Author Archives: Steve

The Meaning of History

Chris Coonce-Ewing asks a juicy question: what is history?

This is a test of many things: there are discipline answers, philosophical answers, political and phenomenological answers. There are kinds. There are characterizations. The Beowulf and Gawain poets provide answers in their own way, which has been a big subject in our examinations and interrogations of the these works. Both poets need the past. We do too.

The historian wouldn’t like this answer:

History is a sound in another room.
You call and either he, she,
it
goes mouse quiet

Rich Spaces

Spinning, Susan Gibb’s, is a rich and energetic space. I particularly enjoy when she digs into the stuff on her shelf. She puts up a great quote from Garcia Marquez then goes after it.

This post here, in a different context, is serious writing. Better days, yes.

Tiresome Terminology

A few terms and phrases I”ve been tired of for some time now (off the top of the head):
1. Blog: which sounds like the sound you make when you spit out that sour milk.
2. Homeland: which sounds a little too much like what the maniac would say in a Bond film.
3. Think outside of the box: often said by those who forget that they’re still in a box when they say it.

Gawain and History

One of the significant issues we’re going after in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the importance of context, not just for the reader but also for the poet. An Arthurian romance in the Middle English style and mode comes with all kinds of significant ideas: why Arthur, why Gawain, and why that structure to the poem.

The Gawain or Pearl poet is very much aware of his subject, just as Chaucer is aware of biblical parallels and anecdote, but he’s also very much aware of his structure, both internal to the poem’s narrative and in the poem itself. He’s aware that he’s “constructing” a poem that tells Gawain’s story. But we always begin at the beginning–ah the play on the things–just as the poet does. The poet begins, as did the Beowulf skald, with mention of “how we got here” and “with those figures significant to the figures in the story.” Mark Anastasio, just after we left off with the Green Knight’s intro words, caught me outside of class and suggested possible reasoning behind Rome, Aeneas, and Brutus. (I’ll let him inform the class about what he told me.)

Arthur in the romance tradition is a figure who brings order to world. He unites and governs as a servant of Christ, and he deserves the loyalty of the knight-thane, just as Beowulf did. Implicit to order and its figures, however, is a threat: the threat is disorder and death. The grand narrative of Arthur is the narrative of Rome. It is great but it also falls. Beowulf is great, but just like his fathers, he will die–then what? In cyclical history, Rome always falls. Arthur’s story always ends the same way. Rise and fall, ascent and descent. If you’re a Christian, Christ always dies on the cross, and you’re helpless to prevent it. From the poet’s perspective, we need to learn from the story that always ends the same way (and it’s not as easy as it sounds).

Questions of Time
The Gawain poet treats time as a force. Consider these lines from part 2, 24

Then the summer season when the west breeze blows
After þe sesoun of somer wyth þe soft wyndez

and soft winds sigh on seed and stem.
Quen Zeferus syflez hymself on sedez and erbez,

How the green things glory in their urgent growth
Wela wynne is þe wort þat waxes þeroute,

when the dripping dew drops from the leaves,
When þe donkande dewe dropez of þe leuez,

waiting for the warm sun’s welcome glance.
To bide a blysful blusch of þe bryt sunne.

But then Fall flies in, and fills their hearts,
Bot þen hyes heruest, and hardenes hym sone,

Bidding them be rich, ripe, and ready for winter.
Warnez hym for þe wynter to wax ful rype;

The autumn drought drives up dust
He dryues wyth drot þe dust for to ryse,

that billows in clouds above the broad earth.
Fro þe face of þe folde to flye ful hye;

Wild winds whistle, wrestling the sun;
Wroþe wynde of þe welkyn wrastelez with þe sunne,

Leaves launch from each limb and land on the soil,
Þe leuez lancen fro þe lynde and lyten on þe grounde,

while the green grass fades to grey.
And al grayes þe gres þat grene watz ere;

What rose at the first now ripens and rots
Þenne al rypez and rotez þat ros vpon fyrst,

till the year has gathered its full yield of yesterdays.
And þus irnez þe ere in isterdayez mony,

In this Deane text, which differs profoundly from the strong translation of Barroff and that makes corny decisions in translation (thus I’ve added the Tolkien version in its Middle English), we can note the cyclic power and inevitability of time and its tropes. The summer is “glad” but the “hard harvest” always follows and “ripe” always moves to rot. The context here is also the many yesterdays. Under the governance of this natural pattern Gawain must prepare for his journey and “travails yet to try” (535).

Time runs throughout the text. It’s marked by calendar, ritual, point of view, and season. Gawain moves into it as the story plays out. The birth of Rome is tied to Troy and linked to the birth of Britain.

But what is the warning here?

Dylan as Hero

In the recent issue of Time magazine, Richard Corliss clumsily frames Bob Dylan as classic and mythical hero.

But it was his gift for synthesizing that sent him into the depths of the forest and allowed him to bring it all back home in teeming poetry set to ancient lays.

Lanval and the ethics of the court

In BL we’re preping for Gawain with the Anglo-Norman Lanval and other things, and talk of the hero and the journey is in the air. At our last meeting we’d considered various criteria related to the hero and how these manifest in Marie de France’s work. In Lanval they are the encounter (which sets up the context for the fixing of obligation), the obligation, and the test. We struggled over the advances of Guenevere and Lanval’s breaking of his promise to the fairy queen, which comes in heaps and with a few rhetorical slaps. In the keeping of his obligations to his love, he obviously fails. But the hero’s problem and his context is more complicated and tricky than a simple failure like this. Lanval says to Guenevere (in nice couplets, 8 syllable lines)

“Lady,” he said, “hold me excused
Because your love must be refused.
I’ve served the king for many a day;
My faith to him I won’t betray.
Never for love, and not for you,
Would I be to my lord untrue.”

Here is an interesting glue. There has been more than one obgligation made in the story of Lanval. The promise he makes to the fairy queen and the implied obligation to Arthur in the court ethic. In a sense, we ask, which obligation takes precedence? Marie de France’s tale takes us into the legal world of 12 century courts and their intricacies, their balance of ethic, tradition, and means of maintaining order. In the context of the tale, Arthur has slighted Lanval, but Lanval refused to “dishonor” him by gainsaying Guenevere’s charge of treason. Why? In a way, he’s protecting Arthur by neglecting his defence, another kind of giving or “giving up,” giving as selfless act, and in doing so maintains the balance of law, propriety, and holds true to prior obligations. The question could be then, does this redeem him in the eyes of his love?

Hypertext and Beowulf

For the British Literature students. Here’s a like to an interesting hypertext of Beowulf. We’ve been tracking two multi-dimensional issues: audience and conflict and the nature of character, leadership, and reputation as disclosed by the text. All kinds of important issues arise from this approach.

We started with a question of the nature of Grendel. Who is Grendel? It’s interesting that Grendel is a lot of things: demon, antagonist, outsider, and a “reason” unto himself. Grendel, through the text, is difficult to pin down without Beowulf as hero to give him context, much as is the unmemoried Unferth and his accusations of vanity.