British and American Literature. Учебно-методическое пособие

when in the possession of Sir Robert Cotton, the manuscript was bound up with an originally quite distinct twelfth-century copy of miscellaneous Old English prose. But the manuscript proper is itself a composite volume. It begins with three short prose works: a legendary account of the dog-headed saint Christopher (the first two-thirds missing), an illustrated Wonders of the East and a translation of the Latin Letter of Alexander to Aristotle describing his adventures in the East. Each of these deals in various ways with monsters, and perhaps they were brought together with Beowulf on that account.

It might seem strange that the first great piece of English literature deals not with England, or Englishmen at all. The hero is a Geat, living somewhere in central Sweden, who is involved in adventures first in Denmark and later in his own country. But the long lists of poetic allusions offered in Dear and Widsith show that the early English minstrel derived his topics, from almost any part of Germanic Europe. His heroes may have been Burgundians, Goths, Franks, or men from a host of less known tribes. Most of the historical characters referred to in Beowulf are well-known figures from Migration times when the Germanic tribes of northern Europe began their great journeys south and west, land-taking, forming new kingdoms out of what had been the Roman Empire, and laying the foundations for medieval and modern Europe. The Anglo-Saxons recognized themselves part of this movement, and long preserved detailed traditions respecting their origins – much as European immigrants to modern America often preserve quite precise oral information as to their antecedents. Anglo-Saxon kings like Alfred who traced their genealogies back to the Gods, did so via various continental heroes, including some mentioned in Beowulf: Scyld, Scef and Heremod.

Scholars usually divide the poem into eleven “chapters”, but if we start following the plot according to the chapters, the composition falls apart. The title itself by which the poem is known is merely a name of convenience. As usual with Old English literature, there is no title page, no introductory material, and the only preface takes the form of an exordium dealing with the death and burial of Scyld Scefing, which at first sight seems to have little to do with the main text. This poem corresponds with none of the genres or kinds into which we are accustomed to divide modern or classical literature, and any attempt to judge it by classical criteria fails. Equally, as it has been mentioned above, we lack any comparative material.

The poem starts with the funeral ceremony of Scyld Scefing, the Danish king. Then we know about the reign of Scyld’s son and grandson

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(another Beowulf). After that we meet King Hrothgar who builds a great festive hall called Heorot, lives in peace and happiness, but the monster Grendel, portrayed as Cain’s offspring, attacks him at night, eats up thirty kings in a single dinner and ruins Hrothgar. After a dozen years Beowulf (the hero of the poem), King of the Geats with his fourteen good friends arrives in Denmark, meets Hrothgar, a close friend of his grandfather and vows to defeat Grendel or die. Heorot is left to him and his companions. When everybody falls asleep, Beowulf fights against Grendel without a sword and defeats him, pulling off Grendel’s arm. The monster, mortally wounded, flees, and Beowulf shows off the torn arm and is rewarded by Hrothgar and his wife. But then Grendel’s mother, a more dangerous and formidable monster, arrives and steals chief of the King’s councilors. Beowulf follows her, kills her in her underwater cave, cuts off dead Grendel’s head and brings this trophy to Hrothgar’s. By the time Beowulf comes back his friends have despaired of his survival. He is again rewarded for his heroic deed and leaves Hrothgar for home.

Here we can compare this part of the poem with a European folktale The Bear’s Son Tale in which the young hero sets out on a series of adventures accompanied by several companions. He successfully combats a supernatural creature haunting a house, though several others have failed to withstand him, usually because they had fallen asleep. In the course of the struggle he wrenches a limb off the monster. Later he is guided by bloodstained tracks to its lair, underground. The hero descends by means of a rope. He finds there his former enemy either wounded or dead, and also a female of the species, whom he overcomes with the aid of a magic sword, which is found in the lair. Finally, his comrades on the surface, who were to have hauled him up by the rope, abandon the hero, either treacherously or because they think him dead. Nevertheless he manages to return, bringing with him a piece of the dead monster and occasionally the sword with which it was overcome, and is acclaimed victorious.

Scandinavian versions in particular, although found in their recorded form only from the fourteenth century, seem to preserve certain features of this folk tale in a relatively pristine form. It is clear from several versions that the marauding monsters are in fact trolls – that is, the living dead, who, because of some unhappiness in their lives or in the manner of their deaths, walk abroad in the dark at night creating havoc wherever they go. Being creatures of darkness, they are upset by any kind of light – which if shone in their eyes, causes them to lose their hideous strength,

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and so enables a hero to deal with them permanently. This is usually effected by cutting off their heads, although the feat is properly achieved only with the aid of a magic sword, since trolls are normally invulnerable to ordinary human weapons.

In addition to providing a general paradigm, comparison with certain of these Old Norse versions occasionally helps show how the Beowulfpoet has handled his received materials. For example, in Grettis Saga we can recognize a protagonist whose chief actions and functions are in principle identical with those of Beowulf. At different times in the course of a very eclectic tale, the hero Grettir is shown confronting three quite discrete monsters. First Grettir defeats and slays a male troll haunting a lonely farmstead by night. He feigns sleep until the monster's approach, and then there follows a battle in which much of the hall is destroyed in a manner very reminiscent of Beowulf's confrontation with Grendel at Heorot. The hero succeeds because he is able to take advantage of a moment of weakness on the part of the troll when the moon comes out from behind the clouds and shines in its eyes. Later, after much intervening matter, the hero plans to confront another troll, this time a female, haunting a different farmstead. On this occasion the fight goes harder, the she-troll dragging him towards her lair behind a waterfall; but the hero manages to draw a knife and hack off one of the monster's arms, whereupon she disappears dead down the ravine. Rather arbitrarily, Grettir is then made to seek out the underwater lair as the result of disbelief in his exploits. He descends by means of a rope, leaving a friend at the surface. He finds not the monster, but a third ogre, and it is the destruction of this third monster, which bloodies the water so that his waiting friend thinks the worst and thereupon leaves.

But Beowulf is very far from being simply an unqualified English version of the Scandinavian Bear's Son tale. Even at the level of simple narrative, the Beowulf-poet has contrived to produce something more highly wrought, more impelling and significant. The tone of the Icelandic sagas is very different: matter-of-fact and casual even when the most striking crises are at hand. And their setting is different; no great hall of Heorot, centre of the nation state, upon the survival of which so much depends – but small yeoman farmers being attacked in their lonely fields by night, their lives depending on themselves alone, with no dramatic or tragic consequences. They are ruled by heroic ideals, just as Beowulf is, but the net effect is personal rather than communal, individual rather than universal.

Back to the plot, Beowulf returns home, hands over to his king all the gifts he has got for his heroic deeds and gets a part of the kingdom. Some

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time later he ascends to the throne because his king and the king’s son perish. Beowulf becomes a great ruler for the next fifty years, but then comes a fire-spitting dragon to destroy him and his land. Beowulf, mortally wounded, manages to kill the dragon with a knife. The poem concludes with an account of mourning and the proclamation of the King’s virtues.

No one could pretend that we read Beowulf for its plot. Continual comment, allusion and digression are of most interest to us. As we can presume, the poet's primary concern had been heroic narrative, but there are curious omissions to account for. There is hardly any reference to normal battle events. Beowulf has the reputation of heroic activity carefully built up around him, but the only direct descriptions of his prowess we are given are when he encounters three supernatural beings – only the first two of which does he survive. All the characters of the poem exist only within the actions they commit or in the speeches they make.

As we have seen, the poem falls apart in the middle. But it is notorious for its structure. As J. R. R. Tolkien observed, the two halves are as integral to the whole as are the two parts of the Old English verse line. The structure of the poem, being thematic rather than narrative, is just as rhythmic and just as complete in itself as the rise and fall of the individual verse line. The first part evokes the noble, heroic and glorious atmosphere of the time and helps to heighten the contrast of Grendel’s onslaught, which brought chaos to Denmark. The mixture of heroic epochs shows the infinity of the heroic world. The parts about Beowulf’s battles have the same structure: preparation, setting off, fight and the consequences. It is also interesting to note that the allusions (a reference to something outside a particular work of literature) are always legendary and historic, while digressions (a straying away from the main subject) show the everyday life. The author of the epic also introduces Christian symbols, such as light – the symbol of God.

Thus we can say that the main theme of Beowulf is the nature of the heroic life; life is fleeting so one must act to merit the praise and remembrance of men. Heorot is the symbol of heroic society.

Most of the surviving texts of the written literature of Old English were regularized in the dialect of Wessex, though some of them were originally composed in other dialects. The apparent linguistic change in Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon is not only the result of a radical linguistic transformation, but in part a change in the dialect of the scribe.

One of the fascinations of Middle English and further on is the variety of style and diction. At the Norman Conquest Wessex lost its leading po-

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sition, but it took three centuries before the language began to stabilize into a new literary dialect, a poetic lingua franca. An oral tradition was still alive, but English poets at the start of the XIV century were widely sung and recited. These were John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland and the Gawain poet.

The latter is the author of an alliterative poem from the north-west midlands, dating from the second half of the XIV century. Its title is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and it is about King Arthur and his court, consists of 2530 lines written in long-lined alliterative stanzas of varying length. Alliterative verse was the standard form in Old English, the line was usually unrhymed, and made up of two distinct half-lines each of which contained two stressed syllables. In the second half of the XIV century it was revived in the Middle English poetry as a serious alternative to the continental syllabic rhyming verse, and the Gawain poet, whose name is not known, was the first to do it. The poem was intended not only to be read in its written version, but also to be listened to by the audience. Like many medieval romances – stories, relating the adventures of some hero of chivalry – it begins by establishing its legitimacy as a history, tracing its narrative back to Troy. The poem’s action begins in the British King’s court. During New Year celebration the king calls for a heroic tale to be told, but suddenly a genuine adventure begins: a Green Knight on a green horse bursts into the party and challenges the knights: one of them must deal the first blow to him, on condition that, a year later, the knight who accepts the challenge, will seek out the Green Knight for a return match, subjecting himself to a counter blow. The elderly Arthur, out of a sense of honour, begins to accept the challenge, but his nephew, Gawain, a popular Arthurian hero, proposes himself. The whole poem is allegorical, the detail intertwines and repeats, and yet the richness of detail never ruins the beautiful balance of the main design of the poem.

The same author is considered to have written three other poems, most notably Pearl. It is an elegy and consoled lament. The reader is carried forward not by the narrative, but by the beauty of the prosody and the rich mixture of Old English and Norman elements in the diction. The language of Pearl is easier than that of Gawain. The central image is a man who has lost a priceless pearl in a garden. He falls asleep, and within this allegorical figuration is another, real story.

Little is known about the life of William Langland, the author of Pier’s Plowman, one of the best poems in Middle English, which, as many critics say, may have influenced Milton. His name may not have been Langland, he was probably born about 1331. In Pier’s Plowman the poet wants

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people to understand the causes of their suffering and put things right without throwing the hierarchies down. Piers first appears in the poem, as a ploughman, representing the common people, then metamorphosing into a priest, and finally into a Bishop with St Peter and his papal successors. Verse form and direct teaching set Langland apart from Chaucer and Gower. He uses the dream convention to cross into the world of reality. The poet widely uses allegory and juxtaposition: Christ and Anti-Christ, good and bad shepherd. Men make their way either to the tower of truth or to the dungeon of falsehood. Another characteristic trait of Langland’s art is the use of a rich vocabulary drawn from every current and archaic source. The poet did not try to improve the language, he made it deliberately old, using the unrhymed alliterative verse of a dying tradition:

John Gower (1330–1408) is still another very prominent poet of that period. His considerable learning is attested by his perfect writing in three languages. His principle writings are: Mirour de l’Omme (in the AngloNorman language) – an allegory concerned with fallen man, his virtues and vices; the Latin Vox Clamantis – an apocalyptic poem of seven books in 10 265 lines of elegiac couplets, containing reflections on the disturbances of the early years of Richard II and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. In English he wrote Confessio Amantis. The latter contains 141 stories in octosyllabic couplets – rhymed couplets of eight-syllable lines. The framework of the poem is the confession of a lover, Amantis, to Genius, a priest of Venus. The confessor tells him exemplary stories of behaviour, organized under the headings in the Seven Deadly Sins based both on classical story (mainly Ovid) and medieval romance. There are eight books, one for each of the sins, and one gives an encyclopedic account of philosophy and morals. Several of the tales are paralleled by stories in The Canterbury Tales and other works of Chaucer. John Gower was a close friend of Chaucer, their names are often coupled by literary critics. Both have much influenced the further development of English literature. They managed to bring into the mainstream of the canon of literature the disparate narratives of the classics and the popular romance.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400) is the first English writer whose works are read widely and quite easily. We can say that he speaks with particular directness to the modern reader. He was a servant of the court and on oc-

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casion its emissary abroad. He was under strong influence of French and Italian literature (The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame). His most mature Italian-influenced works are Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales.

The plan of the latter, greatest work was not original: to gather a heterogeneous collection of people together and have them tell a series of stories – moral stories, bawdy stories, romantic stories and fables. But Chaucer is a real genius for characterization. He managed to show people of different social position, their moral, personal and class tensions, social relationships. The pictures of pilgrims are masterpieces of characterization – through their conversations and disputes we get a sense of medieval humanity.

The Canterbury Tales is an anthology of stories, set in the framework of pilgrimage. The tales are told by individuals, the first such characters in English literature, passing the time on their journey from Southwark to the tomb of St Thomas à Beckett at Canterbury. All the pilgrims are introduced in the Prologue in order of their social eminence: a knight at the top and a ploughman at the bottom. In between there are representatives of the Church, a widow, a cook, a shipman, etc. Each tale is the drama of the storytellers revealed in the prologue.

“The Knight’s Tale” introduces the main themes: love, marriage, justice, predestination, the wheel of fortune. But the best creations are Chaucer’s women: the Prioress, the Wife of Bath. Two lines are enough for Chaucer to characterize his heroes. For example for the Wife of Bath pilgrimage was a combination of tourist experience and husband-hunting:

She was a worthy woman all her life:

Husbands at churche door she hadde five…

Chaucer’s masterpiece is an encyclopedia of genres. “The Manciple’s Tale” is a fable – it conveys a clear moral lesson, and its character is a crow. “The Monk’s Tale” is a parable – a short narrative devised to give a clear demonstration of a moral lesson. “The Nun Priest’s Tale” is a bestiary – an allegorical interpretation of the supposed habits of real and mystical animals.

The Canterbury Tales were unfinished at Chaucer’s death. The greatest long poem he completed was Troilus and Criseyde based on the legend of Troy.

Chaucer is the father of English poetry for two reasons: he adapted continental forms and by that he evolved a relaxed, distinct English style; he enriched the poetic vocabulary and through translation he adapted the

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great Latin, French and Italian poets into English poetry. Moreover, he brought England into the new English poetry.

The fifteenth century was exhausted by the Wars of the Roses. Literature was almost in decay, trying to flee from the sad present into nostalgia. Here it is worth mentioning Le Morte D’Arthur – a retelling of English and French legends about King Arthur. This title is given to a late XIV century poem from the North-West Midlands, which survived in one manuscript and became a source for the lengthy cycle of Arthurian legends by Malory, finished in 1470 and consisting of 21 books. It deals with Arthur’s last battles, his death, Lancelot’s love for Guinevere and the Maid of Astolat.

The political situation in Scotland was quite stable at that time, and that promoted literary development. William Dunbar (1460–1513) wrote his famous Lament for the Makaris with its disturbing refrain “Timor mortis conturbat me” – “I am troubled by the fear of death”. The poem is often considered to be a requiem for a sad century.

Tasks

1. Read a part of the Old English text from Beowulf and its modern translation made by Michael Swanton. Can you find the traces of Old English in the modern language?

Hroθgar maÞelode, helm Scyldinga:

For werefyhtum Þu wine min Beowulf, ond for arstafum usic sohtest.

Gesloh Þin fæder fæhδt mæste, wearÞ he HeaÞolafe to handbonan mid Wilfingum. Đa hine Wedera cyn for herebrogan habban ne mihte. Þanon he gesohte Suδδ+Dena folk ofer yδa gewealc, Ar-Scyldinga.

Đa ic furÞum weold folce Deniga ond on geogoδe heold gimmerice,

hordburh hæleδa. Đa wæs Heregar dead, min yldra mæg unlifigende,

bearn Healfdenes: se wæs betera δonne ic! Siδδan Þa fæhδe feo Þingode;

ealde madmas; he me aÞas swor.

Hrothgar spoke, protector of the Scyldings: “Beowulf my friend, you have sought us out to fight in our defence and out of good will. A blow by your father brought about the greatest of feuds, when with his own hand he

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killed Heatholaf among the Wylfings. After that the kindred of the Weders could not keep him for fear of war. Thence he sought out the people of the South Danes, the Honoured-Scyldings, over the rolling waves. At that time I was first ruling the nation of the Danes, and in my youth held a broad kingdom, a rich stronghold of heroes. By then my elder brother Heorogar, Healfdene's son, was dead and lifeless – he was better than I! Thereupon I settled the feud by payment; I sent ancient treasures over the crest of the waves to the Wylfings – he swore oaths to me.”

2.What can you say about the artistic devices of Old English authors? What is the role of repetitions in their poetry?

3.What do you know about Sutton Hoo? Was the excavation interesting only for archeologists?

4.Why is Beowulf so interesting for literary scholars? How did they trace the time and origin of the manuscript?

5.Even though the language is probably unfamiliar, try to make some sense of the passage from The Canterbury Tales. Compare it with the modern translation.

Pay attention to the rough rhythm of the original, which reflects the roughness and simplicity of the widow’s life. Is anything lost in the translation?

Give the modern English words for the following:

Whilom, thilke, catel, keen, eek.

A povre wydwe, somdeel stape in age

Was whilom dwelling in a narwe cotage,

Beside a grove, stondynge in a dale.

This wydwe, of which I telle yow my tale,

Syn thilke day that she was last a wyf,

In pacience ladde a ful simple lyf,

For litel was hir catel and hir rente.

By housbondrie of swich as God hire sente

She foond hirself and eek hir doghtren two.

Thre large sowes hadde she, and namo,

Three keen, and eek a sheep that highte Malle.

Once upon a time there was a poor widow, quite advanced in years, who lived in a small cottage beside a small wood situated in a valley. Since that day when she was last a wife, this widow about whom my story is concerned had patiently lived a simple life, for her property and income were small. By means of careful management of the things God sent her,

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she provided for herself and her daughters. All she owned were three large female pigs, three cows and also a sheep, called Molly.

Chapter II

ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern world were much influenced by Greek and Roman models. This period is known as Renaissance – the great flowering of art, architecture and literature, which followed the dark period of the Middle Ages obscurantism. It began in Italy in the late XIV century, spread to the rest of Europe in the XV century and culminated in the High Renaissance in the early XVI century. Its emphasis was humanist, whether independent or in association with the divine.

In English literature Renaissance manifested itself mainly in drama. The medieval church allowed the performance of certain scenes from the Bible from Creation to Crucifixion already in the X century. These plays became known as mystery plays or mysteries because they were performed by guilds, and each of the guilds tended to refer to its trade or craft as a mystery. By the time the early morality plays appeared in the XV century, the first small “companies” of players appeared, either traveling or attached to prominent families. The parts of women were usually played by boys. These companies needed plays written for them. The moralities – dramatized allegories wherein the characters are personifications – had a considerable influence on the development of Elizabethan drama and conveyed moral and spiritual instruction through dialogues between actors, who represented abstract qualities rather than characters – Pride, Honour, etc. The best known play is Everyman – the main character of it, Everyman, travels towards Death, and in the end is left with nothing but Good Deeds to plead for him.

Gradually the dramatists and players liberated themselves from the strict limits of the morality plays and began writing interludes – plays with stronger plots and mainly of secular kind, a short dramatic entertainment between farce (a play intended mainly to provoke laughter, using exaggerated characters and absurd episodes) and morality play. For example John Rastell’s Calisto and Melebea (about 1530) is a love story with strong moral overtones. It is also one of the first English dramatic works that approach true comedy. Later miracle plays – a form of medieval religious drama from the life of a saint or martyr, in which a miracle occurs by virtue of the action of a saint, and history plays (dramas based upon

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