What is English Literature? — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01hello I'm Dr Katie Blankenau and I'm excited  to have you all in this class as we explore the
2. 0:08history of English literature from the early  medieval period to the 18th century. Now that
3. 0:15time span means that we will be covering over 800  years of history and literature unsurprisingly we
4. 0:22won't be able to cover all of that span of time  in depth, that would take much more than a single
5. 0:27semester. But we will be hitting some highlights,  some texts that I see as particularly interesting
6. 0:35and representative of the ideas and concerns  of their day. Now if you look at the title of
7. 0:41the course you'll notice that it combines two  academic disciplines history and literature.
8. 0:47The lectures in this course will provide the  historical content that you need along with the
9. 0:52brief introductions to each text provided in  the textbook. Of course you're always able to
10. 0:59go more in depth by reading the sections of the  textbook on the medieval period the Renaissance
11. 1:04and the 18th century but that's not required. The  lectures aren't just about history though I'll
12. 1:10also be discussing and analyzing the literature  that that really forms the primary material of
13. 1:16this course. Uh if you aren't doing the reading  for the course then you're really not taking it,
14. 1:21this is a reading heavy class but hopefully the  material that we'll read or at least some of it
15. 1:28will be interesting to you. And in fact I'd  like to get started with a few examples in
16. 1:33order to explain why I think it's worthwhile  at all to study early English literature.
17. 1:40Okay so we're going to briefly explore two  of the Exeter book riddles The Exeter book
18. 1:47is a really fascinating manuscript collection  uh given to Exeter Cathedral in 1072. Here's a
19. 1:54picture of it and the book contains a variety of  different texts from different time periods which
20. 2:01is characteristic of many medieval manuscripts uh  and the book itself the the texts may have been
21. 2:08copied down almost 200 years before the book  was given to the cathedral. So we don't know
22. 2:14when it was written sometime between 900 and the  date it was given to the cathedral. So if we look
23. 2:22at the book itself what do we notice about the  language? Well uh we see well right off the bat
24. 2:33that's not English. It's old English and we'll  discuss that language in a bit So the riddles
25. 2:39we're going to look at here are probably over a  thousand years old and they would have been told
26. 2:44and adapted among lay people and monks before  they were written down and then long before
27. 2:49they were translated into contemporary English  So let's look We're going to look at two of them
28. 2:56Here's riddle 45 Something's swelling over in  the corner Rising and standing raising its cover
29. 3:05A hotty bride grabbed that boneless thing with  her hands and the prince's daughter slipped that
30. 3:11swelling thing under a cloth So uh what do we  think the something might be? Uh let's do a bit
31. 3:18of close reading. So close reading is the term for  the first step of literary analysis. It's making
32. 3:25detailed specific observations about the words in  the text. One thing that stands out to me here is
33. 3:33the repeated -ing verbs. These are called present  participles but you don't need to know that Uh
34. 3:39and these verbs are all similar Swelling rising  standing raising and swelling again So there's
35. 3:47great emphasis being put on this particular  enlarging rising action in the first two lines.
36. 3:53In the next two lines two characters appear  a haughty bride and a princess who interact
37. 3:59with the mystery thing A bride and a  princess uh were powerful desirable
38. 4:06female roles at the time So the combination  of sexually charged verbs and desirable women
39. 4:12leads me to wonder are they describing an  erection and is this a medieval dick joke?
40. 4:19In fact most agree that the solution to this  riddle is actually bread dough. Even if you've
41. 4:26never made bread you probably know you have to  knead it with your hands and then put it under
42. 4:30a cloth in a warm corner to wait for it to rise.  But let's be honest uh the sexual implications are
43. 4:37clearly there too. We might imagine a bunch of  monks in like 950 AD teasing each other saying
44. 4:42"Brother get your mind out of the gutter It's just  bread." So there isn't a straightforward solution
45. 4:48to this riddle. It's also a a double-edged  joke slash trap. Let's look at another example
46. 4:59This is riddle 47 What is this riddle describing?  A moth ate words A marvelous fate it seemed to me
47. 5:07when I heard of that wonder that a worm could  swallow some man's song A thief in the dark
48. 5:13tales of glory and their firm foundation  that thieving guest was none the wiser
49. 5:18for swallowing those words So in a way  this one is easier especially if you're
50. 5:25a medieval monk in an ancient library  fighting off what we call bookworms
51. 5:29uh moths or other insects that eat through  books leaving holes behind like in this picture
52. 5:36What's striking I think about this riddle is  that it turns an ordinary thing bookworms into
53. 5:42a philosophical observation about the impermanence  of literature and of life, and it's an admonition
54. 5:48that consuming books doesn't necessarily make  you wiser This brings us to the question I
55. 5:53think of studying English literature: Will you  be wiser for swallowing these words? Why should
56. 5:59we study early English lit? In the past many of  the works that we'll be studying were touted by
57. 6:07people who wanted to uncritically elevate western  civilization and particularly British culture;
58. 6:14to say hey if you want to be wise you must read  Chaucer or Shakespeare because these are the
59. 6:20great works in the great language, the language  of power, English. But it's worth asking why do we
60. 6:26speak English uh especially here in North America?  We speak it of course because of colonialism and
61. 6:34this notion of western civilization as and English  as the repository for wisdom, was unsurprisingly
62. 6:42constructed to cover racism and colonialism and  slavery uh particularly in this hemisphere. So
63. 6:50in elevating English literature this approach  attempted to identify western Europe with the
64. 6:56very sort of notion of civilization itself and to  dismiss the rest of the world. When in fact if you
65. 7:03wanted to be considered wise or learned at the  time this text was written you would have needed
66. 7:09to be speaking Latin and Greek and Arabic. And  in fact for most of the period we'll be studying
67. 7:16um in terms of scientific and technological and  artistic achievement Western Europe really had
68. 7:21nothing on the Middle East for example So I'm not  going to promise that the words we'll read in this
69. 7:27class have some inherent wisdom or greatness that  supersedes other stories from other people's But
70. 7:35here's why I love to read early English  literature: so my first reason all texts are
71. 7:42like riddles with more than one solution. When  we pick them up and play with them interrogate
72. 7:48their meanings and question them, we engage in  the kind of critical thinking that will in fact
73. 7:54help you become wiser. The second reason has to  do with this riddle, riddle 47. The poets of this
74. 8:04time knew one thing very well: Death and time like  thieves in the dark swallow all individual lives
75. 8:12But it's my contention that the more we read the  more lives we live We can live not just our own
76. 8:18experiences but the experiences of the countless  people real and imagined who've gone before us and
77. 8:25whose songs and stories are preserved, for now.  We can only travel so much in our lifetimes It's
78. 8:32expensive and no one has invented a time machine  yet But we have the records of far-off times and
79. 8:38places and through them we can access more than  our one limited life can hold So for the purposes
80. 8:46of this lecture which fair warning is longer  than the other lectures for the semester we're
81. 8:51going to be looking back before the existence  of English literature in that we'll be covering
82. 8:56the period before the existence of old English,  the language of Beowulf our text for module one
83. 9:06As we get going with this history lesson um it's  important to clear up some really basic terms:
84. 9:12what is the difference for instance between  English and British? actually kind of a
85. 9:15complicated question in some ways. The term  English of course refers to the language
86. 9:22uh but can also refer to something or someone from  England a specific kingdom nation on the island
87. 9:29of Great Britain. So if this is that island  uh here is England You'll notice of course
88. 9:37that there are other kingdoms on that island  namely Wales and Scotland, there's also a region
89. 9:44um here called Cornwall that'll be important as we  get going a little further. So the this is where
90. 9:54we get the name the United Kingdom. These three  kingdoms are united today in one nation But of
91. 10:03course we also have this other island here Uh in  fact if we ask Google uh bear with me here what
92. 10:12the United Kingdom is It notes that the borders  of the contemporary United Kingdom also include
93. 10:19Northern Ireland. however I would note that  it does not include the Republic of Ireland
94. 10:27uh which of course is an independent country and  fought hard for centuries for that independence.
95. 10:35If we look at this description of the UK it says  this is an "island nation in northwestern Europe
96. 10:41England birthplace of Shakespeare and the Beatles  is home to the capital city London a globally
97. 10:46influential center of finance and culture England  is also site of Neolithic Stonehenge Bath's Roman
98. 10:52Spa and centuries old universities at Oxford and  Cambridge" What's intriguing here is that it only
99. 11:00mentions England after in in an attempt to define  the United Kingdom. Why do you think that is? In
100. 11:11exploring that question we're going to look at  the history of this region starting way back
101. 11:16and explore how these separate kingdoms came to  be and in doing so complicate a bit what English
102. 11:22literature can mean Uh so let's start with  one of Google's big hits Neolithic Stonehenge
103. 11:34So Stonehenge pictured here one of the most  recognizable monuments of the Stone Age
104. 11:41the Neolithic period built before the invention of  the wheel. Who built Stonehenge? Many people over
105. 11:50successive generations and generations. In general  the uh the Stonehenge that we recognize today
106. 11:58was built over a period between 3000 and 1520  BC but it may be even older. There are early
107. 12:10uh totem pole like structures near the  site that may date back to 8,500 BC.
108. 12:17And we don't know much about these early  inhabitants of Britain. What does characterize
109. 12:25uh the the peoples is that we see successive waves  of migration Uh for instance back in that 8,500 BC
110. 12:34period we know that the people who inhabited  the island probably had black skin blue eyes
111. 12:42and were hunter gatherers. Admittedly pretty much  everyone at the time was a hunter gatherer. Later
112. 12:50though Neolithic migrants uh came from as far as  central Europe uh and settled in Britain and they
113. 12:57brought agricultural practices and more a settled  way of life. So this was an international site.
114. 13:05one person uh buried near Stonehenge later in the  Bronze Age was actually born in the Alps Notably
115. 13:12with the monument itself the bluestones, part  of the the structure, came from Wales one of the
116. 13:23other kingdoms not England. The altar came from  Scotland so this is not just an English monument
117. 13:33despite the fact that Google references it only in  in relation to England Yes it is located there but
118. 13:43uh even older than Stonehenge is the Neolithic  village of Skara Brae in Orkney uh uh which is
119. 13:52uh which you can also visit and these sites  in places like Wales and Scotland thousands
120. 13:59of years later those places the far far north of  the Scottish uh north of the Scottish mainland
121. 14:06uh those places are considered out of the way or  unimportant but at the time they were considered
122. 14:12enormously important even holy. So this idea  of England as the center of the United Kingdom
123. 14:20uh that's a much more recent state of affairs  and one of the points that I want to emphasize
124. 14:26through this very very very prehistoric  uh degression Uh one of the points I want
125. 14:32to emphasize is the role of historical  contingency. So the texts or authors that
126. 14:38we consider central and important rose to that  position as a result of fascinatingly complex
127. 14:47sociohistorical events and they often were  not considered great or important in their day
128. 14:59All right let's keep going on this speedrun  through history I know it might not feel like
129. 15:03a speedrun to you but we're still a very long  way from the English language Uh let's jump to
130. 15:10800 BC This is 1,800 years after the Standing  Stones were raised at Stonehenge. At this point
131. 15:18Celtic peoples inhabited much of Western Europe  Uh this is in the last millennium BC This map
132. 15:25would probably irk an ex an expert but but  it's useful if we look at it here we can see
133. 15:33names like the Gauls and the Britons. Celtic  languages still exist today Uh for example
134. 15:45uh the Irish uh the Irish language  is still spoken in Ireland
135. 15:56Cornish the language of Cornwall  still existent in Cornwall that
136. 16:03area down there that I mentioned earlier
137. 16:08Scottish Gaelic spoken up north in Scotland
138. 16:17and Welsh which is still spoken in Wales this  part of the island of Britain. So you'll notice
139. 16:27none of these languages is English If you  hear someone speaking it you're not going
140. 16:30to understand what they're saying. These peoples  had the Celtic peoples had shared linguistic roots
141. 16:38and shared cultural elements but they were  not one ethnic group They didn't conceive
142. 16:42of themselves as Celts and even the Britons  uh identified here on this map didn't see
143. 16:49themselves as one group they had separate  tribal groups like the Iceni. so who did
144. 16:55call them Britons? well uh that brings us to  that red boot down there uh the Roman empire
145. 17:12So Roman conquest. In the first century AD the  Romans invade Britain. Julius Caesar approached
146. 17:20and well invaded in 55 BC but he did not take  any territory He was repulsed but about a hundred
147. 17:27years later in AD 43 the Romans invaded again and  this time they took over England. Notice I didn't
148. 17:35say Wales uh Cornwall or Scotland uh or Ireland Um  one source says that the Romans brought elephants
149. 17:43across the channel. I would probably surrender  too if I saw an elephant, but not everyone did and
150. 17:49certainly not right away. It took the Romans about  40 years uh with one rebellion led by Boudicea
151. 17:56the queen of the Iceni that tribe I mentioned  earlier Uh and eventually they subdued the south
152. 18:02of the island So this name Britain comes from the  Celtic name Prythain Uh so there's middle Welsh
153. 18:13uh Ynys Pyrthain is the island of Britain Uh which  gets latiniz latinized by the Romans That's where
154. 18:22we get this term Britain and Britons refers  to the Celtic British peoples the Romans take
155. 18:32over England uh they suppress uh the druidic  religion um which didn't keep written records
156. 18:38and which we know basically nothing about if  anyone tells you they do they're probably wrong
157. 18:45In exchange for you know freedom Uh the Romans  bring Latin extensive road networks administrative
158. 18:53organizations bureaucracy and Londinium which  becomes London so it extends north to modern
159. 19:02Scotland uh and the it becomes uh eventually  overseen by romanized Britons so if we look
160. 19:12at this map here we can see London Londinium  uhand these roads uh reaching out from London
161. 19:23these are built by the Romans Now you'll note that  those roads do continue north of Hadrian's wall
162. 19:31the wall that the Romans build to separate the  conquered lands from the Picts, um Celtic peoples
163. 19:40in the north in Scotland You'll notice that  the the roads don't really reach into Cornwall
164. 19:47uh uh into Cornwall and Wales Uh so the Romanized  Britons this ruling class they build Roman villas
165. 20:00they worship Roman gods Uh and eventually as Rome  becomes Christianized so do the Romanized Britons
166. 20:07Uh we see Celtic Christianity develop uh familiar  perhaps by uh the Celtic cross seen today um in
167. 20:17Ireland in particular We're going to turn here to  a description of this conquest by Gildas a Celtic
168. 20:25Britain whose text De Excidio Brittaniae, On the  Ruin of Britain uh was written in the 500s He
169. 20:35describes this conquest by the Romans So here's  Gildas' description of the Roman colonization:
170. 20:45The Romans therefore having slain many of the  rebels and reserved others for slaves that the
171. 20:50land might not be entirely reduced to desolation  left the island destitute as it was of wine and
172. 20:56oil and returned to Italy leaving behind them task  masters to scourge the shoulders of the natives
173. 21:02to reduce their necks to the yoke and their soil  to the vasselage of a Roman province to chastise
174. 21:08the crafty race not with warlike weapons but with  rods and if necessary to gird upon their sides the
175. 21:14naked sword sword so that it was no longer thought  to be Britain but a Roman island And all their
176. 21:19money whether of copper gold or silver was stamped  with Caesar's image Meanwhile these islands stiff
177. 21:26with cold and frost and in a distant region of  the world remote from the visible sun received
178. 21:32the beams of light that is the holy precepts of  Christ the true sun showing to the whole world
179. 21:38his splendor not only from the temporal firmament  but from the height of heaven which s surpasses
180. 21:44everything temporal So notice here that Gildas  is recognizing the violence of this colonization
181. 21:50by Rome and he's ambivalent about it While he is  himself a romanized Britain he's writing in the
182. 21:57generations after the Romans have left Britain  as we'll discuss in a moment Uh he see however
183. 22:03Christianity which he sees as separate from  Roman colonization Christianity is connecting
184. 22:09Britain to the rest of the world despite the  fact that this island is at the edge of the map
185. 22:15uh in a distant region uh it is connected to the  son of god and that connects it to the whole world
186. 22:31So the Roman period lasts from the 1st through the  5th centuries AD So quite some time of romanized
187. 22:39Britons living in this island But nothing lasts  forever and Rome falls slowly but surely for many
188. 22:47complicated reasons and Britain as the furthest  outpost of the empire in this distant region it
189. 22:54it gets abandoned Uh by 410 AD all Roman legions  had retreated from the island and in their absence
190. 23:05England is invaded by the Picts uh the Celts  coming from the north and by German tribes coming
191. 23:18from the mainland here tribes like the Franks the  Frisians the Jutes the Angles and the Saxons These
192. 23:27are Germanic peoples Uh they are notably different  from the Celtic Romanized Britons Uh for instance
193. 23:39they are pagans they worship gods familiar from  these northern Germanic tribes like Thor and Woden
194. 23:49uhand they uh uh essentially are the ruin that  Gildas is describing as the Britons seem to be
195. 23:59pushed west into uh Cornwall into Wales  and further north So Gildas is describing
196. 24:09uh this the results of the Roman abandonment.  We'll look at that passage on the next slide
197. 24:21So Gildas writes "No sooner were they [the Romans]  gone than the Picts and Scots like worms which in
198. 24:28the heat of the midday come forth from their holes  hastily land again from their canoes differing one
199. 24:34from another in manners but inspired with the  same avidity for blood and all more eager to
200. 24:39shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair than  to cover with decent clothing those parts of their
201. 24:44body which required it Moreover having heard of  the departure of our friends and their resolution
202. 24:49never to return they seized with greater boldness  than before on all the country towards the extreme
203. 24:54north as far as the wall To oppose them there was  placed on the heights a garrison equally slow to
204. 25:00fight and ill adapted to run away a useless  and panic-stricken company who slumbered away
205. 25:06days and nights on their unprofitable watch  Meanwhile the hooked weapons of their enemies
206. 25:11were not idle and our wretched countrymen were  dragged from the wall and dashed against the
207. 25:15ground Such premature death however painful  as it was saved them from seeing the miserable
208. 25:20sufferings of their brothers and children But  why should I say more they left their cities
209. 25:25abandoned the protection of the wall and dispersed  themselves in flight more desperately than before"
210. 25:32So here we see Gildas describing uh the  northern pagan invaders as essentially uh
211. 25:42subhuman others They are very strange because  they wear beards bushy hair on their villainous
212. 25:49faces they are not Christian he's describing  uh an end of the world a community overrun
213. 26:00and even as to him this is happening from the  north uhit's also happening in other directions
214. 26:10So as I mentioned the uh people Germanic peoples  like the Jutes the Angles and the Saxons were also
215. 26:19coming into what is now England at this time while  Gildas describes uh the uh the violent overrunning
216. 26:31uh of the nation um the real story probably  involved waves of migration and settlement some
217. 26:38violent some peaceful and Celtic Britons  remained in Wales and Cornwall Uh but
218. 26:47those Romano-Britons the Romanized Britons  continued to live in the area Some of them
219. 26:55uh merging with the upper echelons of uh the  Germanic society some like Gildas leaving Um
220. 27:07from these times we think comes the legend of  Arthur uh a Celtic British king who would one
221. 27:15day return to reclaim the island presumably  from the Angles the Saxons and the Jutes Now
222. 27:24uh the English as a people and a language emerge  from these Anglo-Saxon-Jute colonies they uh the
223. 27:36term England is Eng-land land of the angles who  were not necessarily the most dominant group
224. 27:46we don't think um but for whatever reason their  name is the one that affixes itself to the region
225. 27:58So the terms and uh languages used today reflect  the uh the the conflict of the history I've just
226. 28:08described For example we call that one area to  the west of England Wales this comes from the
227. 28:18old English "Wealas" meaning foreign uh "wealh" in  fact meant slave and was also used for Welshman Uh
228. 28:29so we can see a clear uh hierarchy and tension  there In contrast in Welsh the the nation is
229. 28:39called Cymru deriving from fellow countrymen we  can see on that sign here uh in uh Wales itself
230. 28:49English and Welsh are still used on the signage  So it's important to understand then that that
231. 28:58this language of English is is born out of  forces like migration conflict colonialism
232. 29:06It emerges out of the churn as cultures meet  and adapt and change and in that sense while
233. 29:13English is a very different language today than  it was then the world it is spoken in, our world,
234. 29:21has more in common than you might think with the  changing social landscapes of ancient Britain
235. 29:30We'll look in more depth at Old English  when we discuss Beowulf for now though
236. 29:38uh the language uh West Germanic language uh  spoken by those Angles Saxons Jutes and so on
237. 29:46over time turned into prehistoric old English  uh which is associated with uh 450 to 700
238. 29:55uh and eventually by 700 uh it becomes the  language we call Old English uh which is
239. 30:03preserved in written records like that uh the  Exeter book that we began with The uh kingdoms
240. 30:13that develop among the English people include  the kingdom of Northumbria uh to the north,
241. 30:22of Mercia in the Midlands and Wessex in the  south and these peoples who as we can see are
242. 30:32coexisting sometimes violently with Celtic peoples  living in Wales Cornwall and further north Um
243. 30:42these kingdoms become recchristianized uh so  they the they convert to Christianity and uh the
244. 30:52languages continue to coexist as well We can see  this in an example from a text on the next slide
245. 31:05So in 731 AD a monk named Bede completed his  Ecclesiastical history of the English people
246. 31:14He's focused on the Christianized English Uh he  says at the present time there are five languages
247. 31:21in Britain English British Irish Pictish and Latin  Um so as we mentioned earlier uh Irish and British
248. 31:32which may have had different meanings uh lang  versions of those languages survive Pictish uh
249. 31:39a Celtic language does not survive and of course  uh Latin and English uh were spoken there as well
250. 31:48Uh so it's important to recognize then that  when we talk about English literature we are
251. 31:54just talking about a small percentage of the  literature of Britain In your textbook though
252. 32:01you'll see works from Irish poets and  Welsh storytellers The Mabinogion for
253. 32:07example is a really great read I recommend  it Um and you can choose one of those works
254. 32:12for your presentation if you like uh but the  combination of peoples and languages in this
255. 32:20world produces things like uh the Lindisfarne  gospels Uh here uh Celtic art and Anglo-Saxon
256. 32:28art are combined in these beautifully illuminated  um copies of the New Testament However uh this
257. 32:39cycle we've seen of invasion uh and change  continues uh because the Vikings show up
258. 32:53In the 790s the Vikings attack the northeast of  England Um and they're called uh the Danes by the
259. 33:03English at the time uh though they are made  up of various peoples They're not just from
260. 33:08Denmark and the Vikings sweep down They conquer  Northumbria They conquer part of Mercia but they
261. 33:17are held off in the south uh by Alfred the Great  the king of Wessex And Alfred in the 880s notably
262. 33:27refers to himself as the "king of the English" uh  which gives us this sense uh that despite these
263. 33:36being different kingdoms at this point there  is some notion of the English as a a a people
264. 33:46uh and Alfred's family continues to rule England  until 1016 when Cnut a Danish prince takes
265. 33:55the throne uh and we'll pick up with that  historical moment in a couple of lectures
266. 34:02Notably the Vikings eventually over time convert  to Christianity uh like the English did And in
267. 34:12many ways the Scandinavian Vikings and the  Germanic English uh have some shared pagan
268. 34:18religious traditions linguistic relationships Um  and it's from this mixed culture of English and
269. 34:26Danish that the story of Beowulf emerges  And that's the topic of our next lecture