The Medieval Period

Question 1

What genre replaces the Epic during the Medieval perios?

Answer 1

• A significant change of sensibility and taste: replacement of the old heroic (epic) poetry (Anglo-Saxon literature) by the verse romance (Middle English literature)
• “Romance” comes from the Old French word «romanz», which means vernacular and became attached to these works (romances) because they were written in the vernacular rather than in Latin.
• • The romance flourished in France from 9th to 12th cent. and spread to England with the Normans
• Chivalry is a system of values which operates in the context of the feudal world.

Question 2

How is the Heroic (epic) poetry compared to Romance?

Answer 2

• More realistic in treatment, sterner in mood.
• Claims to deal with characters that have had a place in the origins of a country or population (Beowulf, Aeneas, the Trojans and the Greeks)
• Fighting is for a specific purpose, a necessity.

Question 3

How is the Romance genre compared to Epic?

Answer 3

• More escapist, the marvellous is introduced for its own sake (Astolfo rides the hippogriff to
  the moon to get Orlandos’ sanity back)
• fighting on principle or as a matter of fashion: a stylised sport (as in medieval tournaments)
• Chivalry from chevalerie
• The Knight is a paragon of bravery, honour and courtesy
• It includes courtly or chivalric love.

Question 4

What are the 3 major fields in Medieval Romances?

Answer 4

• The Matter of France (Charlemagne and his paladins, the crusades)
• The Matter of Britain (King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and Guinevere, Merlin, Camelot)
• The Matter of Rome (episodes and events from the Aeneid and the classical world)

Question 5

Which poem represents the transition from heroic to romance?

Answer 5

• Chanson de Roland, a poem in 4,000 decasyllables, which told the adventures of a paladin against the Saracens.
• Values: Loyalty to one’s king and one’s faith, love for one’s country, exaltation of disinterested heroism.

Question 6

Which poems get closer to Romance?

Answer 6

• Roman de Brut, by Norman poet Robert Wace (1155), draws on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae. It is in French. Poetry. It tells in 15,000 lines the adventures of Brutus, reputed descendant of Aeneas ad conqueror of the Island of Albion (named Britain after his name) and of his successors, in particular King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
• Brut by English priest Layamon (ca. 1200, version of Wace’s work in Middle English) accentuates the romance. Poetry
• Le Morte Darthur, by Thomas Malory (1470). Prose version of the Arthurian legend, drawing on the French and English versions, printed in 1485 (it established itself as the canonical version of King Arthur’s stories). Middle English

Question 7

Which poem is the first romance and what is it about?

Answer 7

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
* A verse romance of 2,500 alliterative lines, copied in 1400 (ca.).
* Gawain is Arthur’s nephew (Galvano in Italian) and a Knight of the Round Table.
* A compendium of the chivalric vision proper to romance.
* A challenge issued by a mysterious Green Knight who presents itself at King Arthur’s court on Christmas day and is accepted by Sir Gawain, who achieves it after 1,001 adventures.

Question 8

What is a Dream Poem?

Answer 8

Dream Poems = the most important medieval literary genre with romance. Dream is a form of knowledge for the Medieval mind.

Question 9

What are the titles of two Dream Poems?

Answer 9

Pearl
Piers Plowman

Question 10

What is Pearl and what does it talk about?

Answer 10

It is a dream poem.
* Pearl is a poem of 1,212 lines, preserved in the same manuscript as Sir Gawain. It is allegorical.
* The narrator(a jeweller) is looking for a lost jewel in a garden. But he falls asleep. A beautiful woman appears to him, whom he identifies with Pearl, his daughter who died when she was two years old. She has become a Queen and Christ’s bride. She is a symbol of grace and purity, and reveals him the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem. He would like to join her and surges forward, so he wakes up.
The dream is inspirational for his own salvation.

Question 11

What is an Allegory poem?

Answer 11

• A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
• A representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another.

Question 12

What are two examples of Allegory?

Answer 12

• John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678-84) is a prose allegory of a spiritual journey of a character called Christian
• Dante’s Divine Comedy (ca 1304-7) is an allegorical poem describing a dream of a journey

Question 13

Talk about the poem Piers Plowman

Answer 13

• Dream Poem by William Langland (1330-86) in alliterative verse, not rhyme.
• Represents the journey of Will , the dreamer, in his quest for the true Christian life and salvation. Will meets Piers, a plowman, who becomes his spiritual guide.
• The government, the society and the Church are presented as profoundly corrupt. Denunciation of the Church’s corruption.
• Partly social satire, partly theological allegory.
• Will encounters abstract personifications - Dowell, Dobet, Dobest - representing three stages of good behaviour: «do well», «do better» and «do best».

Question 14

What is Medieval Drama (MD)?

Answer 14

• MD has its origin in the mass or liturgy.
• Purpose: to communicate the teachings of religion in a simple and attractive way to all the
  faithful. Most of them were illiterate.
• The ritual of the Christian Church, with its two great festivals of Christmas and Easter and the celebration of Christ’s life through its most significant moments, is inherently dramatic.
• Ritual of the Mass = interaction priest-believers, script with lines to recite.
• Liturgical drama spread in Europe in the 13th century

Question 15

What are Miracle and Mistery Plays?

Answer 15

Miracle Plays or Mystery Plays: cover many different subjects from the Old Testament (the Creation, the Fall, Noah, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac) to the New Testament (the Annunciation, the Nativity, episodes in the life of Christ, the raising of Lazarus, the conspiracy of Judah, the Last Supper, the Resurrection) .

Question 16

What is a Cycle and what are some examples?

Answer 16

Cycle = a series of mystery/miracle plays written in a certain town
* Four Cycles survive: the Cycle of York, Chester, Wakefield and an unknown town (N. Town)
* They are anonymous
* The Wakefield cycle is the most interesting. It includes some texts whose author shows great mastery of language (from educated language to local vernacular).
* The Second Shepherds’ Play (Secunda Pastorum) is its masterpiece (the character of Mak, the sheep-stealer, creates a comic pseudo-nativity by trying to hide a sheep he has stolen in a cradle). The episode concludes with the real Nativity.

Question 17

What are Morality Plays?

Answer 17

• They stage an allegorical conflict between figures of good and evil (psychomachia), as they struggle to capture the soul of the character symbolizing humanity as a whole.
• The characters are personified abstractions of virtues and vices, who struggle for man’s soul.

Question 18

What’s the most famous Morality Play?

Answer 18

• The title of the most famous morality play Everyman (ca. 1500) already indicates that the protagonist is every man, that is, all of humanity.
• Everyman describes the journey of man toward death. None of his friends wants to accompany him (Fellowship, Goods i.e. riches, Five wits). Only Good Deeds and Knowledge comfort him and accompany him.

Question 19

What are the 7 deadly sins mentioned in Everyman?

Answer 19

1) pride (self-glorification, orgoglio),
2) wrath (rage, ira); 3) lust (lechery, lussuria)
4) gluttony (craving for food, gola)
5) covetise (greed, covetousness, avidità)
6) sloth (laziness, accidia)
7) envy (being green-eyed, invidia).

Question 20

What is a reckoning?

Answer 20

Christians have to show God a reckoning of their life, i.e., a settlement of accounts, a computation, a calculation of all their good and bad deeds.

Question 21

What is an interlude?

Answer 21

• A type of morality play that introduces more realistic and comic elements (end of 15th cent.)
• A playlet offered between the courses of a banquet.
• It marks the transition between religious and secular drama. It includes scenes far removed from the original theme and atmosphere of the morality play and is entertaining.

Question 22

What’s the title of some interludes?

Answer 22

John Skelton’s Magnyficence
The Play Called the Four PP (ca 1544) by John Heywood

Question 23

Talk about The Play Called the Four PP by John Heywood

Answer 23

• The Play Called the Four PP (ca 1544) by John Heywood is a comic interlude: a Palmer (pilgrim), a Pardoner (venditore d’indulgenze), a ‘Pothecary (pharmacist) and a Pedlar (ambulante) compete to tell the biggest lie. The Palmer is the judge of the competition.
• ‘Pothecary: a tale of a marvellous cure.
• Pardoner: a tale of a visit to Hell where he finds a
  neighbour, a terrible shrew. Lucifer does not want
  women in Hell any longer.
• The Pedlar wins by declaring that he has never seen a woman with a bad temper or losing her patience.

Question 24

Talk about John Skelton’s Magnyficence

Answer 24

• It is a moral play
• The protagonist (a prince) is tempted by the Vices and learns from Adversity and Despair to follow the advice of Perseverance. The education of a prince is typically a Renaissance interest.
• Its lesson (moderation or measure ) is a Humanist rather than a Christian value.
• An implicit critique of Cardinal Wolsey (guilty of sinful pomp = magnificence)