"Elegy" revisited

                I enjoyed reading Gray’s “Elegy.”  I found it an excellent example of the high and low culture juxtapositions we’ve been discussing in class – the comparison is certainly vividly present.  Because of this emphasis, it is also a lovely example of the period as a whole, which dealt with questions of urbanization, a rising middle class, and class consciousness beginning to unravel into nostalgia for the pastoral.  Yet I also enjoy the poem for what it is in itself: beautiful writing and a tender tribute to the life of those often forgotten.  Beyond its place in history, “Elegy” is a remarkable piece of literature.

                I wonder how often I’ve missed appreciating works when I get too caught up in seeing them as symbols of the time.  Sometimes I even find myself frustrated with a text for not containing just the right statement I need to prove in a paper that the text supports my argument about the historical setting.  I suppose that’s only natural – after all, the homework must be completed.  Yet in this class, we have read so much that is rich and meaningful and beautiful.  It would be a shame not to pause and recognize the beauty (or the humor, or the humanity, or any compelling feature) when it appears.  In “Elegy,” I love the little phrase, “One morn I missed him on the customed hill, along the heath and near his favorite tree” (109-10).  This sentence certainly does allude to urbanization, the problem with enclosure laws, and the disappearing rural life.  Yet also, it describes vividly the tenderness of the setting.  It places the concern for a disappearing way of life in a personal context.  “One morn I missed him,” it says – this way of phrasing the fact that the man does not appear recalls not just lament for his demographic or what he represents, but for him.   And that, perhaps, is the power of poetry: to say something larger (like the political scene) without overriding the immediate sense of the words.  The images created enhance the larger meaning, and they also stand alone and work together with that meaning.  This poem accomplishes both tasks – both layers of meaning – remarkably well.

Lord of the Rings Moment and The Wanderer

                As I read “The Wanderer,” I couldn’t help but be reminded of Lord of the Rings.  Perhaps that’s a testament to my nerdiness, perhaps (I’d like to think) a testament to an appreciation of genius.  And of course, it stands to reason that Anglo-Saxon literature would resemble Tolkien; after all, it is the original and he the copier.  Yet this poem in particular stood out as especially similar, making me wonder what he drew from it – or what both authors drew from life – that is so compelling.

                The most striking passage, I thought, was the ubi sunt – the “where are they?”  The speaker pleads, “Where did the steed go?  Where the young warrior?  Where the treasure-giver?  Where the seats of fellowship?  Where the hall’s festivity?” (92-3) For this warrior, at least, the world is in its latter days, beyond the golden times (though not by much) and looking back with deep nostalgia.  Though the speaker still lives in what we would consider a fairy-tale-esque world, he too is looking to the past to find the legendary years.  In Lord of the Rings too, characters live after the years of perfection.  Gondor is falling into ruin; Rohan looks to the past for consolation in the present.  All this digression is to point out that there is something romantic, common to our experience, and deeply moving about looking to the past and creating of it a time of legend and lore, glory and a story-like feel.  It seems that, living in the present moment, it is difficult to recognize the story we may be living right now.  However, the lives of this day become stories too, in time.  Such is the case for the wanderer, whose tale of woe now stirs up longing in me for an age that is past.  We do well to live our lives now in a way that will make the right kind of story for those to come.

No Forgiveness for Gawain

“For man’s crimes can be covered but never made clean;

Once sin is entwined it is attached for all time.” (2510-11)

This quote by Sir Gawain as he woefully displays his green girdle of shame to Arthur’s court has a lot to say about his view of sin.  At first glance, it sounds odd for a purportedly Christian hero to say.  Doesn’t Gawain model of piety as he is, know that the whole point of grace is to atone for sin?  It seems that Gawain doubts the power of forgiveness to remove his guilt.  However, a consideration of the contemporary values suggests another explanation for his lament.

During Middle English England, virtue was key to the chivalric code – and virtue meant total purity, down to the smallest action.  That is why Gawain is dismayed at his small indiscretion in the first place.  It is a flaw in his carefully maintained perfection, the root of his honor.  Still, why wouldn’t he recognize the power of God’s grace to purify him after this mistake?

Of course, one explanation could be simply that Gawain is not truly as Christian as he seems at first glance.  After all, he sometimes trusts more in magic than in God’s power, as shown by his choice of shield symbol and his ready acceptance of the magical girdle to protect him from the knight.  However, I think it also possible that Gawain’s definition of grace and forgiveness is what causes the discrepancy.  Steeped in the Christendom of his day, Gawain would no doubt recognize the salvific power of the atonement.  That does not mean, however, that he would understand (or accept for himself) the power of grace to really cleanse him from the guilt of sin in this life.  Perhaps, despite his Christian doctrine that Jesus had bought his salvation for after death, he still labored under all the guilt that imperfection inspired for a knight in this life.  To me, his view seems a misinterpretation of the gospel.  However, this explanation can make Gawain’s attitude seem less blatantly heretical and more just ignorant or struggling.

Romantic Values in Christianity

            In Anglo-Saxon and Middle English Britain, romance played a large role in literature.  I find it interesting to note how it also expanded into Christianity, endowing the faith with ideals of lost-ness, knighthood, and love. 

The Norton introduction on Romance states that romance is characterized by “a tripartite structure: integration… disintegration; and reintegration.”  That is, it deals with lost-ness and found-ness.  Sometimes, though, it says, “the desired pattern can… be frustrated” (141).  Such is certainly the case in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  In this romance, Christian values are at play throughout.  Gawain prays and attempts to live by Christian virtue as he sets out on his spiritual quest.  However, he fails.  Because of that, he returns home feeling irrevocably stained by sin, and certainly lost in the romantic sense. 

Even more intentionally Christian works demonstrate the impact of the romantic ideal. The impact of the ethic of knighthood shines through in “The Dream of the Rood.”  Christ climbs the cross to conquer death, and then “was victorious in venturing forth, / mighty and triumphant  when he returned with many” from the storming of Hell (150-1).  Here, as well as in “Corpus Christi Carol” where Jesus is explicitly called “a knight” (9), the romantic ideal of knighthood has found a foothold in Christian poetry.  The Biblical Jesus is not a warrior, at least during his life on Earth, but these poems identify him as a knight in the Anglo-Saxon style.

In Anglo-Saxon writing, even stories where Jesus himself is not made a knight invoke the Anglo-Saxon value of battle.  In Judith, the saintly maid wins glory through an act of war, and she receives spoils of war just as a warrior would do. 

Even the value of romantic love has an expression in Medieval Christianity.  The “Guide for Anchoresses” discusses suffering for the sake of love for Christ by comparing it to romantic love, saying “What do men and women suffer for false love and for unclean love?  And how much more they would still be willing to suffer!” (140).  The text uses romantic love as a metaphor for love for Christ.  Indeed, the practice of wearing wedding rings upon entering monastic life demonstrates the way that romantic love found a counterpart within Christianity, devalued though marriage was at the time.

This integration of surrounding cultural values into Christianity could be seen as corruption of the faith.  However, it could also be seen as an attempt (intentional or not) by the Church to make the story of faith relevant within the new cultural context.  Such has been the practice throughout the history of Christianity, and it takes place in our own time too.  It is helpful to consider how Christian writers used their cultural values, such as the romantic ideal, and shaped them in a new way to express their faith.

Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton is a very interesting and influential person for having lived such a short life, and I wanted to explore his life more than was covered in the high and low presentation. Chatterton was born in 1753, three months after his father, who was a school teacher, died. He was raised in poverty, attending a charity school. Bound as an apprentice to a lawyer at age 14, Chatterton began writing poems, and eventually started fabricating documents.  He ended up inventing a 15th century poet priest named Thomas Rawley. Chatterton moved to London in April, 1770, to try and make it as a writer, but ended up dying on August 24th at age 17 from an overdose on arsenic.

His poems weren't discovered until after his death, inspiring a lot of controversy over whether the Rawley poems were authentic. When it was finally discovered that they were written by a teenager, people were impressed and amazed. Some people consider him to be the first romantic poet - his story and young death inspired a lot of Romantics, becoming an obsession for some writers. Woodsworth, Blake, Coleridge, Keats, and Dante all mention or allude to him in their poetry. Chatterton inspired a lot of debate about the value of impersonation, and whether a well-done trick is better than original creativity. Some writers ignore him, others adore him, but overall, Chatterton is an example of how writers are often made famous after their deaths, becoming almost larger than life through their work and the speculations people make about their lives. With Chatterton especially it is interesting to see how such a young person can be made so much of, especially when he died before he accomplished his goals and hopes for life.

Jonathan Swift and CORE 250

When reading Jonathan Swift's essay, "A Modest Proposal," I am always astounded by how rational he makes his proposal of eating babies and children seem. That is the point, and his use of satire is incredible in this essay, making the reader both horrified and curious as to what he'll come up with next. But, again, the main thing I always take away from reading "A Modest Proposal" is how rational and reasonable his argument sounds, if you let go of any moral qualms.

We had our final discussion today in CORE 250, where the professors asked us questions about which thinkers we identified with and why, making us reflect on the different ideas presented in each unit. It was really interesting listening to what everyone had to say, especially in relation to how people find truth. One student argued from a Descartes standpoint, eventually ending his argument by stating that it is impossible to really prove anything beyond your own existence. Other people shared their opinions, eventually concluding that it is possible to use reason to prove or disprove anything. This made me think of "A Modest Proposal," and how rational Swift makes his proposal sound. What morals do people have in place that make his proposal of eating Irish children so horrifying, yet allow for their mistreatment and harm? I don't know if it was Leonard Oakland playing the devil's advocate today in CORE or if I've just been think more about how humans use reason to justify and explain things, but I found this connection interesting.

The Name Game

I had set off to research the name Judith to understand the allusions better. I understand the reference to The Book of Judith in the Bible, but I was just curious to see what else the interwebs had to say about this name. Really I had been curious since the baby in The Walking Dead had been named Judith. I didn't find much, but a happened upon some very cool allusions about Holofernes as a name.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “Holofernes” is  of Persian origin, similar information [sic] to ‘Artaphernes,’ ‘Dataphernes,’ ‘Tissaphernes,’ the last element of each of which is ‘pharna’ means ‘glorious’.  Is it possible that the unknown Anglo-Saxon poet and his audience  aware of this meaning?  What associations might have been made, then, with the name?

The first element may appear to be similar to Old English holh or hol, which can mean “hole,” “hollow” or “perforation.”  Hol  also has the meaning of “slander.”  No obvious associations here; in any case Judith’s beheading of Holofernes could hardly be considered “perforation,” unless understood as an extreme understatement!  The verb holian means “to oppress,” which could have some resonance: Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar, was sent to subdue or oppress the Jewish people.  Finally, and probably most fittingly,  Hloh, meaning “laughed."

Heolfor (“gore,” “blood”), also appearing in Beowulf and Andreas – poems which deal with similarly heroic matter – and heolfrig (“gory,” “bloody”), which itself appears in Judith, may have evoked a more distant kind of resonance, connecting the name of the enemy general to his bloody fate at the hands of the poem’s heroine. Perhaps the strongest connection is to be found not in Old English but in Latin.  Infernus means “infernal,” and fernus  is a perfect match with the Old English version of the villain’s name, Holofernus.  Certainly the poet dwells on Holofernes’s hellish fate once his head is cut off by Judith.