Lecture notes
Middle English Lecture Notes
- Module
- Middle English
- Institution
- Royal Holloway University Of London
22 page document of lecture notes from the module Middle English.
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Middle EnglishLyrics
(a)
-Use of of
-‘my mistress she must be’
-2 quatrains
-refrain
-Use of fair to liken to a woman
-‘blossoms most sweetly’
(b)
-‘I am from Ireland’
-‘I am of Ireland’
-2 quatrains
-‘for sake of holy charity’
-repetition by a female soloist
(c)
-My mysterious ‘maiden’ sleeps out on the more for seven nights in a
shelter of roses and lilies, eating primroses and violets and drinking
spring water. Scholars have identified her, variously, with the virgin
Mary, Mary Magdalene, a dead child, a water sprite; but it is doubtful
whether the singers would have known or cared who she was
-Pathetic fallacy
-repetition
-Alternative line rhyme
-Sevenyst – ‘seven nights’ an uninflected plural – here presents the ‘yogh’
sound
(h)
-to tourney ‘into the world’ – The opening six lines are very similar to
those of a debate poem, The Thrush and The Nightingale, in Carleton
Brown,
-wynne wele – ‘blissful joy’
-Miles probably ‘animals’; a rare welsh loan
-‘I know I am one of those unhappy for love’
-Perhaps ‘Animals whisper to their secret loves in order to speak their
minds’ In this reading derne, ‘secret (ones)’, is an adjective used as a
noun
-Cloude ‘earth’
,-‘Women become very splendid, so well does it (i.e. spring, love, etc) suit
them’. Proude may connote haughtiness and also elegance in dress
-‘If I shall fail to have my joy of one’
(k)
-The traditional image of the wounding dart of love is here presented
with unusual vigour
-dep ‘causes’
-‘For one expression of love’
-The lines continue the image of love’s wound that only one suregeon can
heal
-I.e. green with sickness
-Licoln, Lindsey, Northhampton and Lound are all in the east midlands,
at no very great distance apart
-‘As (the one) I am in chains for’
-‘About the one whom it concerns’
(l)
-This lullaby addressed to the Christ child is adapted from an earlier
secular lullaby CB. Where the earlier poem laments the general miseries
of human life – Grimestone’s version concerntrates on sorrow specific to
Christ: the contrast between his present earthly and his past heavenly
existence, and especially his future passion and death on the cross
-The ‘thing that was your own’ is humanity which god himself created
-‘You are sent into this world as if you have been abandoned’
-Werd is a Norfolk form
-Me listet wol litel singe ‘I have very little desire to sing’
-Bleyk an blak ‘pale and wan’ (not black)
-drize ‘ dry, withered’ in death
-weping dale ‘vale of tears’
-binne – that is, the manger
-as ‘as if’
-pou ‘though’
-‘You have come among those who will prepare you for death’
-pin ore ‘(I beg for) your mercy’
-‘Bet yet, if we would only be loving and live by your teaching and
abandon sin for love of you, you would no more be troubled’
(q)
-The speaker is crucified Christ. His love for mankind brought him to
earth and caused him to become man’s companion and equal.
-me lettet ‘causes me to remain, detains me’
, -‘I am happy to possess you’ Taken from the following line, of Christ
winning mankind like a knight winning his lady by force of arms
Lecture Two
The Canterbury’s Tales – The Reeve’s Tale
Chaucer’s Life
• Born in 1340s
• Son of London wine merchant, John Chaucer
• By 1357 entered royal service
• Captured in France during 1359-60 campaign
• 1366: Marries Philippa de Roet (lady in waiting to Queen
Phillipa of England)
• In 1368: becomes an esquire of the royal household
• Documented Business trips to Italy in 1372-3, France in
1377-81; Italy again (Lombardy) in 1378, etc
• 1374 Onwards: Customs officer
• 1380: Birth of son, Lewis
• 1385-9: Becomes Justice of the Peace for Kent
• From 1389-91: Clerk of the King’s Works
• Died 25 October 1400
Chaucer’s Writings
1) Early Work (dream poems)
c. 1360s: The Romaunt of the Rose (Translation of
the Roman de la Rose)
c. 1368-9: Book of the Duchess
c. 1378: House of Fame
c. 1380: Parliament of Fowls
2) Epic and Romance
c.1379: Anelida and Arcite
c.1380-1: Palamon and Arcite (aka Knight’s Tale)
c.1386-7: Troilus and Criseyde
3) Philosophy and Astronomy
c.1381-6: Boece (translation of Boethius’ Consolation of
Philosophy)
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