Midterm Study Guide English 205

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