Anglo Saxon poems

Now, it's pretty unlikely that either of the poems I have here will appear on your test, but a random poem from the Exeter Book may appear.

"The Wife's Lament," (before 1072)

Genre: an "elegy" or lament for things and/or persons lost, often lost to death. The predominant features of Anglo-Saxon verse are produced by oral-formulaic composition, in which an illiterate but immensely learned bard sings, to his own instrumental accompaniment, a song he composes as he sings by following strict metrical rules and a huge array of thematic content strands.

The poem's date is impossible to determine except that it must have been composed and written down before the Exeter Book, in which its sole surviving copy was found, was donated to the Exeter Cathedral library by Exeter's first bishop, Leofric, upon his death in 1072. Scholars generally accept the conclusion that this, the largest surviving collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry (131 parchment leaves measuring roughly 12.5 by 8.6 inches), is the manuscript the bishop's will calls ".i. mycel englisc boc be gehwilcum _ingum on leo_wisan geworht." ["one great English book with many things written in verse."]

Form: four-stress lines of varying syllable lengths, divided in halves by a caesura which often indicates a breath pause. The prose translation obscures many of the work's poetic features, but Anglo-Saxon verse is notoriously difficult to translate into Modern English verse.

Characters: the narrator, a woman married to a man from a distant community which is hostile to her, and her husband as she characterizes him, also hostile--toward others, but also perhaps toward her (an interpretive crux).

Summary: The narrator makes the case that her grief deserves to be told in song because she is exiled from her own kin and from her husband, doomed to poverty amid a wilderness and surrounded by hostile neighbors, facing old age alone.

“ Judith ”

Judith is a poem written in Old English during the Middle ages in England on the topic of the beheading of Holofernes, an Assyrian military leader as recorded in the Biblical-era Book of Judith. The author is unknown.

Beowul f (c. 700-1000 A.D.)

You can count a set of questions on Beowulf. It is likely that ETS will give you a passage and ask you to be able to summarize it, maybe explain how a specific word is used, and identify the poetic devices or meter used. If you have not read it, DON'T (I didn't). Read a short synopsis online, memorize the characters, and focus on what's important--it's historical significance. Schlors (and ETS) are more interested in the dynamics of early Anglo Saxon verse than they are in the actual content of the poem.

ETS is going to want you to identify a caesura, which is the metrical break in the middle of an Old English line. If you see a passage in which every line is broken into two pieces, you're probably looking at Beowulf or an immitation of it. Also knowing that Beowulf is alliterative will be important.

Beowulf is a heroic epic poem. At 3,182 lines, it is notable for its length in comparison to other Old English poems. It represents about 10% of the extant corpus of Old English poetry. The poem is untitled in the manuscript, but has been known as Beowulf since the early 19th century.

First battle: Grendel

Beowulf begins with the story of King Hro_gar, who built the great hall Heorot for his people. In it he, his wife Wealh_eow, and his warriors spend their time singing and celebrating, until Grendel (angered by the singing) attacks the hall and kills and devours many of Hrothgar 's warriors. Hrothgar and his people, helpless against Grendel's attacks, abandon Heorot.

Beowulf, a young warrior, hears of Hrothgar's troubles and, (with his king's permission) leaves his homeland to help Hrothgar.

Beowulf and his men spend the night in Heorot. After they fall asleep, Grendel enters the hall and attacks, devouring one of Beowulf's men. Beowulf, feigning sleep, leaps up and grabs Grendel's arm in a wrestling hold, and the two battle until it seems as though the hall might fall down due to their fighting. Beowulf's men draw their swords and rush to his help, but there is a type of magic which aids Grendel and makes it impossible for swords to hurt him. Finally, Beowulf tears Grendel's arm from his body and Grendel runs home to die.

Second battle: Grendel's mother

The next night, after celebrating Grendel's death, Hrothgar and his men sleep in Heorot. Grendel's Mother appears, however and attacks the hall. She kills Hrothgar's most trusted warrior in revenge for Grendel's death.

Hrothgar, Beowulf, and their men track Grendel's Mother to her lair under an eerie lake. Beowulf prepares himself for battle; he is presented with a sword, Hrunting, by a warrior called Unferth. After stipulating a number of conditions (upon his death) to Hrothgar (including the taking in of his kinsmen, and the inheritance by Unferth of Beowulf's estate), Beowulf dives into the lake. There, he is swiftly detected and attacked by Grendel's mother. Unable to harm Beowulf through his armour, Grendel's mother drags him to the bottom of the lake. There, in a cavern containing her son's body and the remains of many men that the two have killed, Grendel's mother fights Beowulf.

Grendel's mother at first prevails, after Beowulf, finding that the sword (Hrunting) given him by Unferth cannot harm his foe, discards it in a fury. Again, Beowulf is saved from the effects of his opponent's attack by his armour and, grasping a mighty sword from Grendel's mother's armoury (which, the poem tells us, no other man could have hefted in battle), Beowulf beheads her. Travelling further into the lair, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse; he severs the head, and with it he returns to Heorot, where he is given many gifts by an even more grateful Hrothgar.

Third battle: The dragon

Beowulf returns home and eventually becomes king of his own people. One day, late in Beowulf's life, a man steals a golden cup from a dragon's lair. When the dragon sees that the cup has been stolen, it leaves its cave in a rage, burning up everything in sight. Beowulf and his warriors come to fight the dragon, but only one of the warriors, a brave young man named Wiglaf, stays to help Beowulf, because the rest are too afraid. Beowulf kills the dragon with Wiglaf's help, but dies from the wounds he has received. The dragon's treasure is taken from its lair and buried with Beowulf's ashes. And with that the poem ends.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)

Chaucer is (rightly) huge with ETS. The Cantebury Tales wil definitely be on your test, and Troilus and Criseyde has a fair chance, too. Again, there is no need to read either of these for the test. There are only few characters that you need to know from the Tales, and a synopsis of Troilus will do. Knowledge of rhyme schemes and meter of these workds is, I think, very important for the exam.

**The Cantebury Tales

You will have to read Chaucer on your exam and be able to explain it. A good way to prepare for this is to read the prologue to the tales; it's not necessary, but it's good practice on sounding out Middle English verse.

Apart from picking apart the verses, you'll have to identify characters. A random character or two may pop up, but chances are that one a few favorites will appear. I have included The Knight, The Miller, The Nun's Priest, and The Wife of Bath here, but I would also suggest reading up on "The Merchant."

The Knight's Tale is the first.

The Knights tale is about two knights, Arcite and Palamon, who are imprisoned by Theseus, duke of Athens. In prison they see and fall in love with the sister of Hippolyta, Emily (Emelye). They variously get out of prison and end up in a tournament over Emily arranged by Theseus. Arcite wins, but dies before he can claim Emily as his prize and so Palamon marries her. It introduces many typical aspects of knighthood such as courtly love and ethical dilemmas, etc. The story is in the form of poetry.

The Knight and his tale both embody the ideas of chivalry. The following tale, by the Miller, is a direct antithesis to the Knight's with none of the nobility or heritage of classical mythology, but is instead rollicking, bawdy, comedic and designed to annoy the Knight.

The Miller’s Tale

The Miller's tale is about a carpenter/landlord and his wife. The Reeve, another of the travellers, happens to be a carpenter, and urges the Miller not to joke about his profession; the Miller replies that he does not mean to insult carpenters in general, or portray them as cuckolds, and tells his tale anyway. Thus, The Reeve's Tale follows, which 'quites' the Miller with a tale in which some students make a fool out of a dishonest and greedy miller.)

The story is of a student (Nicholas) who persuades his jealous old landlord's much younger wife (Alisoun/Alison) to spend the night with him, making that possible through an elaborate scheme in which he convinces the landlord that he has found, through his astrology, that a flood of Biblical proportions is imminent. The solution, says Nicholas, is for each of them to wait silently overnight for it in separate tubs suspended from the rafters, and to cut their tubs from the roof when the water has risen. He adds that if the landlord tells anyone else, he'll become insane. This comic prank allows Nicholas and Alison the opportunity to sneak down after the landlord falls asleep and be together.

While Nicholas and Alison lie together, another hopeful suitor, the foppish Absolon, appears and asks Alison for a kiss. She quietly tells Nicholas to watch and get a good laugh. She sticks her "hole" out the window, and he kisses it "full savorly," pausing only when he feels bristly hair and considers that no woman has a beard. He realizes the prank and, hearing them laughing at him, becomes enraged. He disappears to borrow a red hot colter (a plow part) from the early-rising blacksmith. Returning, he asks for another kiss. This time Nicholas, who had risen from bed to "piss" (urinate), sticks his "ers" (arse) out the window. When Absolon say "speak sweet bird, I know not where thou art", Nicholas almost blinds him with an enormous fart, shocking Absolon, who then brands Nicholas in the rear, searing off the skin. Nicholas cries for water, awakening the landlord, who hears someone screaming "water, water" and thinks that the Second Flood is come at last. He panics and cuts himself down, falling clean through the floor and breaking his arm; the rest of the town awakens to find him lying in the tub in the cellar. He tries to explain what he's doing in the tub, and sure enough in accordance with Nicholas'prophesy, he is considered a madman (and a cuckold, too) by the whole town.

The Wife of Bath

Her tale begins with an allusion to the absence of fairies in modern day, and their prevalence in King Arthur's time, then begins her tale, though she interrupts and is interrupted several times, creating several digressions. A knight in King Arthur's Court rapes a woman. By law, his punishment is death, but the queen intercedes on his behalf, and the king turns the knight over to her for judgement. The queen punishes the knight by sending him out on a quest to find out what women want, giving him a year and a day to discover it and having his word that he will return. If he fails to satisfy the queen with his answer, he forfeits his life. He searches but every woman he finds says something different, from riches to flattery.

On his way back to the queen after failing to find the truth, he sees four and twenty ladies dancing. They disappear suddenly, leaving behind an old hag and he asks for her help. She says she'll tell him what to tell to the queen and save him if he promises to grant her request at a time she chooses. He agrees and they go back to the court and he is pardoned after he tells them that what women want most is "to have the sovereignty as well upon their husband as their love, and to have mastery their man above". The old woman cries out to him before the court that she saved him and that her reward will be that he takes her as his wife and loves her. He protests, but to no avail, and the marriage takes place the next day.

The old woman and the knight converse about the knight's happiness in their marriage bed and discuss that he is unhappy because she is ugly and low-born. She discourses upon the origins of gentility, as told by Jesus and Dante and reflects on the origins of poverty. She says he can choose between her being ugly and faithful or beautiful and unfaithful. He gives the choice to her to become whatever would bring the most honour and happiness to them both and she, pleased with her mastery of her husband, becomes fair and faithful to live with him happily until the end of their days.

The Nun's Priest's Tale

The tale of Chanticleer and the Fox is a beast fable popularised by the 14th century Middle English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's 625 line poem comprises the Nun's Priest's Tale, one of his Canterbury Tales.

The tale follows the monk's depressing accounts of despots and fallen heroes and, as well as sharing these themes, the tale also parodies them. It also has ideas in common with earlier tales with the marriage between Chanticleer and Pertelote echoing the domestic lives depicted in tales like Franklin's and The Tale of Melibee. These different themes help to unify several tales and offers a lively story from a previously almost invisible character.

The tale concerns a world of talking animals who reflect both human insight and error. Its protagonist is Chanticleer, a proud rooster who dreams of his approaching doom in the form of a hound. Frightened, he awakens his "wife" Pertelote, who assures him he only suffers from indigestion and chides him for paying heed to a simple dream. After recounting stories of other prophets who foresaw their deaths, Chanticleer is comforted by Pertelote and proceeds to greet a new day.

Unfortunately for Chanticleer, he predicted his doom correctly. A sly fox who has tricked Chanticleer's father and mother to their downfall now awaits Chanticleer's inflated ego. When the fox insists upon hearing the cock crow, Chanticleer sticks out his neck just a little too far and is promptly snatched from the yard. As the fox is chased through the forest, Chanticleer (all the while dangling from the fox's jaws) suggests that the fox should pause to tell his pursuers to give up their chase.

Now the fox's haughtiness rears its ugly head, and as the fox complies, the rooster falls out and proceeds to fly up the nearest tree. The fox tries in vain to convince the wary Chanticleer, who now prefers the safety of the tree and fails to fall for the same trick a second time.

"Troilus and Criseyde"

Troilus and Criseyde is a work on another scale altogether, 8239 lines of rhyme-royal (seven-line stanzas rhyming ababbcc) in five books, the first major work of English literature and sometimes called the first English novel on account of its concern with the characters' psychology. Shakespeare also composed a version of Troilus.

The story comes from Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, and it is most intriguing that Chaucer nowhere mentions the name Boccaccio. Instead, in Troilus, he claims to be simply translating a work by a certain Lollius, wrongly assumed in the Middle Ages to have written about Troy, whereas he is in fact radically altering Boccaccio's story to make it deeper and more poetic.

When he began to write Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer was already fully aware of the need to make the English language into a poetic diction that would be as powerful in expressing emotion and reflexion as the other literary languages he knew. He was familiar with the writings of Ovid, Cicero, Virgil, Macrobius, Boethius, and Alain de Lisle in Latin, with Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio in Italian, with the Romance of the Rose and other French works, as well as with the native English romances. He had travelled, too, his mind was European. The opening lines of Troilus and Criseyde show why John Dryden called Chaucer the "father of English poetry" (in the Preface to his Fables Ancient and Modern of 1700):

The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen,
That was the king Priamus sone of Troye,
In lovinge, how his aventures fellen
Fro woe to wele, and after out of joie,
My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye.
Thesiphone, thou help me for t'endite
These woful vers, that wepen as I write.
To thee clepe I, thou goddess of torment,
Thou cruel Furie, sorwing ever in peyne,
Help me, that am the sorwful instrument,
That helpeth loveres, as I can, to pleyne.
For wel sit it, the sothe for to seyne,
A woful wight to han a drery feere,
And to a sorwful tale, a sory chere.

Chaucer was following in the footsteps of Dante in his attempt to form vernacular English into a poetic language able to stand beside the language of Virgil and the classics.

Troilus and Criseyde is set inside Troy during the Trojan War. In Book 1 of Chaucer's version, one of Priam's sons, Troilus, appears as a young warrior scornful of love, until he glimpses Criseyde in a temple. Love's arrow having wounded him, Troilus suddenly finds himself deeply in love with her. He withdraws to complain alone, but a friend of his, Pandare, overhears him and he admits he is in love with Criseyde. Pandare offers to help Troilus meet her.

Much time elapses as they slowly establish a relationship, until at last Pandare skillfully arranges for them to spend a night together. This represents the first movement, 'from woe to wele' a rise to happiness. Suddenly Criseyde learns that her father, a prophet who has fled to the Greeks, is arranging for her to leave Troy and join him. The lovers are separated by blind destiny. Once in the Greek camp, Criseyde soon turns for protection to a Greek Diomede and although she and Troilus exchange letters, soon she seems to forget him. One day Troilus finds a brooch he gave her fixed in a cloak he has torn from Diomede during the fighting, and knows that she has betrayed him. He tries to kill Diomede, but cannot. Suddenly the book seems to be over, since the love-tale is at an end:

Go, little book, go, little myn tragedye,
Ther God thy makere yet, er that he dye,
So sende might to make in some comedye!
But little book, no making thou n'envie,
But subgit be to alle poesye;
And kiss the steppes, whereas thou seest pace
Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, Stace.
And down from thennes faste he gan avyse
This littel spot of erthe, that with the se
Embraced is, and fully gan despise
This wrecched world, and held al vanite
To respect of the pleyn felicite
That is in hevene above; and at the laste,
There he was slayn, his lokyng down he caste.
And in hymself he lough right at the wo
Of hem that wepten for his deth so faste;
And dampned al oure werk that foloweth s
The blynde lust, the which that may not laste,M
And shoulden al oure herte on heven caste.
And forth he wente, shortly for to telle,
Ther as Mercurye sorted hym to dwelle.

The remaining stanzas seem to suggest Christian and moralizing readings of the story at odds with the main narratorial tone. Finally comes an invitation to "moral Gower, philosophical Strode " (Chaucer's friends) to correct the work if necessary, and a final prayer translated from Dante's Divine Comedy.

"Everyman"

Morality pla y - Moralities evolved side by side with the mystery plays, although they were composed individually and not in cycles. The moralities employed allegory to dramatize the moral struggle Christianity envisions universal in every individual.

Everyman, a short play of some 900 lines, portrays a complacent Everyman who is informed by Death of his approaching end. The play shows the hero's progression from despair and fear of death to a " Christian resignation that is the prelude to redemption. " First, Everyman is deserted by his false friends: his casual companions, his kin, and his wealth. He falls back on his Good Deeds, his Strength, his Beauty, his Intelligence, and his Knowledge. These assist him in making his Book of Accounts, but at the end, when he must go to the grave, all desert him save his Good Deeds alone. The play makes its grim point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given.

John Gower

It's unlikely that Gower will apear on your exam. If he does, it will be in relation to Chacuer andTroilus and Criseyde. Here's a short bio in the event that he appears on your exam:

John Gower, poet and friend of Chaucer, was born around 1330, into a prominent Yorkshire family which held properties in Kent, Yorkshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Gower's coat of arms is identical to those of Sir Robert Gower of Brabourne. Nothing is known of his education, though it has been speculated that he was trained in law. Gower himself held properties in Suffolk and Kent, where he seems to have resided until taking up residence in the priory of St. Mary Overies in Southwark, London, around 1377.

In 1385, Gower's good friend, Geoffrey Chaucer, dedicated the Troilus and Criseyde to him, giving him the epithet "moral Gower."

In 1386, Gower began work on his most acclaimed work, Confessio Amantis (i.e. Lover's Confession). Unlike his previous works, Gower wrote the Confessio in English at the request of Richard II who was concerned that so little was being written in English. It is a collection of tales and exempla treating of courtly love. The framework is that of a lover complaining first to Venus, and later in the work, confessing to her priest, Genius. The Confessio, completed around 1390, is an important contribution to courtly love literature in English. Some of the stories have their counterparts in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and one of the stories later served as the source for Shakespeare's Pericles, in which Shakespeare had Gower appear in the Chorus.

Margery Kempe (1373-1439 or 1440)

The Book of Margery Kempe is considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. At around the age of 35, after a failed confession that resulted in a bout of self-described "madness," Margery Kempe had a vision that called her to leave aside the "vanities" of this world. Having for many weeks railed against the institutions of family, marriage and church, Kempe reports that she saw a vision of Christ at her bedside, asking her "Daughter, why have you forsaken me, and I never forsook you?" From that point forward, Kempe undertook two failed domestic businesses--a brewery and a grain mill--both common home-based businesses for medieval women. Though she had tried to be more devout after her vision, she was tempted by sexual pleasures and social jealousy for some years. Eventually turning away from what she interpreted as the effect of worldly pride in her vocational choices, Kempe more fully responded to the spiritual calling that she felt her earlier vision required. Striving to live a life of commitment to God, Kempe negotiated a chaste marriage with her husband, and began to make pilgrimages around Europe to sites that were holy to her, if not to others. The stories surrounding these travels are what eventually comprised much of her Book, although a final section includes a series of prayers.

Part of Margery Kempe's significance lies in the autobiographical nature of her book: it is the best insight available that points to the middle class experience in the Middle Ages. Kempe is admittedly unusual among the more traditional holy exemplars of her time, such as Julian of Norwich. Though Kempe is often depicted as an "oddity" or even a "madwoman," recent scholarship on vernacular theologies and popular practices of piety suggest she was not, perhaps, as odd as she appears compared to more traditional, cloistered holy women.

Sir Thomas Malory (1405-1471)

Malory is important because he wrote the first major Arthurian romance, which continues to be rewritten up to the current day. I don't see the summary here being very important; I would remember, however, that this is a work of prose. Many questions on the GRE can be answered if simply rember whether a work is prose or verse. A good GRE question would try to trick you into identifying Malory as the author a verse Arthurian romance.

Here's a brief history of the man and the work:

Few facts are certain in Malory's history. From his own words he is known to have been a knight and prisoner, and his description of himself as "a servant of Jesu both day and night" has led to the inference that he might have been a priest. It is believed that he was knighted in 1442 and entered the British Parliament representing Warwickshire in 1445.

In 1450, it appears that he turned towards a life of crime, being accused of murder, robbery, stealing, poaching, and rape. However, the validity of these charges are the subject of much controversy given Malory's unclear political affiliations. False charges were common amidst the political strife of the War of the Roses. Supposedly while imprisoned for most of the 1450s (mostly in London 's Newgate Prison), he began writing an Arthurian legend that he called The Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table. His work was first published posthumously by William Caxton as Le Morte d'Arthur in 1485.

Malory is believed to have obtained the material for his work from many French sources in addition to earlier English Arthurian Romances, most notably the stanzaic Morte Arthur and the alliterative Morte Arthure. In the preface to the first edition of the Le Morte D'Arthur, William Caxton speaks of the work as printed by himself "after a copy unto me delivered, which copy Sir Thomas Malory did take out of certain books of French, and reduced it into English." Malory himself tells us that he finished the book in the ninth year of King Edward IV of England (about 1470). Le Morte D'Arthur brought together the various strands of the legend in a prose romance which many critics reckon the best of its kind.

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