The Middle Ages: From Beowulf to Canterbury Tales

Question 1

The Middle Ages

Answer 1

• the longest period (about 100 years)
• between Antiquity (Greek & Roman Empires) and Modernity (Shakespeare)
• Stages: early, high & late Middle Ages

Question 2

The Middle Age
- stages

Answer 2

1. 600 - 1066 Early Middle Ages
2. 1066 - 1272 High Middle Ages
3. 1272 - 1485 Late Middle Ages
   > importan distinction between literature before and after 1066 (cultural change)

Question 3

Oral tradition

Answer 3

• oral transmission of the work
• not one version of a text (fluid)
• nuances and changes within texts (spoken)

Question 4

The Wanderer
- bullet points

Answer 4

• not prior to the 8th century (ongoing debate)
  > oral transmission
• preserved in the Exeter Book (last quarter of the 20th century)

Question 5

What type of poem is The wanderer and why?
- The Wanderer

Answer 5

• Elegy
• lamentation, sorrow, grieving, isolation

Question 6

What is the setting like? What tone does it create?

Answer 6

• stormy seas, cold water, darkness (beginning of dawn), winter
  > the setting implies how miserable the wanderer is

Question 7

What can we infer about the culture of the time from this poem?

Answer 7

• warrior culture, everybody dies, he is alone
• decentralization of family

Question 8

Warrior Culture
(3 things)

Answer 8

Pledge, boast and deed
- Pledge: absolute loyalty (comitatus)
- Boast: sign of courage (is the defiance and disdain of death)
- Deed: act, you prove your loyalty, courage and power

Question 9

Manhood in the Middle Ages

Answer 9

• not talking
• no expressing emotions (toxic masculinity)

Question 10

Why is the concept of Manhood ironic in the Wanderer?

Answer 10

• Man are not supposed to talk about their emotions, but the whole poem is about feelings, being alone and therfore miserable

Question 11

How many speakers are in the poem the wanderer?

Answer 11

• two or three speakers depending on your argumentation
  1. the wanderer (himself)
• he wants to talk about loss
• his solution: talking about god
  2. Narrator:
• there is a switch in pronouns (> he)
  3. The sage/ the wise man
• Is there a wanderer and a sage?
• there are different opinions
• the Pagan culture is represented by the wanderer
• the Christian culture is represented by the sage
  > Christian Monks/Scribes could have added the Christian opinion/ the sage and chnged it, copared to the usual oral tradition in the middle ages
  > ethical conflict between the outlook of the wise man and that of the wandering warrior

Question 12

Which formulaic writing traditions are in the poem?

Answer 12

Formulaic
- how we write

A-Verse (middle: cazura) B-Verse
Code signs Expectation
> Cluse in the A-Verse to what will happen in the B-Verse
> The B-Verse refers back to the A-Verse

Question 13

Beowulf
- bullet points

Answer 13

• Old English Literature (650 to 1100)
• dated between 8th and 11th century
• Old English heroic poem
• set in Scandinavia
• consists of more that 3000 alliterative long lines

Question 14

What genre does this text belong to?

Answer 14

• Old English heroic poem
• construction of the archetypal ‘heroic’ individual in binary opposition to the ‘villain’

Question 15

Are there instances of warrior culture in the text?

Answer 15

• Pledge: Pledges his loyalty to the king
• Boast: I will kill Grendel
• Deed: Him actually killing Grendel
  > line 282

Question 16

What is the narrator, what value does the narrator hold?

Answer 16

• Orator
• the orator is telling the story to the audience in the mead hall

Question 17

Who is Grendel and what is his role?

Answer 17

• represents us against a common evil
  > us: pagan warriors
  > evil: Grendel
• Cain > Grendel > Other
• Abel > Beowulf, the pagans > us
  > This text tries to explain the pagans to us Christians (here the pagans who moved to Great Britain)
  > Hypocritical

Question 18

Why is this text about Scandinavian so important for English literature?

Answer 18

• The English are incorporating Scandinavian texts into Literature
• Migration Literature

Question 19

The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
- bullet points

Answer 19

• written 1387 - 1400
• storytelling contest of a group of pilgrims on the way to canterbury

Question 20

How is society changed from the previous texts?

Answer 20

• tribal life in contrast to set society
• those who have settled: Christian narrative
• The Canterbury Tales
  > Pilgrim situation is very Christian
• Beowulf/ Warrior culture
  > those who have died

Question 21

When were the Tales written?

Answer 21

Written from 1387 to 1400
> Chaucer stopped writing, when he died

Question 22

How many stories did Chaucer intend to write? How many did he write?

Answer 22

Intended: 30 x 4 = 120
How many did he write?: 24

Question 23

What is the setting of the text?

Answer 23

• Spring, April
• London
  (the setting does not change!)

Question 24

What is Chaucer’s goal in the depicting of all these characters in the “General Prologue”?

Answer 24

Goal: Criticism and irony (implicit)
He wanted to boast about his writing skills, he used different genres for the pilgrims

not explicit criticism, but implicit of their class e.g. the monk is described too wordly

four humours
- yellow bile (choleric - ambitious, aggressive)
- blood (sanguine - passionate, optimistic)
- Phlegm (phlegmatic - thoughtful, reasonable, calm, lazy)
- Black bile (melancholic - depressed, quiet)

Question 25

Who is speaking?

Answer 25

• Chaucer himself is the narrator
• Writes himself in the story

Question 26

Formulaic vs. Real

Answer 26

Formulaic: depicting characters realistic, using unrealistic descriptions
reality:
e.g. April, spring London = dry
> is not real
> it is formulaic: looks very real, but are representatives of the class