Wednesday, October 7, 2009

mea culpa, maxima, etc.

So, part of the problem of the year of reading for orals is that no one is checking up on you. I'm useless without that guilt-motivator. (culpa primum movens est?). I figured this blog could be that guilter. And it has been! I've been guilty! But I haven't been blogging.

I have been reading, just not Piers Plowman. More on that later, maybe.

Since I've been teaching the Canterbury Tales, I've been rereading some of that. I doesn't hurt to know it really well, I suppose, but I've already written one thesis on it, and it seems to me there are other ways I could be productively spending my reading time. Then again, this weekend I'll be grading their first papers, and be ardently wishing I was rereading Chaucer. Besides, it is more or less pure joy to read, except for the Knight's Tale, which is half joy and half chore, or at least 70/30. I see that the Norton Anthology of Medieval Literature gives a plot summary of KT, the quicker to get to the Miller's Tale pay-off. I endorse this maneuver.

I've also been spotting up my Angevin history, reading Madicott's Simon de Montfort and Howell's Eleanor of Provence concurrently. I don't want to collapse "history" with "royal and aristocratic history," but I'm finding this reading to be illuminating of my general sense of thirteenth century English literature for a few reasons: Montfort, as a principal in the Baronial revolt, is a regular figure in the political poetry that appears right alongside the religious and amatory, and I figured I should have some somewhat objective background for that; Montfort's ascension (earthly ascension - I'm not making claims for anyone's sainthood) gives an interesting view into how force of personality can trump many other factors, even in the royal circle, which gives a useful corrective to a simplistically deterministic view of ideology that I need to remember to avoid; both Eleanor and Simon are reminders of how the English aristocracy is of the continent not only culturally but literally, and the literary culture they fostered is not even a full step removed from that of their southern siblings.

On the primary text front, I've been working my way through Hudson's Selections from English Wycliffite Writings. I had a general sense of what the Lollards were about, of course, from secondary reading around Chaucer, but the texts themselves are both more compelling, more sensible, and more radical than I had imagined. It's a little shocking how systematically and completely they prefigure Luther and the Reformation in general (and my vague understanding is that, through Hus, there is a definite and traceable line of teaching, but I'll have to look into that before I start making claims too grand, I suppose). And they make good reading - the rhetorical richness and vigor is quite refreshing after my brief encounter with the mushiness of Piers.

Speaking of, I really have to get back to Piers, because I have also been reading Steve Justice's Writing and Rebellion, and I'm up to chapter three: "Piers Plowman in the Rising." Chapter two, "Wycliff in the Rising," was masterful on its own, but enriched by being read alongside the actual Wycliffite texts. I suppose I should do Langland the same favor. I just wish he were as rigorous a writer as Justice.

I did identify my biggest stumbling block in getting along with Langland, though. I've never been able to remember my dreams. I know I have them, because occasionally I'll wake up able to identify some bits of one, but those bits slip away quickly, and all the more quickly if I try to grasp them consciously. For this reason (although until now I hadn't identified it as such) I've always been resentful and suspicious of any system that gave much credence to dreams. I would get along better with Freud, for instance, if he would have just admitted that dreams were meaningless rubbish and unworthy of analysis. Any plot that hinges on a dream instantly vitiates whatever appeal it could have otherwise had for me. Any plot that could but doesn't necessarily involve a dream (say, Alice in Wonderland) can only be worthwhile if the dream-aspect is dismissed as a red herring. Chaucer, so brilliant when he frames his work with realism (CT) or textuality (Troilus and Criseyde), becomes infuriating when he frames it with a dream narrative. Obviously I'm just going to have to get over this to some extent, or ignore about half of the poetry from my period. Maybe now that I've identified my problem, I can do that. The first step: explaining away the dreaminess.

You might note what else I haven't been reading: Old English. Need to get on that before I forget it completely. I have been fitfully working on my French and Latin by translating bits of Foucault and John of Salisbury. I'm surprised how well I can get along with the French and dismayed by how horribly I get along with the Latin. One of the joys of Justice's book has been the footnotes, which give generous swaths of his sources in both Latin and Anglo-Norman. There, too, I find the French more transparent, but I'm particularly intrigued by how much English crops up in it. I'm used to thinking of the influence of French on Middle English, but it clearly works both ways. Perhaps we should abandon the narrative that says that Old English absorbed some aspects of French and emerged as Middle English, which eventually supplanted French as the literary, legal and courtly language, in favor of a model in which English and Anglo-Norman exist alongside each other until they become indistinguishable. What we speak now is a creole. I've known this about English for some time, of course, but I always imagined the French spoken in England as remaining distinct.

At any rate, dear blog, I have to get to class, but I wanted to be sure you knew I really was reading. Really.

1 comment:

  1. As the classic guilt-motivator, your mother is certainly glad you are reading! Not, however for your sake, or the hope of the power of the carrot of a degree held out in front of you, but simply because I love reading your thoughts about what you are reading and learning about the literature through you. (The Zbigley Notes)

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