Middle English Literature Middle English Literature in the Fourteenth and in the Fourteenth and

Fifteenth Centuries Fifteenth Centuries GAZZARA

Middle English Literature in the Middle English Literature in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Fourteenth and Fifteenth CenturiesCenturies

1200 poetry and prose written in English (not just French) ◦ educated readers; many French-English bilingual◦ late-century merchant-class and noble children learned French as

their second language 1348 bubonic plague, or Black Death

◦ destroyed one-quarter to one-third of the population of Europe scarcity of laborers some power and possibility of social mobility

◦ e.g.: Lollards (from "lollers," a slang word for unemployed transients) followers of social reformer John Wycliffe.

Relevant text here: William Langland's poem Piers Plowman ◦ part of the "Alliterative Revival," a fourteenth-century style of

poetry-writing that uses earlier Anglo-Saxon versification practices

Fourteenth-Century InfluencesFourteenth-Century Influences

14th-Century expansion of merchant class and international trade◦ visible in Geoffrey Chaucer's career as a civil servant and

in his portrait of the Merchant in The Canterbury TalesNew key players: Dante, Boccaccio, and PetrarchWork of author of Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight (an Arthurian romance) and three other poems exists only in a single copy

Christian visionary writings, such as Julian of Norwich's "Showings," formed another important literary trend in the fourteenth century

Fifteenth-Century InfluencesFifteenth-Century Influences

15th century rise in production of mystery plays, or cycles of plays that dramatized Bible stories city guilds, which were organizations representing trades

Morality play personified virtues and vices struggle for man's soul◦ productions of morality plays + professional players LEADS to early modern

professional theater of Elizabeth I Sir Thomas Malory’s English translation and retelling of thirteenth-

century French romances about King Arthur, Morte Darthur, ◦ renewed the popularity of tales of the knights of the Round Table and their

quest for the Holy Grail 1476 William Caxton moveable type to England

◦ drastically increased speed at which books could be made in multiple copy and dispersed to readers

◦ decreases their cost of production◦ One of Caxton's first successes was a print edition of Malory's Morte Darthur

Medieval EnglishMedieval English

Old English: ◦ almost entirely Germanic vocabulary◦ a heavily inflected language◦ words change form to indicate changes in function,

e.g.: person, number, tense, case, mood, and the likeDetailed rules for pronouncing Middle English:

◦ in general, sound aloud all consonants except h; sound aloud the final "e";

◦ sound double vowels as long; ◦ and pronounce short vowels as in modern English and

long vowels as in modern European languages other than English

Old and Middle English ProsodyOld and Middle English Prosody

Same verse form for all Old English poetry is the same: ◦ the verse unit is the single line. Rhyme is not often used to link lines in Old English

Alliteration AS ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE in OLD Matching (or similarly-sounding) consonants for alliteration; a vowel alliterates

with any other vowel. Old English alliterative line:

◦ contains four principal stresses, and ◦ is divided by a caesura (a pause) into two half-lines, each containing two stresses

at least one (and sometimes both) of the stressed words in the first half-line begins with the same sound as the first stressed word of the second half-line

last stressed word often is non-alliterative Middle English verse can be alliterative (as above, though sometimes

increasing the number of alliterative or stressed words); or, ◦ influenced by Old French, it can be in the form of alternately stressed rhyming verse

lines Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are mainly in rhymed couplets, with five-stress

lines

The Miller’s Tale The Miller’s Tale

Chaucer slyly pretends that the Miller’s fabliau is “cherles tale”—but remember the narrative voice is NOT that of the drunken Miller but that of the POET satirizing the courtly affectations of the costume, manner, speech and behavior of the petit bourgeois characters.

The wooing of both Nicholas and Absolon satirizes the typical language and gestures of courtly lovers, and of course Alison, whom they are pursuing, is NOT a lady.

The genre of the MILLER’s tale is fabliau (plural fabliaux): a short, funny, often bawdy narrative in low style, imitated and developed from French models.

These are narratives in which those who win do so not through virtue (as in a moral exemplum) or through virtue coupled with high birth (as in romance).

Winners are instead the clever, and often the young and attractive clever.

Fabliaux are stories about material gain and bodily comfort for the winners, and REVERSE for the losers.

Such “justice” as they represent is concerned only with getting even, or, to use Chaucer’s term, “quitting.”

Their narrative style is streamlined, focusing as it does on those objects that will be used (e.g., tubs, hot pokers).

They are umembarrassed about mentioning bodily parts unmentionable in romance.

These stories are, in short, materialist, representing a world of material facts and needs to be exploited by the clever.

The Miller’s TaleThe Miller’s Tale

Genre: Fabliau with lots of allusions to Bible stories, perhaps by means of the mystery play.

Setting: Oxford, with well-described urban architecture: the house with a shot-window (small casement) onto the street, the barn, the church, a smithy: university buildings do not appear.

Key WordsKey Words

Versions of “privee” appear some fourteen times (plus its near synonym “derne”), meaning secret, arcane, intimate, unknown, private, clandestine, discreet, stealthy, and the like, comically tying together the specialized scholarly knowledge of Nicholas, sexual behaviors, notions of manners, theological mysteries, marriage, town gossip and publicity, and perhaps, even the privy.

Lexis, Key Passages, TropesLexis, Key Passages, Tropes

Lexis: Some romance words of mock-delicacy collide with salty terms for body parts like “ers,” “queynte,” “buttok,” “haunche-boon,” “hole.”

Key Passages: The blazon of Allison, lines 125-62; Absolon’s aubade, 590; sexual euphemism, 444-48.

Tropes: Nice puns on “queynte” (167-68, a rime riche); “berde;” during the famous kiss (629, 634).

In groups: prepare responses to In groups: prepare responses to any three of the following—will any three of the following—will not be collected not be collected

What is the religious material doing in this dirty story?

Are all the characters punished at the end? According to poetic justice, where does each of their faults lie?

What view of the “private” does the story present?

Does it matter that the story is set in Oxford? Why don’t we see any university buildings?

What, exactly, do Alison and Nicholas enjoy?