A little after 10:00 on Monday I thought I’d get an early start watching this week’s Introduction to British Literature lecture. It’s a good thing I did because it took me over three hours to get through it while taking notes.
In video one the professor told us that the instructions for our short assignment would be posted soon.
While the earliest forms of Old English literature came from a mix of Roman and Germanic cultures, the later Romantic poetry comes from a different set of cultural influences.
The key to these works is the way that the texts handle secrets using covert signs and complex symbols as a way of foregrounding the problem of literary interpretation.
Video two looks at early Welsh literature.
The Franks Casket features none of the cultures that were in Britain before the Romans. We now look at the Celts of the western side of England. With the Romans gone they have to deal with the Germanic invasions. The Welsh people are the direct descendants of the Celts of Britain.
The earliest Welsh poem is Y Goddodin (uh godothin). A king gathers men from neighbouring tribes to attack a Germanic settlement but they lose. Most of the poem consists of elegies for the Celts that died.
“Lludd and Llefelys” is a Middle Welsh prose tale from the 11th Century, around the time that “Judith” was written. It was published in the Mabinogion collection of British stories in the 19th Century. The story reads like a fairy tale. Lludd’s brother Llefelys becomes the king of France through marriage.
The story tells of three plagues that descend upon Britain.
The first comes after the arrival of the Coraniaid people on the island. They can hear every word that is spoken throughout England.
The second plague comes from a scream that carries through the land that causes women to miscarry, men to lose strength, young people to lose their senses and all plant and animal life is stripped of the ability to reproduce.
In the third plague even a years supply of food becomes only enough for one night.
With the aid of a brass horn that prevents the Coraniaid from hearing what he is saying, Llefelys offers solutions to each plague.
The Coraniaid can be killed by a mixture maid from insects. It cannot harm Britons and so it is thrown over everyone, thus eliminating the enemy.
The scream is caused by two dragons in combat. Lludd lures them to Oxford, the exact centre of England, puts them to sleep with mead and buries them underground in a stone chest.
The food disappearance is caused by a wizard who puts everyone to sleep each time he raids their stored. Lludd uses a vat of cold water to keep himself awake while he defeats the magician.
The stories are allegories of the real invasions that threatened the Celtic identity. Within each is the aspiration that the Welsh can regain control of the island.
The time of conflict between the Celts and the Germans was also a time of migration. In the 5th and 6th Centuries some Celts went to France. The Breton language in France descended from the Bretonic Celtic language of Britain.
Some Vikings moved to France in 911 and the Carolingian King Charles III allowed them to stay to protect northern France from further invasions. They were first known as North Men but that shortened to Normans. They assimilated into French culture and converted to Christianity.
The poem “The Death of Edward the Confessor” was written in the same style as “Judith”. He died in 1066, the year that British history and literature changed drastically. As Edward had no heirs his brother in law Harold became king of England. He successfully repelled a Viking invasion at Stanford Bridge in Northern England. Two weeks later William the Bastard, the Duke of Normandy invaded England from the south. Harold fought William and died at the Battle of Hastings. The battle is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. William conquered England on Christmas Day of 1066.
The Norman conquest brought about an upheaval of the political and social order. Over the next twenty years the German elites were displaced and most of the land in central and southern England was owned by Norman lords.
The Normans only spoke French but gradually the Anglo-Norman language developed as used by the elites. The Old English words for “meat” came to refer to the livestock that the English raised while the French equivalents referred to prepared meat for the Norman nobles' dinners.
Anglo Norman became the literary language of England with subjects from both domestic and imported sources. Some of the new immigrants from France were descended from the British Celts that had gone to Brittany and so the new culture also made use of Celtic narratives. It was this melting pot that bubbled up Marie de France.
Video four talks about the lais (song tales) of Marie de France.
Marie de France was educated and could speak Latin, French and Middle English. Some say that she was the Abbess Marie Beckett, the sister of St Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Her literary audience was clearly a courtly one. Up until Marie de France none of the poets of Britain identified themselves. She basically argued that if one has it one should flaunt it with good will.
She decided that translating Latin stories into French had been done and that there was no fame to be had in that. She settled upon putting the lai songs into writing. The lai songs were invented by the Celtic minstrels of Brittany. So inadvertently the Normans ended up bringing stories of England from France back to England. Marie’s poems are between song and writing and are aware of the multiple languages and cultures within them.
“Bisclavret” or “The Werewolf” is one of Marie’s twelve lais. Bisclavret is the Briton word for “werewolf” but within the text she also uses the Norman French “Garwaf”.
“Chevrefoil” meaning “Honeysuckle” is the name of another Marie’s lais and she says it is called “Gotelef” in English.
The Breton lai is a short verse romantic adventure in French or English with themes of love and the supernatural.
A romance is a narrative genre characteristically focusing on a hero and his adventures. It gives an account of knightly behaviour in a remote time and place where magic continues to work. Romances are idealized but address contemporary issues and so there is a balance between the otherworldly and the topical. They tend to have a three part structure: integration, disintegration and reintegration. This definition is influenced by Northrop Frye.
The Old French poet Jean Bodel said that for the man of understanding there are only three romantic subjects: Roman stories are educational, French stories provide historical knowledge, and British romances are empty but pleasant and tend to be all about King Arthur and his court.
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain” was written in Latin around 1136. A lot of it is fictional. He drew on Welsh and Breton sources to conclude that the first king of Britain was a direct descendant of Aenaeas named Brut. After the fall of Troy Aenaeas went to Italy where he fathered Ascanius, who begat Sylvius, who was the father of Brutus, who went to Britain and named it after himself. The legends say that King Arthur was a direct descendent of Brutas but there probably was no King Arthur.
Arthur is said to have driven out the Saxon invaders and then created a British Empire that conquered even Egypt. He invited the finest knights from distant kingdoms to his court thereby creating a culture in Camelot that influenced far off lands. Arthur defeats the Roman armies and is about to conquer Rome itself when he receives word that his nephew Mordred has taken over the English throne and adulterously forced Guenevere to be his consort. Arthur returns to England but is mortally wounded in his battle with Mordred and taken to the island of Avalon. Because of the death of Arthur his kingdom loses control of England and the Saxons return. The story is a form of wishful thinking on the part of the Welsh, who believe they once almost controlled the world but were betrayed.
Monmouth’s history spread and carried with it the milieu the other characters that resided in Arthur’s court. Professor Teramura says that the Arthurian universe is like the Marvel universe in that each character gets his own spin-off.
In the stories the ideal code of conduct is both promoted and challenged.
Britain’s first big literary export was Marie de France.
In video five we learn that Marie’s lais were in the chivalrous Arthurian milieu but were not all Arthurian. Milun is from Wales but travels throughout the British Isles. Milun’s lover’s son travels to Mont Saint Michel in France for the tournaments. His meeting with his father symbolically takes place on this island between France and England.
The genre of the chivalric Romance is most interested in the distances between people and the psychological complexity of the spaces between the conflicting obligations within the hero’s self. They are stories of self discovery. But they also reveal the conditions under which women were forced to live.
Marie’s lais are about secrets. Lanval keeps his fairy love a secret. In Milun a swan is used as a vessel for transporting a secret. There may be a pun of two languages hidden in the use of the swan to carry messages or secret signs. The Anglo Saxon word for swan is “cigne” while the French word for sign is “signe”. In Bisclavret there must be a reason for the wolf’s actions.
In “Chevrefoil” the Arthurian knight Tristram while having an affair with the Cornish queen arranges to leave a carved hazel branch for her to find on the road and to decode its message. The narrative depends on her intellectual ability to read secret signs.
Under the feathers of the text are the secrets of the lai.
Marie thought that preserving the lais does not keep the stories from changing. They are made obscure and invite interpretation so that wise folk can add their intelligence. Readers can get more and expand the stories for themselves.
Marie de France’s lais have two audiences. One is in the future and the other is King Henry II of England. Is she instructing him?
In video six we learn that the setting of Lanval is Arthurian. Arthur and his knights are in the town of Carlisle in a part of England where the Scots and Picts are threatening invasion from the north. There is a thematic significance to this location and time.
It is the time of the celebration of Pentecost and Arthur has given gifts to everyone except for Lanval, whom he forgot. Lanval is the son of the ruler of a poor kingdom.
Arthur’s court is a world of competition and jealousy. People act one way socially but have secret motivations. People pretend to love Lanval to conceal their jealousy.
Lanval goes for a walk and encounters two beautiful women who take him to their mistress. The Demoiselle’s tent is more opulent than the richest castle. A metaphor for internal value. She tells Lanval that she loves him and will be with him but her condition is that their affair must be kept secret. The two faced world of Arthur’s court conflicts with this world of the Demoiselle which he is not even sure is real.
He becomes rich and at a party the king’s wife Guenevere comes on to him. He chivalrously turns down her advances but her response is to accuse him of being homosexual. She declares that his presence in court could corrupt Arthur. Lanval breaks his vow and tells Guenevere that he has a lady lover and that even her maids are more beautiful than she is. His insult to the queen angers Arthur but the king nonetheless decrees that Lanval should have a fair trial. If he can prove that his Demoiselle is more beautiful than Guenevere than no insult will be taken. The trial assesses Lanval’s interior.
During Lanval’s trial two of the Demoiselle’s maidens enter the court. They are so beautiful that he is asked if one of them is his lady but he refuses to break his vow twice. Two more maids arrive with the same reaction from the knights and the same lack of response from Lanval. The real Demoiselle shows up. In the story this moment takes a long time. It is a delayed revelation. Another test is for him to resist declaring that she is the one he had spoken of.
The poem is a study in threat. Placing the story in Carlisle where physical threat is present becomes a metaphor for the internal threat presented in the poem. The biggest threat is Arthur’s emotional response to the alleged insult to his wife, but he tempers his rage and follows the counsel of his advisors.
There are two senses of a court: the legal and the royal. Is there justice in Arthur’s court? What is justice? Lanval is unjustly neglected and so the injustices are not only criminal but also social.
Only the Demoiselle sticks up for Lanval, showing the insight that Arthur should have had. She arrives at the trial as the personification of justice and order. Her presence is evidence of the truth revealed about the queen.
If political counsel is required it perhaps comes from the lais.
Video seven is an introduction to the lat 14th Century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.
It comes from the northwest midlands near Wales. It has illuminations and also survived the same fire as the Old English poems like Beowulf.
It descends from the Arthurian Romances but is longer than Marie's lais. Hers are like postcards while this is a canvas. Gawain is a hybrid synthesis of the French literary tradition of Marie’s lais and of the English Beowulf. Beowulf is alliterative while Gawain has alliterative stanzas followed by a rhyming verse with a first short line called a bob and the last four lines called a wheel. The full rhyme scheme is ababa. Gawain is part of the late 14th Century alliterative revival.
Video eight was narrated by one of the TAs Una Creedon-Carey. She is very loud and has a very informal style of lecturing that makes it sound more like she’s tending bar.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written between 1375 and 1400 and comes from a manuscript that includes three other poems that seem to be by the same author.
The poem is not fully reverent of nobility.
There was a graphic novel version published in 2017.
A year after beheading the Green Knight and seeing the Green Knight pick up his own head and ride away, Gawain goes looking for him to fulfill his end of the bargain. He gets lost and finds the castle of Lord Bertilak where he is welcomed and allowed to stay while resting. Bertilak engages Gawain in a game whereby Gawain stays in the castle all day, promising to give him whatever he catches while doing so while Bertilak goes hunting and gives Gawain whatever he catches outside. While Lord Bertilak is out Lady Bertilak flirts with him and gives him a kiss and so when Lord Bertilak returns Gawain gives him a kiss. This goes on for a few days until Lady Bertilak gives Gawain a kiss and a magic green girdle that will protect him from harm. Since Gawain is about to leave to face the axe of the Green Knight, he cheats and keeps the girdle, only giving Lord Bertilak another kiss. So Gawain goes to face the Green Knight and with the help of the girdle manages to withstand his attack but it turns out that the Green Knight is really Bertilak and that Lady Bertilak was really Morgan le Fey and that this was part of a plot by her to undermine King Arthur, the knights of Camelot and Queen Guenevere. Gawain is ashamed for his deception and wears the green girdle for penance but all the other knights think it looks cool and each gets one for himself to wear.
The last video talks about the pentangle on Gawain’s shield being an emblem of fidelity that represents Gawain’s understanding of his own character prior to being tested in this adventure.
The figure is described when Gawain goes looking for the Green Knight before and after his change of character:
For it is a figure that holds five points
where each line overlaps and in other locks
On whole it is endless and in England is called
overall as I hear, the endless knot
The pentangle can’t be unravelled and is supposed to correspond with the reality of how the world works. Each point of the pentangle represents a trait of Gawain’s character and each of those corresponds to five other points.
She points out that the rhyming verses at the end of each stanza also has five lines but that may be a coincidence.
The five groups of five are: the five fingers of the body; the five senses which one must not let take control.
But Gawain picked his body over his morals. He both accepts and denies failure.
Faultless five senses
Never failed five fingers
And all his affluence was in the five wounds
That Christ caught on the cross as the creed tells
And wheresoever this man in melee would stand
His thorough thought was in that through all other things
That all his fortitude came from the five joys
That the holy heaven queen had for her child
These five joys are Gawain’s focus and so there is an image of Mary facing him always on the inside of his shield.
Christ was committed to his own execution but Gawain refused to make such a sacrifice.
Philanthropy and friendship in all things
His cleanness and courtesy never did crack
And pity that passes all points: these pure five
Were higher heaped on that human than on any other
The line “His cleanness and courtesy never did crack" might cast doubt.
Gawain controls his body and mind but fails the test.
This is the token of untruth that I am tied in
And I must needs wear it while I may last
If the pentangle is a symbol of truth then the girdle represents untruth. The girdle has no symmetry and it can be easily unknotted.
But Arthur’s court does not care and so they all take up wearing green girdles. They control the world by making the symbols mean what they want them to mean. Symbols are hard to live up to but they keep trying.
The story has some major homoerotic elements.
The Green Knight movie is being filmed and is coming soon.
It was already 13:17 when I finished listening to the lecture.
I had some roasted seaweed and chips and salsa for lunch.
In the afternoon I worked on transcribing my lecture notes. I still had ten pages to go when it was time for dinner.
I had a potato and two chicken drumsticks with gravy for dinner while watching The Count of Monte Cristo.
In this story the count and Jacopo travel to Sardinia in answer to an urgent message from Mario. While riding to Mario’s home they stop a fight between a farmer named Patrini and the Count Boris Madroff. Patrini says Madroff helped the Marquess d’Alba steal his land from him. The count continues on to Mario’s home where he meets Mario's niece Teresa, who tells him that Mario has been murdered by an unseen archer. Suddenly Carlo walks into the room saying it’s been a long time since they'd seen each other. But this story is set in 1935 and the previous stories featuring Carlo also took place in the same year. I guess they might have gotten the story timeline mixed up in their releases and maybe this is supposed to be the first appearance of Carlo in the series. Carlo turns out to be Mario’s cousin, who has come upon hearing that Mario died. After visiting Mario's grave the count explores Mario's property, trying to figure out why Madroff and D’Alba want to take it over, since it’s not good farmland. He finds a rock that seems heavier than usual and suddenly Carlo pushes him out of the way of an arrow. Next Patrini, Teresa’s fiancé is arrested for attempting to kill Madroff. The count shows his friends an order for the farmers to pay their back taxes within one week or lose their land. It turns out that D’Alba is also the tax collector and the local magistrate. D'Alba tells the count that Patrini will be hanged at sundown. Just before the hanging the count and his friends rescue Patrini. The count learns from Teresa that before he was killed Mario had been studying local rocks by treating them with acid. The count goes to Mario’s home to see his rocks but they are confronted by Madroff and Alba. They escape and double back. They find the rocks and Mario's acid and escape again. After treating the rocks with acid the count discovers that Madroff and Alba want the land because it is rich in silver. A public bill is posted in which patrini challenges Madroff to a duel at the hangman’s scaffold at sundown. At sundown the count arrives to meet Madroff and says he will take Patrini’s place. Madroff says he doesn’t care what weapons are used. The count chooses bows and arrows but Madroff refuses. The count then chooses pistols and since Madroff refused the first choice he must agree to a special method of using the pistols. There are two nooses set up on the scaffold. The count and Madroff must place them around their necks and stand over the trap doors. Each trap door is supported by a tension rope and each rope has a candle mounted against it. The candles are lit and it will take two minutes for the candles to burn through the ropes to cause the trap doors to open. Each man has two pistols, each with one bullet. Each man has two chances to shoot out his candle before it burns through the rope. The count shoots out his candle with his first shot but Madroff misses twice. As the flame eats the rope the count tells Madroff that he can save him with his last bullet if he confesses to murder and theft of land. He confesses and so the count shoots out the candle.
Teresa was played by Lita Milan, who trained as a dancer from an early age and started in show business as a Las Vegas chorus girl. She became a magazine model and then started working in films, mostly playing senoritas and “Indian" maidens in B westerns. Her most remembered role was as Paul Newman’s leading lady in The Left Handed Gun. In 1958 she ran off with Ramfis Trujillo, the playboy son of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Her husband seized power when his father was assassinated in 1961 but they were forced to flee. They lived in exile in Madrid until Ramfis died in the crash of his Ferrari in 1969. She continued on living a very rich party lifestyle in Madrid.
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