The Formation of Western Literature

The Formation of Western Literature Into the Middle Ages First an Overview

Contrary to popular belief, the medieval period cannot be characterized as entirely barbaric. During this period, national literatures in the vernacular appeared. • Due to their disparate influences, literature and culture in medieval Europe were very diverse, drawing from different, often conflicting sources. • In his Confessions, Augustine sets down the story of his early life for the benefit of others, combining the intellectual tradition of the ancient world and the religious feeling that would come to be characteristic of the Middle Ages.

Composed around 850, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulfspeaks about the warring lifestyle of the Germanic and Scandinavian groups that conquered the Roman empire. • Not only does the Song of Roland set the foundation for the French literary tradition, but it also establishes the narrative about the foundation of France itself. • The twelfth century, Marie de France helped establish the major forms and themes of vernacular literature, especially for what we now call romances, novelistic narratives that deal with adventure and love.

The thirteenth-century story Thorstein the Staff-Struck is a short example of the Icelandic saga tradition that speaks about the lives of men and women who lived in Iceland and Norway between the ninth and eleventh centuries. • These Icelandic Sagas were especially the love of JRR Tolkien. • Beginning in Provence around 1100, the love lyric spread to Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, and eventually England.

The Divine Comedyoffers Dante's controversial political and religious beliefs within a formal and cosmological framework that evokes the three-in-one of the Christian Trinity: God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit. • Best known for his Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio was one of the many medieval writers who contributed to the revival of classical literary traditions that would come to fruition in the Italian Renaissance and later spread to other parts of Europe.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight revives the "native" Anglo-Saxon tradition first seen in Beowulf that had apparently been submerged between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries following the Norman Conquest. • Although Chaucer's Canterbury Tales does not appear to be overtly political, it was written during a period of considerable political and religious turmoil that would eventually give rise to the Protestant Reformation.

Anonymously written plays such as Everyman focused on morality or were dramatic enactments of homilies and sermons. And Now On to the Particulars

Contrary to popular belief, the medieval period cannot be characterized as entirely barbaric. During this period, national literatures in the vernacular appeared. • During the Middle Ages, the classical civilization of Greece and Rome was radically transformed as a consequence of contact with Germanic tribes from the north, Christians from Palestine, and Muslims from the Arabian peninsula and northern Africa.

Due to such disparate cultural forces, medieval Europe was hardly unified, politically or culturally, by 500. • Within the next thousand years, common ideas and values emerged such as consensual government, recognition of religious difference, and individualism. • Though these ideas and values have come to be associated with "the West," they were not always practiced at home and were seldom practiced in occupied territories.

Known as "the busy millennium," the medieval period in Europe produced literature concerned with religious faith and the appropriate use of physical force. • Though characters from medieval European works are often discussed as archetypal individuals who seek to understand themselves and their destinies better, many of these works borrow from culturally specific non-Western traditions.

That these characters were later exported back to non-Western parts of the world as part of the colonial education system may account for their so-called universal appeal.

In his Confessions, Augustine sets down the story of his early life for the benefit of others, combining the intellectual tradition of the ancient world and the religious feeling that would come to be characteristic of the Middle Ages. • Born in Tagaste, North Africa, Aurelius Augustine did not convert to Christianity until midway through his life. 354-430

He went on to become the bishop of Hippo, North Africa, and one of the men responsible for the consolidation of the Christian church in the west. • In The Confessions, he talks with humility directly to God, aware that God is concerned for him personally, and comes to an understanding of his own feelings and development as a human being.

The Confessions • Augustine probably began work on the Confessions around the year 397, when he was 43 years old. • Augustine’s precise motivation for writing his life story at that point is not clear, but there are at least two possible causes. • First, his contemporaries were suspicious of him because of his Classical, pagan-influenced education; his brilliant public career as a rhetor; and his status as an ex-Manichee. (Ancient religion of Iranian origin). • Another motivation may have been a bit of correspondence between Augustine’s close friend Alypius and a notable Christian convert, Paulinus of Nola, a Roman aristocrat who had renounced the world and his immense family fortune upon converting to Christianity. Alypius wrote to Paulinus and sent him some of Augustine’s works. Paulinus wrote back to ask Alypius for an account of Alypius’ life and conversion.

Basic Structure • Structurally, the Confessions falls into three segments: • Books 1 through 9 recount Augustine’s life and his spiritual journey. • Book 10 is a discussion of the nature of memory and an examination of the temptations Augustine was still facing. • Books 11 through 13 are an extended exegesis of the first chapter of Genesis. • The sharp differences between these three parts have raised many questions about the unity of the Confessions. • Augustine himself commented in his Retractiones that the first ten books were about himself, and the other three were about scripture. • Some critics argue that, in fact, the Confessions has no unified structure, and Augustine simply proceeded without an overall plan for the work. • Others think the final four books were tacked on at a later date. Still others have contended that the Confessions is, in fact, unfinished, and that Augustine intended the autobiographical portion simply as an introduction to a much longer work, either a full analysis of the book of Genesis (Augustine produced several of these analyses) or a catechism for new members of the church.

Augustine opens his spiritual biography with a magnificent flourish of praise to God. • The opening paragraph contains one of Augustine’s most famous statements about humanity’s relationship with God: “You stir us to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (translation, Chadwyck). • This pithy sentence summarizes a knotty proposition, one that is a major theme of Augustine’s works and one that the rest of the opening simply restates and amplifies:

In calling upon God, Augustine shows faith, because he cannot call upon a God he does not know. • God fills all of creation; God is perfect, eternal, unchangeable, all-powerful, and the source of all goodness. • God is beyond Augustine’s ability to describe; he asks God for the words to describe such greatness. Augustine pleads that he is too small and weak for God to come to him, but only God can aid him. • The Confessions is always called a story of conversion. Augustine actually undergoes several conversions: • to Manichaeism; to the pursuit of truth, • with Cicero’s Hortensius; to an intellectual acceptance of Christian doctrine; and finally • to an emotional acceptance of Christian faith.

Yet the term “conversion” is somewhat misleading. Even the young Augustine was never truly in doubt about the existence of God. • Although he flirted briefly with the radical skepticism of the Academics, he was always certain, even as a Manichee, that Christ was the savior of the world. Augustine simply had the details wrong—in his view, disastrously wrong • Human beings naturally long to “rest” in God, to know God and to harmonize their wills with God’s will. But because they are weak and sinful, humans can never hope to do this without God’s assistance. In fact, all human impulses toward God have their origin in God.

Augustine discusses his infancy, which he knows only from the report of his parents. According to that report, Augustine became more aware and tried unsuccessfully to communicate his desires to the adults around him. • Only God can say whether people exist in some form before infancy; Augustine says that his own knowledge is limited to what God reveals. • God knows no past or future, only one eternal present. Even as an infant, Augustine was not free from sin. • Observing infants, he notes that they throw tantrums if they do not get their way, although they are too weak to cause actual harm. • Augustine thanks God for the good gifts of his body, his life, and his senses, gifts that reflect God’s perfect ordering of all things.

The Confessions is in one sense Augustine’s personal story, but it is also a story with an almost mythological or archetypal appeal. • Augustine is a kind of everyman, representing a lost and struggling humanity trying to rediscover the divine, the only source of true peace and satisfaction. • As in a fairy tale, the outcome of the Confessions is never really in doubt; its hero is predestined to find what he seeks.

Aligheri Dante 1265-1321 • Dante was born in Florence, Italy, in 1265. This would be one of those meaningless, soon forgotten facts if it were not so significant for the works Dante produced. • It happened to be the wrong place at the wrong time. • The two most influential families in Florence were the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. • The Guelphs were supporters of the Pope and the Ghibellines supported the German emperor, who claimed power in Italy. • Shortly before Dante was born, the Ghibellines were ousted from power, and the Guelphs, with whom Dante's family was associated, took power.

Dante began his own political career in 1295 when the Guelphs were firmly established and many of the Ghibellines were still in exile. • At that time, however, a split began in the Guelphs; the two sides became known later as the Whites and the Blacks. • The crisis came to a head in 1300 when the Whites, who were in power, decided to prosecute the Blacks who had gone to Rome to ask the Pope to intervene on their behalf. (Remember, the Guelphs had backed the Pope—he owed them a favor.) • Dante was one of the six White leaders responsible for this decision. In 1301, the next year, the Blacks staged a successful coup and the White leaders, including Dante, were sent into exile.

In 1302, charged with graft, hostility against the Pope, and a long list of other crimes, in his absence Dante was sentenced to death--if he was ever caught in Florence again. • Consequently, Dante never returned to his home city. This exile also meant that Dante's fortunes, which were not as large as his family had once held, were confiscated. He spent the remainder of his life living at the expense and generosity of friends. He died in Ravenna in 1321. • He first saw his lifelong love, Beatrice Portinari (c.1265--90), when they were both nine in 1274. • There is no evidence that she returned his passion, and only one further meeting between the two, nine years later, is recorded. • She was married at an early age to one Simone de' Bardi, but neither this nor the poet's own subsequent marriage interfered with his pure and platonic devotion to her. • He was betrothed to Gemma Donati in 1277 (remember he would have been twelve then!) whom he later married.

There were three children: Jacopo, Pietro, and Antonia. (Some of the historians mention a fourth, Giovanni.) • When Dante's sons were fourteen, they also had to join their father in exile. Both Jacopo and Pietro later wrote about the Divine Comedy. • Antonia entered a convent and took the name Sister Beatrice. • By choosing to write his poem in Italian rather than in Latin, Dante decisively influenced the course of literary development. • Not only did he lend a voice to the emerging lay culture of his own country, but Italian became the literary language in western Europe for several centuries. • In addition to poetry Dante wrote important theoretical works ranging from discussions of rhetoric to moral philosophy and political thought. • He was fully conversant with the classical tradition, drawing for his own purposes on such writers as Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius. But, most unusual for a layman, he also had an impressive command of the most recent scholastic philosophy and of theology. • Dante was a political thinker in the mediaeval tradition, a rhetorician, and a philosopher, the chief poet of the Italians, and one of the world's greatest writers.

The Divine Comedy • This great work of medieval literature is a profound Christian vision of man's temporal and eternal destiny. On its most personal level, it draws on the poet's own experience of exile from his native city of Florence; • on its most comprehensive level, it may be read as an allegory, taking the form of a journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise. • The poem amazes by its array of learning, its penetrating and comprehensive analysis of contemporary problems, and its inventiveness of language and imagery. Beatrice and Dante

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 1370-1380 Major Themes: • The Nature of Chivalry • The Letter of the Law • Theme of Fidelity: Serious reflection upon human behavior. "A Loving Critique of Chivalry.” quoted by Christopher Tolkien in his introduction.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Verse Form: Middle English but not Chaucer’s • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written in a style typical of the what is called by linguists the "Alliterative Revival" of the 14th century. • Instead of focusing on a metrical syllabic count and rhyme, the alliterative form of this period usually relied on the agreement of a pair of stressed syllables at the beginning of the line and another pair at the end of the line. • The line always finds a "breath-point", or pause, called a caesura, at some point after the first two stresses, dividing the line into two half-lines.

Alternative Rhyme. Vocabulary very rich influenced by French (in court) & dialect words. Arthurian setting. • Although he largely follows the form of his day, the Gawain poet was somewhat more free with convention than his predecessors. The poet broke his alliterative lines into variable-length groups and ended these nominal stanzas with a rhyming section of five lines known as the bob and wheel: • Stanzas quite elaborated : 4 stresses sylables lines (3 firsts alliterate) arranged into pairs, followed by Bob & Wheel (5 lines=1+4). one one-stress line rhyming a (the bob) and four three-stress lines rhyming baba (the wheel). These lines also alliterated.[1] On the whole, the poem takes up 2530 lines, divided into four parts and 101 stanzas. • Thus the romance follows a strict rhyme scheme.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 1370-1380 Major Themes: The Nature of Chivalry • The world of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is governed by well-defined codes of behavior. The code of chivalry, in particular, shapes the values and actions of Sir Gawain and other characters in the poem. • The ideals of chivalry derive from the Christian concept of morality, and the proponents of chivalry seek to promote spiritual ideals in a spiritually fallen world.

The ideals of Christian morality and knightly chivalry are brought together in Gawain’s symbolic shield. • As the poet explains, the five points of the star each have five meanings: • they represent the five senses, the five fingers, • the five wounds of Christ,[12] • the five joys that Mary had of Jesus (the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Assumption), and • the five virtues of knighthood which Gawain hopes to embody: noble generosity, fellowship, purity, courtesy, and compassion.

Gawain’s adherence to these virtues is tested throughout the poem, but the poem examines more than Gawain’s personal virtue; it asks whether heavenly virtue can operate in a fallen world. • What is really being tested in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight might be the chivalric system itself, symbolized by Camelot.

Arthur’s court depends heavily on the code of chivalry, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight gently criticizes the fact that chivalry values appearance and symbols over truth. • Arthur is introduced to us as the “most courteous of all,” indicating that people are ranked in this court according to their mastery of a certain code of behavior and good manners. • When the Green Knight challenges the court, he mocks them for being so afraid of mere words, suggesting that words and appearances hold too much power over the company. The members of the court never reveal their true feelings, instead choosing to seem beautiful, courteous, and fair-spoken.

On his quest for the Green Chapel, Gawain travels from Camelot into the wilderness. In the forest, Gawain must abandon the codes of chivalry and admit that his animal nature requires him to seek physical comfort in order to survive. • Once he prays for help, he is rewarded by the appearance of a castle. The inhabitants of Bertilak’s castle teach Gawain about a kind of chivalry that is more firmly based in truth and reality than that of Arthur’s court. • These people are connected to nature, as their hunting and even the way the servants greet Gawain by kneeling on the “naked earth” symbolize (818). • As opposed to the courtiers at Camelot, who celebrate in Part 1 with no understanding of how removed they are from the natural world, Bertilak’s courtiers joke self-consciously about how excessively lavish their feast is.

The poem does not by any means suggest that the codes of chivalry be abandoned. Gawain’s adherence to them is what keeps him from sleeping with his host’s wife. • The lesson Gawain learns as a result of the Green Knight’s challenge is that, at a basic level, he is just a physical being who is concerned above all else with his own life. Chivalry provides a valuable set of ideals toward which to strive, but a person must above all remain conscious of his or her own mortality and weakness. • Gawain’s time in the wilderness, his flinching at the Green Knight’s axe, and his acceptance of the lady’s offering of the green girdle teach him that though he may be the most chivalrous knight in the land, he is nevertheless human and capable of error.

The Letter of the Law • Though the Green Knight refers to his challenge as a “game,” he uses the language of the law to bind Gawain into an agreement with him. He repeatedly uses the word “covenant,” meaning a set of laws, a word that evokes the two covenants represented by the Old and the New Testaments. • The Old Testament details the covenant made between God and the people of Israel through Abraham, but the New Testament replaces the old covenant with a new covenant between Christ and his followers. In 2 Corinthians 3:6, Paul writes that Christ has “a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” • The “letter” to which Paul refers here is the legal system of the Old Testament. From this statement comes the Christian belief that the literal enforcement of the law is less important than serving its spirit, a spirit tempered by mercy.

Throughout most of the poem, the covenant between Gawain and the Green Knight evokes the literal kind of legal enforcement that medieval Europeans might have associated with the Old Testament. • The Green Knight at first seems concerned solely with the letter of the law. Even though he has tricked Gawain into their covenant, he expects Gawain to follow through on the agreement. And Gawain, though he knows that following the letter of the law means death, is determined to see his agreement through to the end because he sees this as his knightly duty. • At the poem’s end, the covenant takes on a new meaning and resembles the less literal, more merciful New Testament covenant between Christ and his Church. In a decidedly Christian gesture, the Green Knight, who is actually Gawain’s host, Bertilak, absolves Gawain because Gawain has confessed his faults.

To remind Gawain of his weakness, the Green Knight gives him a penance, in the form of the wound on his neck and the girdle. The Green Knight punishes Gawain for breaking his covenant to share all his winnings with his host, but he does not follow to the letter his covenant to decapitate Gawain. Instead of chopping Gawain’s head off, Bertilak calls it his right to spare Gawain and only nicks his neck. • Ultimately, Gawain clings to the letter of the law. He cannot accept his sin and absolve himself of it the way Bertilak has, and he continues to do penance by wearing the girdle for the rest of his life. The Green Knight transforms his literal covenant by offering Gawain justice tempered with mercy, but the letter of the law still threatens in the story’s background, and in Gawain’s own psyche.

“Felix Culpa” • The Felix Culpa is a Latin phrase that literally translated means a "blessed fault" or "fortunate fall.“ The idea is that so wonderful is God’s grace that it is was worth our fall in Eden to see Him work: • The medieval mind loved the tension of opposites especially at Christmas Tide. Note the following quote from the Middle English Carol: • This sillie Babe, so few days old,Is come to rifle Satan's fold;All hell doth at His presence quake,Though He himself for cold do shake

However in another carol, “Adam Lay Ibounden,” the fortunate fall comes up overtly: Adam lay ibounden, Bounden in a bond. Four a-thousand winter Thoght he not too long And all was for an apple An apple that he tokAs clerkesfindenWreten in here book Click Here to Hear this

Ne hadde the appil take ben, The appil taken ben, Ne hadde never our lady A ben hevene quene. Blessed be the time That appil take was, Therefore we moun singen Deo gracias. (Emphasis Mine)

Gawain and the Green Knight is depiction of the Fortunate Fall • Gawain in the beginning of the story is a good knight but he thinks that he is without flaw. • Bertilak shows him that in spite of his solid attempts to live a Christian and Chivalric life he (like all of us) needs grace.

Motifs • The Seasons • At the beginning of Parts 2 and 4, the poet describes the changing of the seasons. The seasonal imagery in Part 2 precedes Gawain’s departure from Camelot, and in Part 4 his departure from the host’s castle. • In both cases, the changing seasons correspond to Gawain’s changing psychological state, from cheerfulness (pleasant weather) to bleakness (the winter). But the five changing seasons also correspond to the five ages of man (birth/infancy, youth, adulthood, middle age, and old age/death), as well as to the cycles of fertility and decay that govern all creatures in the natural world. • The emphasis on the cyclical nature of the seasons contrasts with and provides a different understanding of the passage of time from the more linear narrative of history that frames the poem.

Motifs • Games • When the poem opens, Arthur’s court is engaged in feast-time customs, and Arthur almost seems to elicit the Green Knight’s entrance by requesting that someone tell him a tale. • When the Green Knight first enters, the courtiers think that his appearance signals a game of some sort. The Green Knight’s challenge, the host’s later challenge, and the wordplay that takes place between Gawain and the lady are all presented as games. • The relationship between games and tests is explored because games are forms of social behavior, while tests provide a measure of an individual’s inner worth.

“Adam Lay y-bounden” Medieval babes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DocrO_hRW2w WW. Norton Reviewhttp://www.wwnorton.com/nawol/s10_overview.htm#1 . 22 Nov. 2005 Cliffnotes on The Confessions http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-166.html 22 Nov. 2005 Moore, Charlie “Dante’s Clickable Inferno,” Cartharge College. http://www.carthage.edu/dept/english/dante/Title.html 5 Dec. 2006 Parker, Deborah ed., The World of Dante. 5 Dec. 2006 http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/dante/ Rzepka, Adam. SparkNote on Confessions. 5 Dec. 2006 http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/confessionsaug. Sites Cited

The Formation of Western Literature