2202235 Reading and Analysis for the Study of English Literature
Semester II, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Weekly 1
Reading and Seeing the Rise of English and Literature
1. Terry Eagleton responds to his self-posed question “What is Literature?” by way of
recapping its different definitions from theoretical views such as it is fiction not fact, or it
uses language in special ways, or because people value it as such, giving counterarguments
for each before venturing an answer. What do you think of Eagleton’s answer?
2. The step in the 1300s of English becoming not only spoken but used in writing (like Latin
and French) does not seem like much but it was a status change and an invaluable record that
allows for our study of it today. Imagine speaking Thai in your everyday life but writing email always in English. Think about why that would be the case. For Chaucer, whom Milton
admired and alluded to in his works, to have written, not only letters to his mother (made up
to make a point), but also his major work, The Canterbury Tales, in English, meant that he
dared to encode the common tongue in a literary form, that his mother/more common folk
could read, and that the literate populace no longer reliably understood Latin or French.
Chaucer’s deliberate showcasing of vernacular English to prove its resourcefulness and
richness establishes an early corpus for what was/could be pleasant to read and to listen to.
Look at the first eighteen lines of The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales below and
notice the qualities that might have defined what (good, experimental) literature was in the
fourteenth century. Consider, for example, how literature looked, how it sounds, what it
presents in terms of subject, narrative, imagery, and wordplay.
Caxton’s first edition1
Murphy’s reader-friendly edition2
When that April with his showers soote
The drought of March hath piercėd to the root
And bathėd every vein in such liquor
Of which virtúe engendered is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his sweetė breath
Inspirėd hath in every holt and heath
The tender croppės, and the youngė sun
Hath in the Ram his halfė course y-run,
And smallė fowlės maken melody
That sleepen all the night with open eye
(So pricketh them Natúre in their couráges),
Then longen folk to go on pilgrimáges,
And palmers for the seeken strangė strands
To fernė hallows couth in sundry lands,
And specially from every shirė’s end
Of Engėland to Canterbury they wend
The holy blissful martyr for to seek,
That them hath holpen when that they were sick.
1
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. William Caxton (1476), British Library 25 Oct. 2012
<http://molcat1.bl.uk/treasures/caxton/search.asp>.
2
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Michael Murphy, Brooklyn College, 25 Oct. 2012
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/murphy/canterbury>.
its showers sweet
rootlet / liquid
West Wind
grove and field
young shoots
Aries / has run
little birds
Who sleep
spurs / spirits
people long
pilgrims / shores
distant / known
go
St. Thomas Becket
Who has helped
2. Read Scudder’s article “Learning to See.” Now your turn. Try your hand at seeing by
comparing Chaucer’s composition above with Milton’s Sonnet 19 in your course packet.
What do you see?
3. Milton’s Sonnet 19 begins as if with a sense of angst “when [he] consider[s]” achievements
thus far in life. At what moment(s) in the course of the ensuing thirteen lines does this
suggestive feeling of worry or unease slide into something else? How does the
transformation happen?
4. The two parables in the Bible from Matthew that Milton alludes to in his sonnet seem to
advise opposite things: while the Parable of the Talents threaten a terrible punishment for
“hiding” one’s talent, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard assures that working is
acceptable in different forms and manners. Why does Milton need the two parables in his
sonnet? How does he use the opposing tensions of their teachings? Note that Milton’s
summary of the lesson in his final line is in neither of the Bible passages. Recall also that
Aunt Lydia, the Bible-citing warden of the handmaids in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale,
quotes Milton and not the Bible! What power has Milton achieved with his English when his
is the remembered version of an idea and referred to as an authority like that of the word of
god?
5. Though Milton knew that he was going to be a poet from an early age, he did not begin work
on his epic poem Paradise Lost until in his late thirties. What looks like idleness in the
meantime and is the cause for consideration in the sonnet is his educating himself to become
that aspired poet, reading, studying and traveling, which included a visit with Galileo who
was under house arrest in Florence, Italy at the time. However, being a poet was a vocation,
not a profession in the Renaissance. Queens, soldiers, clergymen, statesmen were poets but it
was not how they made a living. Before Milton became Secretary for Foreign Tongues to
Britain’s Council of State in 1649 at the age of 41, he could read and write, other than
English, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Hebrew, and Spanish, often translating between them.
Though it is common for poets and literate professionals of that time to know at least Greek
and Latin aside from English, Milton’s number of and facility with “tongues” were
intentional and exceptional. These languages gave him a rich vocabulary and depth of word
play. Go to the Arts Library or the Central Library’s reference section and look up the
etymology (the root meaning) of some of the following words in the 20-volume OED
(Oxford English Dictionary): consider, bend, exact, patience, prevent. How might the
meaning of the Latin root of patience, for example, account for the urgency of the sonnet’s
concern and the ironic placement of the volta?
6. “On Shakespeare” praises the Elizabethan poet and in so doing defines and manifests what
makes poetry wonderful. What does the aspiring poet Milton say are some qualities of a
great poet and the power of poetry?