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2. Middle Ages
I. General Context
1. The High Middle Ages (1001–1300)
- The map of the world. - The expansion of Islam. Arabia at the early seventh century: Muhammad
(c.570–632).
- The Norman invasion (1066). It was very different from the Germanic
invasions that took longer and destroyed everything. The ruling class changed
because with the invasion it came a new monarchy, but customs and language
didn’t change. With the Angevin Empire Old English and French mixed up and
the king of England is also the Duke of Normandy.
The conquest of Ireland by Henry II. Now they already have part of Ireland and
France, but they wanted Scotland and Wales too. Therefore, Edward I invaded
Scotland in 1296.
- The new organization of society. With the Norman invasion there is a new
social order.
Classes: oratores (Church, clergy), bellatores (nobility, those who fight) and
laboratores (peasants, people working in agriculture).
Feudalism. The fragmentation of power with the king at the top ( primus inter pares ). Double division: 1) nobles vs. laboratores 2) Aristocracy (own soldiers) vs. vassals.
Socio-economic transformations within feudalism:
- Population increase (characteristic of the period).
- Trade: money becomes the basic means of exchange. The emergence of towns gave rise to the appearance of guilds.
- The beginnings of a new social class: the bourgeoisie. - Politics.
-Tensions between the ruling classes. It was a religious agricultural society.
- The majority of people practised religion and believed in God. Anything that happens concerning religion affects the rest of the society and national and international politics. There were conflicts between the Church (Thomas
Beckett) and the king (Henry II), the king was accused of ordering the muerder
of Becket, who became a martyr.
- Kings and nobles. The Magna Carta or Great Charter (1215).
- Quarrels within the royal family: The Angevin Empire: Henry II, his wife
(Eleanor of Aquitaine), and children (Henry, Richard, John Lackland; one son or
the other?).
- The remote origins of the English Parliament (1254). Origins of the House of
Commons (1260s): Provisions of Oxford.
- A religious world.
Religious conflicts: Eastern Schism (split of Christianity into Latin and Greek
churches in 1054). The Crusades (four crusades between 1096 and 1221).
Heresies: the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229).
The Inquisition (permanently established in 1229).
- The monastic orders (Cistercians: important in architecture, Franciscans, the
Order of Preachers or Dominican order: important).
- Theology and world-view: The invention of Purgatory (late twelfth century): its
effects on ordinary life. People believed that, after death, there was a time for
purification, but they didn’t know where it was. Hell, Purgatory and Heaven as a
place.
Pilgrimages. There were a lot (Jerusalem, Canterbury…).
Prayers and masses for the dead. Martyrs went directly to Heaven, criminals to
Hell and the rest, to the Purgatory. Indulgences (see Chaucer, 'The Pardoner's
Tale'), could be bought with money, crusades, lands, confessions…There were
attempts of reforming the Church.
The practice of regular confession (regulated by the Lateran council of 1215).
Practices of introspection extended. [confession wasn’t new]
- Economy : agricultural. (Trade, money and towns) - Values : From loyalty (of the retainer to the lord) to obedience (of the vassal to
his lord). Remember it was a feudal world, mate.
- Education and high Culture [literature, theology, science, etc. Not about a
way of living].
- Cultural institutions: cultural centres. - The troubadours worked for the court and for dukes. They invented a new kind of love, which changed the idea of it and the way of experiencing it: courtly love. (Still survives nowadays). - The Monasteries. - The Universities. - The streets. The theatre and performs were first on the streets.
III. Poetics
- Double function of literature. Didactic and entertaining literature: teaching by entertaining. - General Christian worldview : Comedy (not homour): hard and painful in the middle but good-ending, as Christ’s life. The Divine Comedy. - Courtly love or fin'amor ("fine love"): - Courtly love vs. Christian worldview. The elevation of the lady: another absolute. Obedience. There’s a connection between literature and loving, loving becomes more natural (invented by troubadors). - Courtly love vs. marriage. The separation of the lovers. Courtly love and marriage were incompatible: as long as marriage was an element of society, for biological reproduction; in courtly love, lovers are necessary separated, they don0t live together as a couple. Passion love was a preparation for marriage. - Love and death. Lovers wanted a perfect union, but human beings have bodies (material aspects of humans), so they will get united after death (spiritual aspiration)= dualism. - Codified: follows strict rules. - Allegory ( allos = other + agoreuein=to speak publicity)
- Double meaning: the literal meaning (material) and the allegorical meaning (spiritual). There are two different possibilities for the reading of the story, two interpretations: 1. Progress of the soul, 2. adventures. You don't read the story as an adventurous one, you do it as a spiritual journey. In adventurous stories, you have a “knight errant” who does things: he performs
a duty his lady ordered him to perform, or he's looking for the Holy Grail, etc. He
can't reach the Holy Grail because there's an allegorical unsalvable distance: a
leap of faith.
- Allegorical characters of Piers Plowman: they personificate abstract ideas.
Dowel (do-well)
Dobest (do-best) Dobet (do-better)
Virtues embodied by the characters. The story has 2 ways of reading. The Quest Myth: Percival, Gawain, Galahad, Merlin, Lancelot, etc.
- Imitation: nowadays in not well regarded, but then it was a good thing. - Authorship begins. From anonymity to individualism. More and more writers sign their works. - Process of humanisation : from Romanesque to the Gothic. God is represented more as a human being. Ex: there's an enormous difference between Romanesque Pantocrator and Gothic Pantocrator.
IV. Genres, Literary forms, Movements, and Writers (not
only in Middle English)
Poetry:
- Medieval tales, legends, and ballads. The Celtic Tradition. The Fennian cycle and the Ulster cycle. - The Arthurian legends: Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia Regum Britanniae (ca. 1136): collection of myths. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. - Medieval Lyrics. Popular, clerical/religious and courtly traditions. Debate Poetry: popular, clerical/religious, courtly traditions. - Debate poetry: The owl and the nightingale (ca. 1200) is a debate between two birds which represent the badness of humanity. - Romances. - The continental tradition of romance. Chivalric (knight errant hero; marvellous and supernatural elements). Chrétien de Troyes (important troubadour; Eleanor of Aquitaine had him at her service): he fusioned of the matter of Britain romances (King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table) and courtly-love. - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1375) = one of the most important medieval British romances. This poem belongs to the movement of the alliterative revival. Not as dearly as in the Old English Period, but very similar. - Allegories: - Pearl. Dream-Vision. It belongs to the alliterative revival. - William Langland, Piers Plowman (ca. 1370; B text 1377). Dream-Vision, alliterative revival.
Prose:
Educational: Ancrence Wisse (the purpose was more didactic than entertaining)
independent: they were played at different parts of the year, and they part of a cycle. There were biblical characters.
Cycles:. The York cycle : Noah’s Flood. Wakefield cycle : The Second Shepherds' Play (in the Wakefield manuscript).
- Morality Plays: characteristics (characters, story, independent; themes, tone). The characters are normal people. So, not a biblical story anymore, but a biblical character who represents humanity, and life from birth to death. Independent story: dangers of damnation and salvation of the soul at the end. The themes are inherited from the mystery plays, the wall/struggle between good and evil and the coming of death. Allegorical characters again: in some works it depends of the way you read the text, realistically or allegorical. In Everyman , the characters represent good deeds and friendship: when Death approaches, the allegorical characters abandon the protagonist, and only Good Deeds stays with him until the end, saving him. The Castle of Perseverance things are more uncertain here. At the very end of the play, it seems that the protagonist is going to be condemned. Only when Jesus Christ dies, the protagonist cries and shouts in repentance, something that angels see. This is an example of comedy, because in the end, good prevails.
Geoffrey Chaucer (c1343-1400)
- Courtier, diplomat, MP, soldier, poet= a man of action. He lived in the biggest town of England of the time, London. And because the middle class was starting to enter nobility, he was a courtier (worked on the court), he was also a diplomat and a member of the Parliament (MP), soldier, writer and translator. Un partidazo. In his family there was certain social mobility (his granddaughter married a nobleman). He lived in the decline of the Middle Ages. - Historical context: The decline of the Middle Ages (increasing crisis with religious and socio-political conflicts): the Peasant's Revolt and the Hundred Years War. There was a change in the feudal world: the growth of a new class with new values. Reign of Richard II. - His writing: The Canterbury Tales : highlights the originality, different genres and literary forms (exempla, fabliaux, romance, saint's life) to present different worldviews, portrait (ironical and critical) of the society of the time. Pilgrims tell a story about spring and renewal. There are lot of characters that belong to different kinds of society, and the idea of having a group of people on pilgrimage allows him to have all of them gathered. - The Scottish Chaucerians: William Dunbar: Lament for the Makaris.
Women and literature in Medieval England:
- A new audience. Noble women were the audience of romances [not same as Spanish ones]. On the other hand, women in towns were part of the audience in theatre representations.
- Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), (queen first of France and later of England). Her daughter Marie, Countess of Champagne, was the patroness of Chrétien de Troyes, patroness of art (?). - Marie de France. (Probably contemporary of Chrétien de Troyes; born in France, she was living in England in the early 13 th^ century). The Lais of Marie de France : some of them were copied in English. - Margery Kempe (c1373-c1440).
V. The Arts
- The Romanesque and the Gothic.
- The Norman castles: Durham Castle (1702) => Harry Potter films <
- Polyphony.
