Appunti di Letteratura inglese

All English Literature I text notes

The Canterbury Tales

The Knight’s Tale

Introduction

• Only one who belongs to aristocracy (most middle class, one lower class).
• Longest tale.
• Chivalric romance: fighting to win over the dame confronted with all the other knights who are chasing after her.
• Triangular desire: the desire for someone or something in competition with someone else.
• This is an Original Imitation of Boccaccio’s Teseide (Teseide = Theseus): both Christian and classical values.
• Main characters: Theseus, Palamon, Arcita, Emily.
• Tone: purpose of the communication, or elements that indicate the way in which a conversation is meant to be interpreted, so they don’t belong to the text but they hold a connotation that cannot be explained by words only.
• This tale has an ironic tone with an aulic register with touches of irony.

The tale

Theseus comes back after fighting the Amazons (it’s not explained why he’s waged war) as a winner and decides to marry the queen of the Amazons Ippolita; although she doesn’t seem to mind, it’s clear we’re seeing everything from his eyes.

• They go back home with her little sister Emily, who is unmarried, to Athens.
• At home they meet a group of mourning women and they find out that these women are all widows since their husbands were killed by Creon and they aren’t being given a decent burial. They ask Theseus to defend them and he does (chivalry values, defend the weak). After the battle, they spare a few defeated soldiers from the nobility and lock them away in a tower. These two are cousins and brothers in arms, and swear that their bond is unbreakable.
• However, on a spring morning (love), the two see Emily singing in the garden and are both struck by love for her.
• Emily is compared to a flower as the tradition wants, a lily because it’s a noble flower.
• She’s singing in the garden: traditional type-scene (scene tipiche), since the garden represents a controlled and harmonious nature (Eve in Paradise Lost): the garden is not the place for the conquest of the knight, but rather in some place like the woods.
• Palamon sees her and falls in love (treated as a curse): being stabbed or shot by Cupid’s arrow.
• Arcita sees her too and falls in love as well: “her beauty strikes me dead”, because love kills, common line in Italian love poetry of the time.
• Their brotherhood is threatened by this love triangle.
• Arcita is freed but is exiled to Thebes and falls into a lover’s melancholy (in the Middle Ages identified a bunch of mental conditions such as depression) so much he becomes unrecognizable: he’s not only sad but mad, crazed (the rack of eros = form of torture where people were stretched and spun—public torture methods that all readers were familiar with) and under the strain of fantasia (those cells that front the brain = fantasia era una condizione nel davanti del cervello che causa allucinazioni).
• Arcita returns to Athens in disguise of a servant for Emily. Palamon manages to poison the guards and escapes the tower.
• Soliloquy: Arcita declares that Emily is killing him with her beauty, Palamon accidentally hears him and realizes it’s Arcita: they argue over who has the right over her (we see Arcita has a more practical side: Palamon says that they’ve got some brotherhood oath and values between them, Arcita says that love is free and every man is for himself).
• Arcita challenges him to a duel, assuring him food, first pick on the weapon and a good place to sleep: chivalry value of a fair battle.
• Before battle, they dress each other in armour without uttering a word: then they start fighting wildly = there’s an opposition.
• Rhetorical devices of the duel: metaphors of beasts fighting wildly. Graphic depiction of fighting: conventional element.
• Destiny interrupts the fight: Emily, Hippolita and Theseus stumble onto the scene: Theseus claims this fight is improper because a fight between proper knights should be an object of spectacle: we see how in the Middle Ages the concept of individual will is not yet developed and instead the person should belong appropriately for the group which they belong to.
• Theseus grants them their lives and decides to make the battle with an array of a 100 knights each in a huge stadium/colosseum with statues of three deities that are going to be blessing this fight: takes inspiration from both the medieval chivalric tradition and classical fights.
• Emily prays to Diana in order not to be married, or to be married of to the one of the two who will love her, while Arcita prays to Mars to be granted victory.
• The ending will be that they all get what they wanted with an ironic twist: Arcita wins, but when he’s riding to Emily he falls off his horse and dies: on his deathbed he tells Palamon and Emily that he’s cool with them being together because he knows he will care for her.
• They get married.

Comment

Their wishes have been granted not by chance but by providence: the Christian concept of destiny.

What’s the difference between classical chance and medieval providence?: Chance does not take into consideration the value of human lives and does everything without really thinking of them as something to care for: providence is God’s guidance and help men become better people.

Style of especially part three: ekphrasis: very long description of pieces of art, which in part three we see in the art that Theseus puts in the stadium for the fight which helps the reader visualize the splendour.

Type scenes in this tale: the garden, the duel, the banquet, the battle, the funeral.

Themes

• Chance and providence: by chance they’re taken into the tower and see Emily, by chance Palamon and Arcita escape, and yet it’s revealed in the end that it’s always been providence all along which guided the tale (union of classical and Christian tradition).
• Fighting as a form of art because it has to adhere to a series of protocols and expectations in order to be a spectacle.
• Female character who is idealized and has to comply with the desire of the knights, object of love, no agency (relationship with the Wife of Bath’s Tale).

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

Introduction from the General Prologue

• Is from around Bath city, a city where even back then there was a lot of wealthy tourists and prostitution.
• Somewhat deaf.
• Arrogant, vain:
• In church she’s always the first one to take the communion: contradiction from real Christian values: for a woman of medieval times church was one of the very few social gatherings.
• Likes to put on excessive accessories.
• Scarlet hose, red face: color of passion.
• She showed her legs: scandalous.
• Gapped teeth: sign of lust (conventional detail).
• She somehow outlived five husbands (old and wealthy) and had lovers in her youth: that’s how she’d had the money necessary to go on pilgrimages often.

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue

• The longest prologue in the book.

The Wife of Bath claims that she has learned something about marriage over the years that she wants to share with us.

She refers to the Samaritan woman in the Bible who married twice; example of medieval casuistics: if a woman marries more than once, who will she be united with in heaven. And Jesus replies: this is not a problem that you have in heaven for physical love is only present on earth.

She explains she’s enjoyed being wed because it’s the only acceptable way for a medieval woman to have sex, and proves to know the Bible and references it multiple times.

Begins a discussion on virginity: she says she’s read the Bible and she hadn’t found a commandment on having to keep your virginity, and so she doesn’t see virginity as a duty but as advice that she doesn’t have to necessarily follow. And then she says: if we didn’t have children, how could virgins of Christ be born? Paul (main theologian of church matters) hasn’t spoken on this, because he’s never been told it was a commandment.

She tells us about her marriage experiences and unsatisfaction because they were all old men. However, her fifth husband is 20 years younger, but he is a scholar who is passionate about reading of sinful and wicked, lustful women. The Wife of Bath (Allison) is enraged by this and get into physical fight.

She says: if women could have written such books then there would have been so many on wicked men that could not intervene: Literature is instrumental to the patriarchy and if women could speak up they would break this patriarchal scheme: progressive statement on the authority of books and literates and the values that they serve.

She hits him first but then he hits her and she loses her hearing on one side. She fakes death and he swears that if she comes back to life he will serve her forever, and this is how she manages to get the upper hand on him.

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

• It’s an exemplum (fable with a moral lesson).
• A tale of how a woman manages to gain control in marriage.
• The story is set in King Arthur’s times, before Christianity took over, with elements of fairytales and magic.
• There is a knight who one gets from the king a death sentence due to rape: but the women of the court suggest he will instead have to roam the country and find the answer to the Queen’s question: what do women want the most?
• The quest begins and, after a year, his time is up: as he comes back to the castle, he sees a large group of maidens dancing (typical hallucination of the wandering knight) who then become an old hag: “I know what women want,” she says “I’ll tell you if you promise to do anything I tell you to afterwards.”
• They go to court: the answer is that what women want most is to control their husbands. Correct answer ding ding.
• The hag then tells the knight that he must marry her because of his promise. He’s not happy with this arrangement because she’s old and poor but then she says that he shouldn’t be unhappy because gentleness comes from giving up what they have and live with little. Would you rather have an old but faithful wife, or a cheating young woman?
• The knight says: you can decide for me.
• The hag rewards him for giving her control, which is what women want most, and magically turns into a young and beautiful woman.

Comment

Despite not being right after the Knight’s Tale, connects to it in a way that is polar opposite (will ask in the exam), since in one the knight narrates of the ideal woman to him, while in her tale the role of the woman defies expectations:

• Breaking the moral conventions of the time.
• Uses literary sources such as the Bible and the Christian patriarchs to prove her point in a masterful interpretation.
• Reconsiders marriage politics for the first time in this historical period: first sprout of the reformation, since she promotes a realistic read of the Bible and not the interpretation given by priests and promotes reading the Bible by yourself.
• This story is of course a fictionalized version of the Wife of Bath herself.

Exam: the tales done in class plus the tales indicated in Teams.

Tale of the Pardoner

Introduction

• Pardoner: indulgenziere: religious pardons will be a great reason for the beginning of the reformation.
• The pardoner was a licensed official of the church who could give out pardons, they were bound by secrecy and were quite powerful because they could choose the price of your forgiveness and the penitence you would suffer in the afterlife: the purgatory is an invention of the medieval Catholicism exactly because of this idea of earning salvation.
• In the tale, the pardoner openly admits he is greedy and villainous.
• He uses is his rhetoric skills in order to steal money from uneducated people.
• His tale is an exemplum, a moral story, which is heavily ironic since the theme of the story is the demise brought by greed.
• The tale ends with him trying to sell his fake relics to the others pilgrims.

Description in the General Prologue

• Doesn’t wear a hood, so we see his unkept hair.
• When a character is supposed to be perceived negatively they are compared to animals:
• Hair like rat tails.
• Eyes like a hare (the eyes are the windows to the soul).
• Voice of a goat (voice is the vessel for emotion).
• He made the clergy into monkeys.
• Pardons were certified with a written certificate with the seal of the pope: his satchel is full of them to the brim, as if it’s food or any other good.
• “There was no pardoner…grace”: because he has no grace, nor elegance nor religious grace.
• Says the pardoner has a fake relic and calls it a pillow case: the narrator shows that he knows that the relic is fake in a comedic line.
• “But still to do him justice…”: the but gives us the idea that the previous lines were all ironic.
• He is good at going through the practices of the liturgies, what is used in the church during service and he is best at singing the Offertory, the song sung when the followers give out money.
• This character is meant to represent a piece of the clergy which tricks people and are frauds.

The Pardoner’s Prologue

• The topic of his sermon is: the root of all evil is greed.
• He says he uses the same preaching every time, and always shows the pardons given by the pope in a sort of theatrical manner, as if he’s giving a show with props.
• Admits he uses Latin words every now and then to give some color to the speech.
• “My hands and tongue…”: sineddoche per il corpo: “tesso il mio racconto falso”.
• He talks about the dangers of greed because it motivates the poor followers to give out their money.
• The other pilgrims thought he would tell a story that is vulgar and indecent, but he does the opposite defying their expectations.

The Pardoner’s Tale

• Set in the Flanders: considered an exotic place: as in, it’s degenerate and full of sin.
• The characters are a trio of thieves, degenerate young men.
• After introducing the characters, most of his tale is made up of a sermon warning the lister of the dangers of greed, betting, etc.
• Autocaratterizzazione: il pardoner si autodescrive.
• Finally we come back to the story of the three young men: it is set during the plague of the black death, meanwhile these men have fun.
• They see a funeral and they’re told that a fiend named Death has killed him. The three men decide they’re gonna take revenge on this Death guy. It’s an allegory: Death has a moral value in the story. Death is personified as a fiend, an enemy, someone who steals from you (will be important in the next story).
• They find an old man and he says he knows that Death is under a tree, where they find a mound of gold. They decide to draw straws to see who will go in town to get food and wine for the night so they can take the gold without being seen.
• In secret, the other two plot on killing the other man once he’s back. The other man comes back and is slayed, but once they begin drinking they die because the other man had thought to poison the food. So, they’ve all found Death in the pursuit of their own greed.
• After this, the pardoner begins to beg for money and the others start insulting him and denying him.
• This is a story that has been told time and time again, and has many different versions.

Medieval drama between the 13th and 15th century

• Between the ancient times and the late Middle Ages, there’s no theatre in the west because of barbaric invasions which killed the tradition of social gatherings.
• 12th century onwards: Europe lives more peaceful times which allow for drama to sprout. It was born as a side commentary for Bible stories.
• Drama is born once again in churches because mass, which was compulsory, was in Latin: tools like dramatic representations and frescos served to teach followers of moral matters.

The space of this kind of theatre gives us an idea of its evolution

• First stage, representations of Bible stories: the church was divided in a part for the followers and one for the clergy divided by a wooden board, in which friars and monks were the first actors.
• Second stage: it slowly moves to outside the church and market squares.
• Third stage: it moves in the outskirts of town, having become more