Month: September 2017

Midterm Study Guide English 205

• The word medieval comes from the term middle age
• Satire is the use of sarcasm, criticism, or exaggeration in denouncing or finding fault with something
• Sympathetic attraction is the connection between heavenly and earthly bodies
• Physiognomy is that people act how they look, such as an ugly person being very mean and dumb
• An allegory is a story or poem that can be interpreted to have a hidden meaning
• Effect of piety (imagining the body of Christ)
• The Wanderer
  • It is a piece of Anglo-Saxon literature
  • The main character is a warrior who has lost his lord and comrades in battle, he is terribly lonely and dwells on the past when he was happy.
  • He attempts to reach out and find salvation through God.
• The Canterbury Tales
  • Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
  • The Tales were supposed to be 120 stories but we only have 24 stories because Chaucer died before finishing
  • The Canterbury Tales are Estate Satire because they make fun of the abuses of the estates of this time
  • There are three states during the medieval period

1. The first is the Church, or those who prayed
2. The second would be the nobility, such as knights or other fighters
3. The third and lowest estate would be the peasantry
   • Women had estates based on sexual status: virgin, married, and widow
   • The characters of the Canterbury Tales
     • The narrator (Chaucer)
     • The Knight, a chivalrous and morally upstanding person. He is the father to the Squire and employer of the Yeoman
     • The Squire, son of the Knight, handsome and a flirt
     • The Yeoman, dressed in green uses bows and daggers
     • The Prioress, quiet, polite, dainty. Speaks incorrect French
     • The Monk, enjoys hunting more than doing religious things
     • The Friar, enjoys spending time in taverns with women and wealthy people, dislikes spending time with the poor and sick
     • The Merchant, appears wealthy but is poor and in debt
     • The Clerk, spends all his money on books
     • The Sergeant of Law, a lawyer who seems to be pretty good at his job
     • The Franklin, jovial landowner and good host
     • The Tradesmen, a group of five men who represent the new social class starting to form
     • The Cook, a good cook but has a large ulcer on his leg
     • The Shipman, a mean thug who is good at navigating
     • The Physician, an intelligent man who always knows how to cure his patients
     • The Plowman, a man who works in the fields and is nice and religious
     • The Parson, brother of the Plowman and who takes his job seriously and always helps the poor and sick
     • The Wife of Bath, a widower who has been married several times
     • The Miller, A big man who is loud and enjoys drinking
     • The Manciple, purchases food and supplies for a school and is dishonest
     • The Reeve, a manager who steals from his lord
     • The Pardoner, sells church pardons and likes money
   • The Miller’s Tale
     • This story is told by the Miller, who is drunk, and is a very humorous tale.
     • It is about a student named Nicholas having an affair with Alisoun. Nicholas tricks Alisoun’s husband John into hiding in a boat, while he sleeps with Alisoun. However, a parish clerk named Absolon arrives and sticks John in the rear with a hot poker after being humiliated by him and Alisoun.
   • The Faerie Queen
     • Written by Edmund Spenser, an English poet
     • In this story, the Red Cross Knight is instructed by Queen Elizabeth to go forth and kill a dragon. Along the way he encounters monsters and an evil wizard. He eventually finds and kills the dragon.
   • Gulliver’s Travels
     • Written by Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish writer and satirist
     • Gulliver’s Travels is considered satire
     • It begins with Lemuel Gulliver getting shipwrecked and ending up on an island called Lilliput
     • The people who inhabit this island are roughly the size of a person’s index finger
     • They tie Gulliver up and shoot his with arrows, this is only a minor nuisance to Gulliver
     • He is given food and taken to their capital
     • The king and his court decide not to kill Gulliver because of the stench his body would create and the fear of the plague
     • The kingdom of Lilliput is at war with their neighbors over which way is the correct way to crack an egg
     • He steals ships from the rival kingdom
     • He flees Lilliput after he is to be sentenced to death for putting out a fire by urinating on it
     • He later ends up in a land of giants called Brobdingnag
     • The people here are famers and are less militant than the people of Lilliput
     • Gulliver is exhibited for money by a farmer who finds him
     • He is the purchased by the queen
     • He talks with the king and is ashamed at how uncivilized England sounds when he tells the king about it
   • Julian of Norwich is an English writer who had 16 religious visions that she received while being incredibly ill and near death
   • Margery Kempe was an English Christian mystic
     • She wrote an autobiography called “The Book of Margery Kempe”
     • She is a very religious person who wishes to sleep in different beds from her husband so that she can be chaste and grow closer to god
     • She goes on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and cries the entire time, annoying everyone
     • She wishes to marry God
   • John Donne, an English poet who wrote “The Altar” and “Easter Wings” along with other works
     • Says that man is not an island but is all part of one great continent
   • Henry Vaughn, English poet
     • In his work “Cock-Crowing” he talks about how man is calling out to God and that every time the sun rises mankind is rejuvenated
   • Richard Crawshaw, English Poet
     • More gruesome than Henry Vaughn’s work
     • The wounds he talks about Christ having are on his eyes and his mouth
     • The wounds show emotion with his eyes crying blood and his mouth kissing things
     • Lacerations also look like mouths

• 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
      • Usually very comical
    • 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