"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.

The Beggar's Opera

 Bertolt Brecht, a German dramatist adapted Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" as a critical view in a capitalist world during WWII in Germany. Both plays ridicule  the aristocracy in the nature of high and low class, using the opera as an event where many high class people would have the opportunity to view the satirical play.

The timing of both plays in regards to economical changes within each country is interesting. Brecht  was immersed in Marxist thought after he became a Marxist, which heavily influenced his adaptation of "The Beggar's Opera". He saw the capitalist society as hypocritical and corrupt and suggested that since drama had been defeated by capitalism, art should be an agent for social change.

I think it is interesting how true that statement has been since the very beginning of writing for art's sake. Each poem, hymn, sonnet, play and so on is written to applaud, appease, or appeal some sort of social norm or social change. Sometimes I do not understand why there are so many adaptations of different plays or even movies, but through Gay and Brecht it is easy to recognize that each adaptation serves a different purpose in different economical and political settings.

A Sentimental Journey

When I presented the extremely brief biography of Laurence Sterne in Izze's and my presentation on "High People and Low People," we didn't have time to go into a lot of detail about his book, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. This book was written after he was criticized for his bawdy humor in his first book, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - his humor was considered so inappropriate because of his occupation as a clergyman. While a funny life fact of Sterne's, it's interesting to think about the standard we place on people based on their occupation, and how this would still happen today if a pastor or priest published a book that was seen as inappropriate for a church leader to write, but one that, say, a member of their congregation could get away with writing.

In covering A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, there were some "fun facts" that I didn't have time to share. I also wanted to reflect on it because it was not what I was expecting at all when I started reading the section in the Norton Anthology. The protagonist in this piece is Parson Yorick, who is named after Yorick the skull in Hamlet, and who also makes an appearance in Tristram Shandy. This section included in the Norton Anthology is a scene of Parson Yorick interacting with a shopkeeper's wife, and through that interaction, comments on the consumerism culture and how different classes interact with each other, a good reflection on high people and low people. The tone of the narrator remains very innocent throughout the passage, but it also allows the reader to be suspicious and to read a lot into their interaction, because it does tend to be rather flirtatious. While it does seem innocent, it makes me curious how Parson Yorick flirting with a married woman wasn't considered scandalous, especially after Sterne got in so much trouble for his "bawdy humor" in Tristram Shandy. The piece ends with Parson Yorick "counting the money into her hand, and with a lower bow than one generally makes to a shopkeeper's wife, I went out," leaving behind the shop (2453). This is good commentary on social structure and norms, because the treatment of people in certain classes is reflected even in the depth of a person's bow. He is obviously crossing that boundary in this section, the quote seeming less innocent after reading the rest of their conversation earlier in the writing.

Gender Identity and Early Moden Literature

We saw obvious cross dressing in Twelfth Night. QE1 lived outside of societal gender norms being unmarried and childless. From a little bit of research it was easy to find reference to gender swapping, cross dressing and gender fluidity in renaissance England. Although it was highly frowned upon, people were explorative of their gender counterparts. Gender is a complex thing that was not as well understood or diverse as it is today. With many different forms of gender identity today, I am curious about the influence of Early Modern Literature in our own culture today. Would the use of male characters playing the role of female characters be offensive today? I don't think people would fret much at the cross dressing, but I wonder if the ideals that women hold themselves at today would influence the need to have men cross dress. Would it even work in a society that does not see cross dressing as being so awful anymore? The reasons that men played female characters, from what I understand, was because the theatre was attempting to protect the innocence of females in sexualized roles and such. Men could depict a woman as a sexual deviant, but women shouldn't play that role. Today, however, that is so obviously not an issue.

This is mostly a train of thought about how the many different gender roles in today's society would look at literature like Twelfth Night. I wonder if people who identify themselves as gender fluid would feel like this is progressive or if it is a mockery of their gender identity.

The Wakesfield Mysteries

Having little knowledge about biblical literature, I was hesitant to attend this show. Worried that I wasn't going to meet the criteria in understand the actor's perspective and trying to bare in mind the  readings of the Mystery Plays, I walked in overwhelmed by my responsibility as an audience member. I sat unknowingly about what was going to unfold on stage and looked for familiar faces in hopes to discuss the production after it was finished. No such luck. So, I sat and sat trying to remember everything we had talked about in class;  Liturgical texts, miracles, the role of the audience, mediocre and extravagant actors.

The production began and I was so relieved to be able to recognize the trinity (which was beautifully depicted), the sly modern-day Lucifer and his fall,  the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood (my favorite), Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity, and the Raising of Lazarus. The adaption to modern day times made the production much more relatable and gleaned light on the texts we had read in class. It was easy to make references to conversations we had in class regarding depicted miracles and church authority.

Shakespeare and Oronooko

First, Oronooko was one of my favorite readings for this course. While the text is outright disturbing at times and hard to read, the underlying message of slavery and the psychology within each character was highly influential. I thought it was interesting to compare the descriptive language and behavior that characterized the protagonist in racially diverse literature.

The language used to describe Oronooko resembled Shakespeare's description of Othello in "Othello". The troubles and tribulations that Othello had faced were expressed in his long monologues throughout the play, explaining where he had been to draw from experiences that made him the man he had become. It was interesting to see Behn describe Oronooko as, "This great and just character... he spoke French and English... He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied"(2317). She continues to describe his physical attributes from his eyes and nose to the color of his ebony skin. Desdemona also described Othello's appearance in a similar way. His skin was dark, his nose was broad, his eyes were piercing, and he was well traveled and well spoken in more than one language. Obviously Othello and Oronooko have something else in common too, they both strangle their wife.

I know Shakespeare borrowed many ideas and developed characters from other works, but I wonder if he used Behn's character to develop his own. I also wonder if the love triangle in "The Tempest" with Caliban was borrowed from Imoinda, the king and Oronooko's relationships.

Chaucer in the HUB

The plays performed by the Chaucer class, first the “Nun’s/Priest’s Tale,” and then the Christmas play about the trial of Mary and Joseph, were performed well by the Chaucer class and added a lot of fun to the HUB on Thursday.

            The first play was about a rooster getting tricked by a fox, then having to use his wits to escape. The rooster has a dream in the beginning of the play that he is going to die because of a vicious fox. He tells his favorite wife about the dream, and she tells him to not worry about it too much, that a dream is just a dream. He ignores her, telling her that men have seen the future in dreams, and that she shouldn’t tell him what to do, especially considering how advice from women has been fatal before. There was a collective groan and hiss from the audience at this point. The rooster does end up getting outsmarted and captured by the fox, and the actors were very funny in this scene. In order to escape, the rooster in turn outsmarts the fox, and the play ends with the fox cursing himself for being deceived, the moral being to be careful of when and how much you speak.

            The second play was a Christmas play about the trial of Mary and Joseph. The class performed the play in southern accents, which, as we learned in this class, actually works really well with the rhythm and pattern of the words. The play describes the trial of Mary, an unmarried woman who is pregnant yet claims to be a virgin. The play was very funny, ending with the satisfying demise of the villain, with Mary and Joseph happy with the conflict resolved. This story is not in the bible, and it was an interesting take on an event that could have potentially taken place.

            I was working at the info desk during the plays, and it was really fun seeing the audience that gathered and listening to their reactions and participation with the plays. This was a perfect example of how the humor in these plays is still just as relevant and funny today as it was when they were first written and performed, and the actors did a great job making the plays funny and entertaining. It was very fun to be both an audience member and an observer of the overall event.