Midterm Review – Crimson Miscellany

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