Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (10) Popular ballads

Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (10) Popular ballads

 

Popular ballads:

 

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• nature of the ballads: anonymous narrative songs preserved by oral transmission
• their origin: primitive societies

 

• the main purposes: songs for ritual dances( not plausible), because of their unconscious or conscious revisions
• date of the English ballads’ composition: from 1200 to 1700
• Bishop Thomas Percy's role: he found a 17th Century manuscript and became interested in ballads
• his work: Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
• the role of his work: inspiring Sir Walter Scott
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• ballads composed by people not by a particular person: because work of a consciously artistic mind doesn't need revision
• common features of popular ballads: spareness / culminating incident or climax of a plot / intense compression / narrating through allusive monologue or dialogue
• their artistic stature: gained through revising and removing the irrelevant part

 

• their distinctive verse form: simplicity of the tunes / a quatrain with four stresses per line / choral practice of using refrains and other kinds of repetitions  / a foreknown or foredoomed paradoxical conclusion /
• role of  repetition and refrain: providing a very primitive and effective suspense / incantation of ritual of liturgy

 

• the dominant subject or motifs of most best ballads: a tragic incident
• Names of  some famous ballads: Lord Randall   /  Sir Patrick Spen
• a ballad  with a happy ending: Thomas Rhymer based on a romance or an old ballad

 

• the origin of Sir Patrick Spens: based on a historical incident of the end of the 13th century:  like some other ballads actual historical incidents
• deficiencies of the quasi-historical Robin Hood ballads: less impressive / without undergoing through the stages of oral transmission  / lacking the appropriate intensity /  chattiness / work of the minstrels to please his admirers /
• the theme of the Robin Hood ballads: in natural freedom loving-man against tyrants
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• composer of St. Steven and King Herod:   a learned cleric using Latin words undergoing a single stage of composition
• the great collection of English ballads: F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads
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Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (9) Everyman

• Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (9) Everyman
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• Everyman:
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• data of the manuscript:  about 1485
• kind of drama:    medieval morality play
• performers of the mysteries and morality plays:    trade guilds
• primary purpose of the plays:    religious
• characteristics of the mysteries:     Biblical events
• characteristics of the moralities:     allegorical Christian moral stories
• intent of the morality play:    more overtly didacticthan the mysteries
• the common feature of the two kinds of plays:        rough humor
• humor in Everyman:      his friends hastily abandon him
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• style of the work:      simple and direct language and approach, direct sermonizing, clear theme
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• usage of allegory in Everyman and in Piers Plowman:                  Direct allegorical equations for didacticism against stimulation of the imagination rather than satisfaction of the intellect

 

• the origin of the text:              maybe a translation of a Flemish play or vice versa

Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (8) Chaucer's art

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• Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (8) Chaucer's art
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• Chaucer's art:

 

the date of the Canterbury Tales:  the last 14 years of his life

the role of his practical business:   formation of only 22 Tales

his greatness as a poet:  practical life( characters), wide reading( plots and ideas) ,his detachment from the high and the low in his poetry , regarding the aristocratic ideals as well as life as a purely practical matter

 

his realism:  extraordinary clear images , more real reality

realism in the tale of Prioress: Presenting her paradoxical personality  without attempting to resolve it ( what she professes to be, a nun; what she thinks a nun ought to be,

a lady ; what she is , a woman )

 

• The Canterbury Tales:
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• Chaucer's first plan:   about 120 stories
• number of the Pilgrims: 30
• the actual number of the Tales:  22
• the first sparks of the idea of the work:  1386   living in Greenwich and observing the Pilgrims from there
• the destination: Thomas a Becket 's shrine
• other collections of stories with the same framing device: John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Boccaccio's Decameron, Giovanni Sercambi's stories
• Chaucer's differences from the other works: his characterization
• structure of the work :  two simultaneous fictions:  the Tales told by  the pilgrims and  the tales about them
• how  a tale leads to the next one: the animosity of the characters
• A story and a drama:  the effect of the tales and the enhancement of the animus of the tellers
• a thematic unifying device:   the question of marriage , like the Wife of Bath and its feminism 
• a half-burlesque version of Chaucer  himself:  the personality and mind of the reporter  in the Wife of Bath that permeates the poem and enriches its meaning
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• data of the most Tales :     during the last 14 years of his life
• number of surviving manuscripts:   more than 80 mostly from the 15th century= popularity of the poem
• number of Caxton's Prints:  two
• the structure of the manuscript :   as nine or 10 fragments , order of the poems within each fragment: the same but the order of the fragments themselves varies widely in the manuscripts
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• organization given to the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer: like marriage group
• unorthodox opinion in the Wife of Bath: sovereignity of women in marriage

 

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• The general prologue:
• Chaucer's sources for the types of people presented in his Tales:  medieval literature as well as his life
• Chaucer 's own interest : only in the visible reality, his details give something more than mere verisimilitude to the description: between the world of types and the world of real people
• role of women in Chaucer's works: women as the weavers like the Wife of Bath= paradised Eve
• symbols in his works :  the Franklin's red face and white beard= Santa Claus
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• the rich suggestiveness of the details: at first flat photographic image of reality, at last complex and deep portraits
• Chaucer as a rival to Shakespeare:  primitive entertainment + comprehension of reality