Literature Begins with Song

            On Monday morning I memorized the second verse of “Barcelone” by Boris Vian.

            I finished memorizing “Baby Lou” by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. Since Gainsbourg only wrote the lyrics I didn’t find the chords until I use Alain Chamfort in the search. There was only one set listed.

            In the late morning I accessed my first Introduction to British Literature lecture. Unlike the Introduction to Canadian Literature lectures it’s not live and so Professor Misha Teramura posts each lecture on Monday morning. That makes it very convenient so I don’t have to rush to meet a deadline and I can also pause and move back the videos while I’m taking notes. He also split this lecture into seven separate videos or chapters.

            He said his goal is to give us tools to appreciate British literature. Literary texts are forms of pleasure and British literature is a banquet of flavours.

            There are two approaches.

            The first is the formal approach.

            This provides techniques to appreciate the complex artefacts of meaning making and tools for understanding how structure, theme, character, rhyme and alliteration create complex meanings.

            The second is the historical approach. The changes in literature over time react to but also shape history.

            The second video looks at the question of “what is British literature?”

            Britain as a political unit didn’t exist until 1707. Geographically it includes all of the islands in the archipelago north of France. Ireland was forced to be part of Britain politically.

            British literature was not self contained because it was symbiotic with the world outside, especially Europe and that symbiosis gets wider with time. For its first one thousand years Britain was a cultural importer of stories, genres, styles and paper.

            The water around Britain is very permeable and the British story is one of invasion.

            John Speed published The History of Great Britain in 1611.

            The Britons, the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes and the Normans all invaded Britain, bringing an influx of languages and cultures that intermixed and carried on. The people spoke many languages and some of the most important English texts were translated from Latin and French. Once English came into being it continuously changed.

            The third video talks about the complex meaning of literature. He asked us to pause the video and to take a moment to define literature.

            I wrote that literature is writing and reading but also composing and sculpting words with language. Literature is the ongoing process of creating language and creating with language.

            He asked if Twilight, graphic novels, wordless graphic novels, journalism, love poems, written lyrics, free style lyrics, screenplays and the Bible are all literature. If we treat a text as literature does it become literature? Is Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” literature? Is a shopping list literature? How was literature defined in each era? What were the conditions of literary study?

            The fourth video talks about the earliest examples of British literature.

            The Ecclesiastical History of the English People was written by Bede around 731. In it he tells the story of Caedmon the cowherd who would not sing at the gatherings as expected because he didn’t think he could. In a dream an angel told him to sing of the creation. Caedmon’s hymn from 658 is the earliest known written piece of Old English literature. Obviously however it wasn’t the first time that poetry was sung in English, since even in this story there had been people singing at the feats. It is only the oldest surviving recorded poem. If a poem is not preserved it is not seen as literature.

            The definition of the word “literature” relates to the use of letters, writing and the alphabet. The technology of writing. The only reason that Caedmon’s poem survived is because someone had the inclination, the resources, the materials and the place for preserving it. That someone was motivated to do so for religious reasons and so there are institutional and material factors behind the category of literature.

            The fifth video talks about how the history of literature depends on what survived. Sometimes survival is a matter of deliberate choice but many times it is a matter of accident. In 1731 Ashburnham House caught fire and the books of the Cotton Library within it were removed so they would not be burned. One of those books contained the only copy of the poem Beowulf. It luckily survived but the pages were charred.

            “The Ruin” is a partially ruined by fire poem about the ruins of the ancient buildings of a Roman city.

            Most of Old English poetry comes from four books. There was probably an incredible amount of poetry lost and much more that was never recorded.

            William Camden wrote The Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine in 1605. In it he argued that British writers have always had a high standard, not only in the time that he shared with Shakespeare but going back to the beginning.

            Claudia Rufina was a British poet who immigrated to Rome around 90 and is mentioned by the Roman poet Martial. I can’t find any reference to her being a poet herself but only that poems were written about her by her husband, a Roman centurion who may have been British. None of these poems survived but if they had they might be the earliest examples of British Literature.

            “Beowulf” was not published until 1805.

            The 14^th Century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” was not published until 1839.

            The 14^th Century The Book of Margery Kempe was not published until 1934.

            The 17 Century works of Lady Hester Pulter were not published until 1996.

            Shakespeare would not have known of “Beowulf”.

            How we define literature affects the stories.

            The sixth video talks of the prehistory of English Literature.

            British literature is a historical problem.

            Outside of the town of Wilton can be found Stonehenge. Some stories say the structures were built by Merlin; others that they were assembled by African giants; and others that it was a Roman temple.

            Samuel Daniel published the poem “Musophilus” in 1599 and mentions Stonehenge, saying that even those that want to know the origins know nothing:

And whereto serves that wondrous trophy now

That on the goodly plain near Walton stands?

That huge, dumb heap that cannot tell us how

Nor what, nor whence it is, nor whose hands

Nor for whose glory it was set to show

            In the Iron Age the Romans wrote of the Celts. The Celts had more than one language. There was the Pictish, the Gaelic and the Brythonic. The Romans observed that the Celts of Britain were not different from the Celts of Europe and described their painted bodies. Conquest displaced the Celtish language to smaller and smaller parts of the west. The Welsh and Cornish languages are direct descendants of Celtic. Invasions caused overlapping changes.

            The Romans had a profound effect on British culture starting from around 55 BC.

            Virgil described Britain as being cut off from the Roman world.

            Horus called the British the furthest people of the world.

            It wasn’t until the 1^st Century that Rome invaded to make Britain a Roman province. The professor says that Britain was Rome’s Alaska. It was the breadbasket for the empire but their hold on it was threatened by invaders from the north, which is why Hadrian’s Wall was built.

            The earliest writing in Britain, dating around the 1^st Century was found in 2016 on a piece of wood. It contains the Roman alphabet and may have been used in a school setting.

            In that century Agricola educated the sons of British chiefs and the toga became a form of fashionable dress in Britain. The higher classes wanted to be Roman.

            There were thermal baths built in Bath. Latin displaced the pre-Roman Celtic languages. Roman myths and stories became popular, such as the homoerotic story of Ganymede and Jupiter; the story of Orpheus; and Dido; Romulus and Remus; and Aenaeus of Virgil’s Aenead.

            The Romano-British elites identified with Rome but the Romans hightailed it out of there when the Goths, the Picts and the Scots began invading. The British looked for help from the Saxons and so the Germanic peoples began migrating to the island. From 400-500 the Angles, the Jutes, the Saxons and the Frisians came from what is now Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. Initially they were concentrated in the south and the east but moved west to avoid a plague.

            The distinct kingdoms of Mercia, Sussex, Wessex and Anglia were established. The Angles were not the majority, nor were they more influential than the others, so why the language came to be called English nobody knows. Bede referred to the country as Britain but when translated the Germanic groups all came to be referred to as the Angles.

            There was a mix of populations and cultures. The invading tribes had little interest in changing the cultures of the conquered and the cities were kept intact.

            In 567 St Augustine began converting the Germanic peoples of Britain to Christianity. For tribal leaders Christianity was a religion of power. It was advantageous to have a literate clergy assisting the government.

            Various tribes developed into regional strains that resulted in the Normans, the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch and the Germans.

            Invading tribes often had more than one characteristic language.

            Various Germanic tribes used a Runic alphabet called “Futhorc” that could be carved using straight lines.

            The final video talks of England as a crossroads of culture.

            The Franks Casket from the early 8^th Century in Northumbria depicts several stories in imagery and in both the Roman and Runic alphabets on its sides. It tells of the Magi visiting Christ; the story of Wayland the smith who was crippled by a king to be made into a forge slave and how his brother killed birds to use the feathers so Wayland could fly away; the story of Romulus and Remus, the two baby brothers nursed by a she-wolf where they founded Rome far from their native land; the story of Titas attacking Jerusalem. There is even some Latin on the box written in the Runic alphabet. The box is a distillation of language and culture.

            I was done watching lecture just before lunch. I had cream of celery soup and potato chips.

            I finished transcribing my lecture notes in the early evening.

            For dinner I had a two small potatoes, a chicken leg and gravy while watching an episode of The Count of Monte Cristo.

            In this story the Count of Monte Cristo arrives on Majorca only to read the news that the Count of Monte Cristo has recently died there and that the funeral will be held the next day. The count goes to the cathedral where he encounters a woman who claims to be the Countess of Monte Cristo, the count’s widow. The count tries to speak with her but she rejects his conversation. After she rides away the count is struck over the head and regains consciousness in the establishment of Demitrio. Demitrio thinks the count might have the Cellini Medallion that he seeks. Demitrio had paid to have the medallion stolen from the museum in Madrid but then another thief stole it from Demitrio's robber. Demitrio threatens the count and demonstrates a karate chop on a piece of wood, suggesting that the count will be the recipient if he does not give him the medallion. The count goes to his rented chateau where the contessa is already staying. The count reveals to the woman that he is the count of Monte Cristo. A young man is found in the house and he tells the count that he is Filipe and the woman is his sister Eugenie. Filipe is an agent for the Royal Museum in Madrid and he has come to try to retrieve the stolen medallion. When they heard that the count was dead they decided to have Eugenie pose as the countess so they could search the chateau. The count suggests that since people are being killed for the medallion that it has a secret compartment containing something more valuable than itself. A man arrives at Demitrio’s business asking directions to the chateau. Demitrio follows him and later the man is found dead with an empty silver chain in his hand. Later Demitrio catches the count searching his home and reveals to him that he has the medallion. They fight hand to hand but it seems the count has also learned tricks in the orient. Back at the chateau the count finds and opens the medallion’s secret compartment. Inside is only a note with the words “chateau Madeira”. Jacopo thinks the answer may be in the closed winery nearby. Inside a barrel marked "Madeira" they find a treasure of jewels. Suddenly Filipe pulls two pistols and reveals that he was Demitrio’s partner all along. Rico attacks but Filipe pistol whips him and knocks him out. But meanwhile Jacopo has had his back turned to Filipe while he’s been loosening the cork on a bottle of champagne. Suddenly he turns and lets it pop as the cork hits Filipe in the face. Jacopo kicks his gun from his hand and they fight while the count tends to Rico. Jacopo knocks Filipe out and it’s the first time the main villain isn't finished by the count. The jewels are turned in and the count buys the chateau. He tells Eugenie she can live there as his guest as long as she wishes.

            Eugenie was played by Maureen Connell, who co-starred in “Kill Her Gently” and "Lucky Jim".