The Formation of Western Literature

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The Formation of Western Literature

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Title: The Formation of Western Literature

1
The Formation of Western Literature

Into the Middle Ages

First an Overview
2

Contrary to popular belief, the medieval period
cannot be characterized as entirely barbaric.
During this period, national literatures in the
vernacular appeared.
Due to their disparate influences, literature and
culture in medieval Europe were very diverse,
drawing from different, often conflicting
sources.
In his Confessions, Augustine sets down the story
of his early life for the benefit of others,
combining the intellectual tradition of the
ancient world and the religious feeling that
would come to be characteristic of the Middle
Ages.

Composed around 850, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf
speaks about the warring lifestyle of the
Germanic and Scandinavian groups that conquered
the Roman empire.
Not only does the Song of Roland set the
foundation for the French literary tradition, but
it also establishes the narrative about the
foundation of France itself.
The twelfth century, Marie de France helped
establish the major forms and themes of
vernacular literature, especially for what we now
call romances, novelistic narratives that deal
with adventure and love.

The thirteenth-century story Thorstein the
Staff-Struck is a short example of the Icelandic
saga tradition that speaks about the lives of men
and women who lived in Iceland and Norway between
the ninth and eleventh centuries.
These Icelandic Sagas were especially the love of
JRR Tolkien.
Beginning in Provence around 1100, the love lyric
spread to Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, and
eventually England.

The Divine Comedy offers Dante's controversial
political and religious beliefs within a formal
and cosmological framework that evokes the
three-in-one of the Christian Trinity God the
Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Best known for his Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio
was one of the many medieval writers who
contributed to the revival of classical literary
traditions that would come to fruition in the
Italian Renaissance and later spread to other
parts of Europe.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight revives the
"native" Anglo-Saxon tradition first seen in
Beowulf that had apparently been submerged
between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries
following the Norman Conquest.
Although Chaucer's Canterbury Tales does not
appear to be overtly political, it was written
during a period of considerable political and
religious turmoil that would eventually give rise
to the Protestant Reformation.

Anonymously written plays such as Everyman
focused on morality or were dramatic enactments
of homilies and sermons.

And Now On to the Particulars
8
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9
Contrary to popular belief, the medieval period
cannot be characterized as entirely barbaric.
During this period, national literatures in the
vernacular appeared.

During the Middle Ages, the classical
civilization of Greece and Rome was radically
transformed as a consequence of contact with
Germanic tribes from the north, Christians from
Palestine, and Muslims from the Arabian peninsula
and northern Africa.

Due to such disparate cultural forces, medieval
Europe was hardly unified, politically or
culturally, by 500.
Within the next thousand years, common ideas and
values emerged such as consensual government,
recognition of religious difference, and
individualism.
Though these ideas and values have come to be
associated with "the West," they were not always
practiced at home and were seldom practiced in
occupied territories.

Known as "the busy millennium," the medieval
period in Europe produced literature concerned
with religious faith and the appropriate use of
physical force.
Though characters from medieval European works
are often discussed as archetypal individuals who
seek to understand themselves and their destinies
better, many of these works borrow from
culturally specific non-Western traditions.

That these characters were later exported back to
non-Western parts of the world as part of the
colonial education system may account for their
so-called universal appeal.

13
In his Confessions, Augustine sets down the
story of his early life for the benefit of
others, combining the intellectual tradition of
the ancient world and the religious feeling that
would come to be characteristic of the Middle
Ages.
354-430

Born in Tagaste, North Africa, Aurelius Augustine
did not convert to Christianity until midway
through his life.

He went on to become the bishop of Hippo, North
Africa, and one of the men responsible for the
consolidation of the Christian church in the
west.

In The Confessions, he talks with humility
directly to God, aware that God is concerned for
him personally, and comes to an understanding of
his own feelings and development as a human
being.

15
The Confessions

Augustine probably began work on the Confessions
around the year 397, when he was 43 years old.
Augustines precise motivation for writing his
life story at that point is not clear, but there
are at least two possible causes.
First, his contemporaries were suspicious of him
because of his Classical, pagan-influenced
education his brilliant public career as a
rhetor and his status as an ex-Manichee.
(Ancient religion of Iranian origin).
Another motivation may have been a bit of
correspondence between Augustines close friend
Alypius and a notable Christian convert, Paulinus
of Nola, a Roman aristocrat who had renounced the
world and his immense family fortune upon
converting to Christianity. Alypius wrote to
Paulinus and sent him some of Augustines works.
Paulinus wrote back to ask Alypius for an account
of Alypius life and conversion.

16
Basic Structure

Structurally, the Confessions falls into three
segments
Books 1 through 9 recount Augustines life and
his spiritual journey.
Book 10 is a discussion of the nature of memory
and an examination of the temptations Augustine
was still facing.
Books 11 through 13 are an extended exegesis of
the first chapter of Genesis.
The sharp differences between these three parts
have raised many questions about the unity of the
Confessions.
Augustine himself commented in his Retractiones
that the first ten books were about himself, and
the other three were about scripture.
Some critics argue that, in fact, the Confessions
has no unified structure, and Augustine simply
proceeded without an overall plan for the work.
Others think the final four books were tacked on
at a later date. Still others have contended that
the Confessions is, in fact, unfinished, and that
Augustine intended the autobiographical portion
simply as an introduction to a much longer work,
either a full analysis of the book of Genesis
(Augustine produced several of these analyses) or
a catechism for new members of the church.

Augustine opens his spiritual biography with a
magnificent flourish of praise to God.
The opening paragraph contains one of Augustines
most famous statements about humanitys
relationship with God You stir us to take
pleasure in praising you, because you have made
us for yourself, and our heart is restless until
it rests in you (translation, Chadwyck).
This pithy sentence summarizes a knotty
proposition, one that is a major theme of
Augustines works and one that the rest of the
opening simply restates and amplifies

In calling upon God, Augustine shows faith,
because he cannot call upon a God he does not
know.
God fills all of creation God is perfect,
eternal, unchangeable, all-powerful, and the
source of all goodness.
God is beyond Augustines ability to describe he
asks God for the words to describe such
greatness. Augustine pleads that he is too small
and weak for God to come to him, but only God can
aid him.
The Confessions is always called a story of
conversion. Augustine actually undergoes several
conversions
to Manichaeism to the pursuit of truth,
with Ciceros Hortensius to an intellectual
acceptance of Christian doctrine and finally
to an emotional acceptance of Christian faith.

Yet the term conversion is somewhat misleading.
Even the young Augustine was never truly in doubt
about the existence of God.
Although he flirted briefly with the radical
skepticism of the Academics, he was always
certain, even as a Manichee, that Christ was the
savior of the world. Augustine simply had the
details wrongin his view, disastrously wrong
Human beings naturally long to rest in God, to
know God and to harmonize their wills with Gods
will. But because they are weak and sinful,
humans can never hope to do this without Gods
assistance. In fact, all human impulses toward
God have their origin in God.

Augustine discusses his infancy, which he knows
only from the report of his parents. According to
that report, Augustine became more aware and
tried unsuccessfully to communicate his desires
to the adults around him.
Only God can say whether people exist in some
form before infancy Augustine says that his own
knowledge is limited to what God reveals.
God knows no past or future, only one eternal
present. Even as an infant, Augustine was not
free from sin.
Observing infants, he notes that they throw
tantrums if they do not get their way, although
they are too weak to cause actual harm.
Augustine thanks God for the good gifts of his
body, his life, and his senses, gifts that
reflect Gods perfect ordering of all things.

The Confessions is in one sense Augustines
personal story, but it is also a story with an
almost mythological or archetypal appeal.
Augustine is a kind of everyman, representing a
lost and struggling humanity trying to rediscover
the divine, the only source of true peace and
satisfaction.
As in a fairy tale, the outcome of the
Confessions is never really in doubt its hero is
predestined to find what he seeks.

22
Aligheri Dante
1265-1321

Dante was born in Florence, Italy, in
1265. This would be one of those meaningless,
soon forgotten facts if it were not so
significant for the works Dante produced.

It happened to be the wrong place at the wrong
time.
The two most influential families in Florence
were the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
The Guelphs were supporters of the Pope and the
Ghibellines supported the German emperor, who
claimed power in Italy.
Shortly before Dante was born, the Ghibellines
were ousted from power, and the Guelphs, with
whom Dante's family was associated, took power.

Dante began his own political career in 1295 when
the Guelphs were firmly established and many of
the Ghibellines were still in exile.
At that time, however, a split began in the
Guelphs the two sides became known later as the
Whites and the Blacks.
The crisis came to a head in 1300 when the
Whites, who were in power, decided to prosecute
the Blacks who had gone to Rome to ask the Pope
to intervene on their behalf. (Remember, the
Guelphs had backed the Popehe owed them a
favor.)
Dante was one of the six White leaders
responsible for this decision. In 1301, the next
year, the Blacks staged a successful coup and the
White leaders, including Dante, were sent into
exile.

In 1302, charged with graft, hostility against
the Pope, and a long list of other crimes, in his
absence Dante was sentenced to death--if he was
ever caught in Florence again.
Consequently, Dante never returned to his home
city. This exile also meant that Dante's
fortunes, which were not as large as his family
had once held, were confiscated. He spent the
remainder of his life living at the expense and
generosity of friends. He died in Ravenna in
1321.
He first saw his lifelong love, Beatrice
Portinari (c.1265--90), when they were both nine
in 1274.
There is no evidence that she returned his
passion, and only one further meeting between the
two, nine years later, is recorded.
She was married at an early age to one Simone de'
Bardi, but neither this nor the poet's own
subsequent marriage interfered with his pure and
platonic devotion to her.
He was betrothed to Gemma Donati in 1277
(remember he would have been twelve then!) whom
he later married.

There were three children Jacopo, Pietro, and
Antonia. (Some of the historians mention a
fourth, Giovanni.)
When Dante's sons were fourteen, they also had to
join their father in exile. Both Jacopo and
Pietro later wrote about the Divine Comedy.
Antonia entered a convent and took the name
Sister Beatrice.
By choosing to write his poem in Italian rather
than in Latin, Dante decisively influenced the
course of literary development.
Not only did he lend a voice to the emerging lay
culture of his own country, but Italian became
the literary language in western Europe for
several centuries.
In addition to poetry Dante wrote important
theoretical works ranging from discussions of
rhetoric to moral philosophy and political
thought.
He was fully conversant with the classical
tradition, drawing for his own purposes on such
writers as Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius. But,
most unusual for a layman, he also had an
impressive command of the most recent scholastic
philosophy and of theology.
Dante was a political thinker in the mediaeval
tradition, a rhetorician, and a philosopher, the
chief poet of the Italians, and one of the
world's greatest writers.

26
The Divine Comedy

This great work of medieval literature is a
profound Christian vision of man's temporal and
eternal destiny. On its most personal level, it
draws on the poet's own experience of exile from
his native city of Florence
on its most comprehensive level, it may be read
as an allegory, taking the form of a journey
through hell, purgatory, and paradise.
The poem amazes by its array of learning, its
penetrating and comprehensive analysis of
contemporary problems, and its inventiveness of
language and imagery.

Beatrice and Dante
27
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1370-1380

Major Themes
The Nature of Chivalry
The Letter of the Law
Theme of Fidelity Serious reflection upon human
behavior.

"A Loving Critique of Chivalry. quoted by
Christopher Tolkien in his introduction.
28
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Verse Form
Middle English but not Chaucers
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written in a
style typical of the what is called by linguists
the "Alliterative Revival" of the 14th century.
Instead of focusing on a metrical syllabic count
and rhyme, the alliterative form of this period
usually relied on the agreement of a pair of
stressed syllables at the beginning of the line
and another pair at the end of the line.
The line always finds a "breath-point", or pause,
called a caesura, at some point after the first
two stresses, dividing the line into two
half-lines.

Alternative Rhyme. Vocabulary very rich
influenced by French (in court) dialect words.
Arthurian setting.
Although he largely follows the form of his day,
the Gawain poet was somewhat more free with
convention than his predecessors. The poet broke
his alliterative lines into variable-length
groups and ended these nominal stanzas with a
rhyming section of five lines known as the bob
and wheel
Stanzas quite elaborated 4 stresses sylables
lines (3 firsts alliterate) arranged into pairs,
followed by Bob Wheel (5 lines14). one
one-stress line rhyming a (the bob) and four
three-stress lines rhyming baba (the wheel).
These lines also alliterated.1 On the whole,
the poem takes up 2530 lines, divided into four
parts and 101 stanzas.
Thus the romance follows a strict rhyme scheme.

30
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1370-1380

Major Themes
The Nature of Chivalry
The world of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is
governed by well-defined codes of behavior. The
code of chivalry, in particular, shapes the
values and actions of Sir Gawain and other
characters in the poem.
The ideals of chivalry derive from the Christian
concept of morality, and the proponents of
chivalry seek to promote spiritual ideals in a
spiritually fallen world.

The ideals of Christian morality and knightly
chivalry are brought together in Gawains
symbolic shield.

As the poet explains, the five points of the star
each have five meanings
they represent the five senses, the five fingers,
the five wounds of Christ,12
the five joys that Mary had of Jesus (the
Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the
Ascension, and the Assumption), and
the five virtues of knighthood which Gawain hopes
to embody noble generosity, fellowship, purity,
courtesy, and compassion.

Gawains adherence to these virtues is tested
throughout the poem, but the poem examines more
than Gawains personal virtue it asks whether
heavenly virtue can operate in a fallen world.
What is really being tested in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight might be the chivalric system
itself, symbolized by Camelot.

Arthurs court depends heavily on the code of
chivalry, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
gently criticizes the fact that chivalry values
appearance and symbols over truth.
Arthur is introduced to us as the most courteous
of all, indicating that people are ranked in
this court according to their mastery of a
certain code of behavior and good manners.
When the Green Knight challenges the court, he
mocks them for being so afraid of mere words,
suggesting that words and appearances hold too
much power over the company. The members of the
court never reveal their true feelings, instead
choosing to seem beautiful, courteous, and
fair-spoken.

On his quest for the Green Chapel, Gawain travels
from Camelot into the wilderness. In the forest,
Gawain must abandon the codes of chivalry and
admit that his animal nature requires him to seek
physical comfort in order to survive.
Once he prays for help, he is rewarded by the
appearance of a castle. The inhabitants of
Bertilaks castle teach Gawain about a kind of
chivalry that is more firmly based in truth and
reality than that of Arthurs court.
These people are connected to nature, as their
hunting and even the way the servants greet
Gawain by kneeling on the naked earth symbolize
(818).

As opposed to the courtiers at Camelot, who
celebrate in Part 1 with no understanding of how
removed they are from the natural world,
Bertilaks courtiers joke self-consciously about
how excessively lavish their feast is.

The poem does not by any means suggest that the
codes of chivalry be abandoned. Gawains
adherence to them is what keeps him from sleeping
with his hosts wife.
The lesson Gawain learns as a result of the Green
Knights challenge is that, at a basic level, he
is just a physical being who is concerned above
all else with his own life. Chivalry provides a
valuable set of ideals toward which to strive,
but a person must above all remain conscious of
his or her own mortality and weakness.
Gawains time in the wilderness, his flinching at
the Green Knights axe, and his acceptance of the
ladys offering of the green girdle teach him
that though he may be the most chivalrous knight
in the land, he is nevertheless human and capable
of error.

36
The Letter of the Law

Though the Green Knight refers to his challenge
as a game, he uses the language of the law to
bind Gawain into an agreement with him. He
repeatedly uses the word covenant, meaning a
set of laws, a word that evokes the two covenants
represented by the Old and the New Testaments.
The Old Testament details the covenant made
between God and the people of Israel through
Abraham, but the New Testament replaces the old
covenant with a new covenant between Christ and
his followers. In 2 Corinthians 36, Paul writes
that Christ has a new covenant, not of letter
but of spirit for the letter kills, but the
Spirit gives life.

The letter to which Paul refers here is the
legal system of the Old Testament. From this
statement comes the Christian belief that the
literal enforcement of the law is less important
than serving its spirit, a spirit tempered by
mercy.

Throughout most of the poem, the covenant between
Gawain and the Green Knight evokes the literal
kind of legal enforcement that medieval Europeans
might have associated with the Old Testament.
The Green Knight at first seems concerned solely
with the letter of the law. Even though he has
tricked Gawain into their covenant, he expects
Gawain to follow through on the agreement. And
Gawain, though he knows that following the letter
of the law means death, is determined to see his
agreement through to the end because he sees this
as his knightly duty.
At the poems end, the covenant takes on a new
meaning and resembles the less literal, more
merciful New Testament covenant between Christ
and his Church. In a decidedly Christian gesture,
the Green Knight, who is actually Gawains host,
Bertilak, absolves Gawain because Gawain has
confessed his faults.

To remind Gawain of his weakness, the Green
Knight gives him a penance, in the form of the
wound on his neck and the girdle. The Green
Knight punishes Gawain for breaking his covenant
to share all his winnings with his host, but he
does not follow to the letter his covenant to
decapitate Gawain. Instead of chopping Gawains
head off, Bertilak calls it his right to spare
Gawain and only nicks his neck.
Ultimately, Gawain clings to the letter of the
law. He cannot accept his sin and absolve himself
of it the way Bertilak has, and he continues to
do penance by wearing the girdle for the rest of
his life. The Green Knight transforms his literal
covenant by offering Gawain justice tempered with
mercy, but the letter of the law still threatens
in the storys background, and in Gawains own
psyche.

39
Felix Culpa

The Felix Culpa is a Latin phrase that literally
translated means a "blessed fault" or "fortunate
fall. The idea is that so wonderful is Gods
grace that it is was worth our fall in Eden to
see Him work
The medieval mind loved the tension of opposites
especially at Christmas Tide. Note the following
quote from the Middle English Carol
This sillie Babe, so few days old,Is come to
rifle Satan's foldAll hell doth at His presence
quake,Though He himself for cold do shake

However in another carol, Adam Lay Ibounden,
the fortunate fall comes up overtly
Adam lay ibounden,
Bounden in a bond.
Four a-thousand winter
Thoght he not too long
And all was for an apple An apple that he tok
As clerkes finden Wreten in here book
Click Here to Hear this

Ne hadde the appil take ben,
The appil taken ben,
Ne hadde never our lady
A ben hevene quene.
Blessed be the time
That appil take was,
Therefore we moun singen
Deo gracias. (Emphasis Mine)

Gawain and the Green Knight is depiction of the
Fortunate Fall
Gawain in the beginning of the story is a good
knight but he thinks that he is without flaw.
Bertilak shows him that in spite of his solid
attempts to live a Christian and Chivalric life
he (like all of us) needs grace.

43
Motifs

The Seasons
At the beginning of Parts 2 and 4, the poet
describes the changing of the seasons. The
seasonal imagery in Part 2 precedes Gawains
departure from Camelot, and in Part 4 his
departure from the hosts castle.
In both cases, the changing seasons correspond to
Gawains changing psychological state, from
cheerfulness (pleasant weather) to bleakness (the
winter). But the five changing seasons also
correspond to the five ages of man
(birth/infancy, youth, adulthood, middle age, and
old age/death), as well as to the cycles of
fertility and decay that govern all creatures in
the natural world.
The emphasis on the cyclical nature of the
seasons contrasts with and provides a different
understanding of the passage of time from the
more linear narrative of history that frames the
poem.

44
Motifs

Games
When the poem opens, Arthurs court is engaged in
feast-time customs, and Arthur almost seems to
elicit the Green Knights entrance by requesting
that someone tell him a tale.
When the Green Knight first enters, the courtiers
think that his appearance signals a game of some
sort. The Green Knights challenge, the hosts
later challenge, and the wordplay that takes
place between Gawain and the lady are all
presented as games.
The relationship between games and tests is
explored because games are forms of social
behavior, while tests provide a measure of an
individuals inner worth.

45
Sites Cited

Adam Lay y-bounden Medieval babes
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vDocrO_hRW2w
WW. Norton Review http//www.wwnorton.com/nawol/s1
0_overview.htm1 . 22 Nov. 2005
Cliffnotes on The Confessions http//www.cliffsnot
es.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-166.html 22 Nov. 2005
Moore, Charlie Dantes Clickable Inferno,
Cartharge College. http//www.carthage.edu/dept/en
glish/dante/Title.html 5 Dec. 2006
Parker, Deborah ed., The World of Dante. 5 Dec.
2006 http//www3.iath.virginia.edu/dante/
Rzepka, Adam. SparkNote on Confessions. 5 Dec.
2006 http//www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/confessi
onsaug.