the flourishing and the autumn of Middle English literature

the 15th century

autumn of the Middle Ages

Scottish Chaucerians

followers of Chaucer in Scotland

John Lydgate

scottish chauserian, ,,The Troy Book’’

King James I of Scotland

scottish chauserian, ,,The Kingis Quair’’

Robert Henryson

scottish chauserian, ,,The Testament of Cresseid’’

William Dunbar

scottish chaucerian, ,,Lament for the Marakis’’

Gavin Douglas

scottish chauserian, ,,The Palace of Honour’’

Troilus and Criseyde Geoffrey Chaucer

doomed love of Troilus and Criseyde in ancient Troy attacked by the Greeks

multigenre masterpiece: romance, epic poem, Boethian tragedy, discussing philosophical themes (free will, predestination) and ethical questions related to war

a novel in verse=complex psychological characters

criticizes courtly love

criticized by audience for presenting an unfaithful lover

troilus and criseyde summary

Troilus, a younger son of Priam, king of Troy, criticizes love until he sees Criseyde and falls in love with her

Criseyde, widow, daughter of priest and astronomer Calkas. He forsees the fall of Troy and chooses the side of Greece. The Trojans wish his family to be punished.

Criseyde escapes the execution by begging Hector for mercy.

Criseyde’s uncle, Pandarus, helps Troilus win her love

Criseyde and Troilus enjoy a love affair but the Greeks demand Criseyde in exchange for war prisoners. Criseyde agrees to go, promising she will come back in a week or two but she finds a new lover there: Diomede

Troilus consumed with grief sees Diomede wearing a broche he had given Criseyde; in despair Troilus devotes imself to a battle and dies; his soul ascends into heaven looking down on small human affairs

Robert Henryson, Testament of Cresseid summary

on a cold winter night the narrator read Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, he has a different version of this story and decides to retell it.

After some time Diomede gets bored with Criseyde and she becomes available to anyone. She comes to her father Calkas, isolates herself from anyone, blaming the gods of love for her misfortunes.

The gods punish Criseyde with leprosy. She joins the lepers and wanders with them begging for food.

One day Troilus corsses her path, returning from a fight with Greeks. There is a scene of recognition without a recognition. He is super generous to Crisseyde while he is sitting on a horse and she on the ground.

Crisseyde reveals herself and condemn for her mistakes and praises Troilus. She writes down her last will in which she gives him her royal ring with a ruby.

After her death Troilus arranges honorable burial and monument to be built on her tomb

Ends with a warning for females: don’t be deceitful in love

Medieval Carnivalesque literature

humourous tales in which the social order and the rules of its representatives genres such as chivalric/courtly romance are inverted, as during the carnival

The Land of Cockayne

example of medieval carnivalesque;

carnivalesque parody of idealized dream-visions, depicts Earthy paradise where rivers flow with oil, milk, honey and wine. The abbey is built from rich foodstuffs, roast geese fly. Monks can fly like birds of prey and monks and nuns indulge in sexual orgies; satirizes religious practices: an atonement to get to the land is to get through the pig’s shit for 7 years.

estates satire

in Chaucer’s works. Exposes the typical voces of various social groups and thei failure to maintain moral standards, e.g. ,,General Prologue’’

parody

in Chaucer’s works. Distorted imitation of a genre or work. Chaucer’s parody of popular romance in the ,,Tale of Sir Thopas’’

fabliau

short tale in verse with bawdy humour, parodying romance and ideals of chivalry and courtly love

revolves around a plot of cuckoldry (a trick played by a clerk/student upon a naive burgeois husband) in a localized setting; there is no moral (a disrespectable character profits and respectable one suffers)

flourished in the 13th century in France, adopted by Chaucer: Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale)

there is a theory that the creators of fabliau were Oxford students

Geoffrey Chaucer ,,The Miller’s Tale’’

Nicholas, Oxford students rents a room from a prosperous but a foolish carpenter John who has a young and pretty wife Alison. The students flirts with her on display. She has been ineptly (nieudolnie) courted for a while by another young man Absolon, a parish clerk but scorns his advances

To spend a night with Alison in bedroom, Nicolas warns John of a coming flood that will drown the world. John makes three wooden tubs to save himself, Alison and Nicholas. While John falls asleep in his tub, Alison and Nicholas go make love in marital bed

At the same time Absolon is serenading under Alison’s window. She tricks him to kiss her at the unmentionable part of her body. This triggers of a sequence of outrageous events.

John is the main victim of the intrigue, Alison goes unpunished

beast fable

short story in verse with animal characters and clear morals ,,Nun’s Priest Tale’’

beast epic

a narrative made up of episodes linked together by the recurrence of the clever but deceitful fox Reynard and the the fiercer but stupider wolf Isengrim: full of humour, tricks, dialogue, mock-heroic effects, no morals

animal debate

two or more birds argue for their opposing point of view. ,,Parlament of the Fouls’’

aetiological tale

explains the origins of something in nature

folktale

based on oral folklore

saint’s lives and legends

Prioress Tale

exemplum

short, realistic narratives illustrating moral stories of famous figures of history or legend adapted for moral instruction

mystical writing

about intimate communion with God, recording the spiritual experience of knowing, seeing and loving God)

Julian of Norwich

Lived in permament seclusion as an achoress in her cell attached to St. Julian’s Church, Norwich during a serious illness she received a series of visions of the Passion of Christ. When she recovered she wrote her ,,Revalations of Divine Love’’, the earliest English work written by a woman

She saw Jesus as a mother, wrote in straightforward Middle English

Margery Kempe

married with at least 14 children, eventually negotiated a chast marriage with her husband; wrote by dictation The Book of Margery Kempe, a spiritual autobiography depicting her domestic affairs, pilgrimages to holy places in Europe and the Holy Land, her mystical visions and experiences

poems of supplication

prayers in verse adressed to Mary, God, Saints

poems of Nativity

about waiting for the advent and the birth of Jesus, carols about the joys of Christmas

poems of the passion

about crucifixion and the sufferings of Jesus and Mary; Jesus is portrayed as a Man of Sorrows; as a knight jousting for his lady=mankind

poems of adoration

the verse praises Jesus, God the Father and blessed Virgin Mary

dulia

praise of saints ; type of poem of adoration

hyperdulia

praise of Mary ; type of poem of adoration

latria

worship reserved for God alone ; type of poem of adoration

poems of life and death

stressing mortality, the brevity of human life, its fleeting nature

dance of death topos, memento mori

medieval drama

origin in the liturgy of the church, independent of the ancient classical traditions

tropes=chanted Latin dialogues performed by priests during Massque

quem quaeritis

the dialogue on Eastern Morning between the three Marys and the Angel at the tomb of Jesus Christm

mystery play cycles

dramatizations in English of incidents from the Old and New Testament and apocrypha

in 1210 Pope ordered them out of church, they first went into the churchyard and then into the town square, became increasingly secularized

composed in cycles: events from the bible

always the same subjects and incidents but differently written and performed in every town all over England, performed usually on Corpus Christi by the town’s guild/craftsmen: each profession had a play assigned to them.

in some towns wagons served as a movable stage going to different sites in the town,

to entertain the public, comic episodes were often inserted in the biblical stories in a carnivalesque manner

lost their importance after the reformation 16th c

second sheperd’s play

3 sheperds complaining, Mak enters telling that his wife keeps giving more mouth to feed. He steals one of the sheep and his wife Gil pretends that it’s their baby. Sheperds can’t find the sheep but quickly realize that the sheep is in cradle. Then Jesus is born??

morality play

allegorical dramatization of the inner moral struggle, dramatized sermon with carnivalesque humour

psychomania: a character is a tyical representative of society, there’s a fight for his soul

the characters are personifications of virtues, vices and death. Supernatural beings: God, bad and good angels, demons

openly didactic, always ends with character’s repentance

performed on a single static stage

,,Everyman’’

,,Everyman’’

the most famous morality play,

God states that humans prefer material things rather than him. He sends Death to summon Everyman to live his life and reconcile it

Everyman tries to postpone it by bribing Death, he seeks travel companions but is deserted by Kin and Riches, he can only rely on Good Deeds that is too weak (lying in chains in the ground)

Good Deeds asks her sister Knowledge for confession for Everyman. He experiences remorse and atones by giving away his possesions to the poor, Good Deeds strenghtened rises from the ground

Beauty, Strength, Discretion and Five Wits accompany him, but at the moment of dying he is left behind by everyone except for Good Deeds

He dies gladly and without fear, he is met by an angel. Only Good Deeds will accompany a human after their death. Only things that we gave on Earth matter.