- Had a special rhyme scheme which was the Spenserian Sonnet- Nine-line or spenserian stanza. The faerie queene had a hexameter (six-stress) line at the end
- The Faerie Queene
- Considered an Epic type of poem. An epic poem is a long, serious, poetic narrative about an event
- This poem is an epic celebration of Queen Elizabeth, the protestant faith, and the English nation.
- Characters
- Redcrosse Knight- Represents Spencer
- Gloriana- Queen Elizabeth
- Una- Beautiful strong women, instructs the Knight not to go into error’s den
- Error- Vomits out papers and books. Spewing out illegal printings
- Jonathan Swift
- Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, poet and clerk
- Chain of events Gulliver Travels
- Describing normal life
- Goes on voyage
- Shipwreck
- Only survivor, winds up on island
- Wakes up ropes around him, captured by the lilliputians
- Shoot arrows at him, his left hand freed lilliputians run away
- Examine him
- Gulliver gestures that he will be nice
- Brings food, Drugs Gulliver and they put him on a cart
- Take Gulliver to a temple and chain him up
- Strange urination scene and weird apology
- Meets the emperor they contemplate his death but then figure his rotting corpse would smell too bad so they keep him alive
- Inventory his belongings, but Gulliver manages to keep one secret pocket
- Gulliver introduced to the courtly traditions (e.x. Tightrope walking for a position in court)
- Military displays
- Gulliver gets set free, see the palace and walks around town
- Explains the war with Blefuscu and warning political faction within country
- Julian Of Norwich
- Receives 16 visions from god
- Julian became an Anchoress after the visions led her that way
- Margery Kemp
- Spiritual autobiography of medieval woman
- Became chase after having a bad pregnancy and started sleeping in another bed at the age of 40
- Since chastity was chosen she went on a pilgrimage to the holy land
- John Donne
- Donne, Devotions on Emergent Occasions and Death’s Duel (1419-24); George Herbert, Introduction (1705-1707), “The Altar,” “Easter Wings,” “Jordan (1),” “The Pulley” (1707, 1709, 1712, 1721)
- Typically wrote sonnets (14 lined poems)
- Volta: turn or shit in a poem
- Round earth imagined corners
- Line 1 flate earth, angles at 4 corners of the earth
- enganimant: no punctuation so the lines flow from one to the next without pausing.
- Bodily ressurection
- Quatraine is 4 lines
- “Dearth” : poverty
- “Let them sleep” talking about the souls
- Speaker has anxiety about his sins
- “There” : rapture
- “Seal’d my pardon” : Christ’s crucifixion
- “Repent” : crucifixion, Donne was religously confused
- Physinomy: what you look like is who you are (pretty person = lovely personality)
- Beautiful form = merciful God
- Man is a michrocosm, but Donne belives man is a macrochosm
- Meditation 17
- Man is compared to:
- A continent…man isnt an island but apart of a whole
- Translators who translate the book (us) into heaven
- Bell that is tolling for you (death bell)
- Diference between Donne and Herbert:
- Donne is metaphysical where Herbert is more direct. Herbert is als less dark. Both are religously oriented
- Herbert
- The alter and Easter wings
- These poems are shaped like their titles
- In easter wings
- “Most thin” comes in the middle of the shape where it is thinnest…this reinforces the poem’s message
- Message: asking God to help and he will be ablt to overcome
- The alter
- Alter made of heart
- Stones praise
- Vaughan and Crashaw
- Unprofitableness,” “Cock-Crowing,” “The Night” (1733, 1736-39); Richard Crashaw, Introduction (1740-41), “On the Wounds of our Crucified Lord,” “Luke 11.[27], Blessed be the paps which thou hast sucked,” “The Flaming Heart” (1746, 1752-55)
- Vaughn: cock crowing
- Tends to write a lot on pilgramages that never see the end
- Self loathing and disspoaintment at end of every poem
- Sympathtic attraction: attraction between earthly and heavenly bodies
- Piece of sun in rooster so it calls out every morning
- God in man so man should call out to God
- Rooster is metephor for man…”that little grain that expels the night”
- Their light is revivevd with the sun
- If a rooster feels so passionate about the sun shouldnt we express the same passion for God
- “O thou immortal light and heat” is an apostrphe
- Addressing an absent or imagines being
- w/ us seed of God
- veil= the flesh
- Speaker still has it and therfore canot fully see God. Wants to die
- Lillies: song of solomon
- The night
- God is darkness…absolute darkness since God is the extreme of all things
- Crashaw: on the wounds of our crucified lord
- More gruesme
- Apart of the continental baroque period
- visceral
- Emphasis on the body
- Wounds are eyes and mouths
- Eyes because wounds are crying ruby tears aka blood
- Mouths because they literally look like mouths….also, possibly because the wounds are speaking on behalf of all individuals’ sins
- Blessed be the paps which thou hast sucked
- As a baby Mary nursed him and now Mary turns to Jesus for spiritual nurturing
- Eucharistic poem
- These poems are replicating the challenge to find the body in blood of christ within the bread and wine