Medieval Blogging

Norman F. Cantor. Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages. 

         
New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. 188.

            Norman Cantor writes Medieval Lives in hopes to show the character of eight very important people during the Middle Ages.  Within the book, Cantor chooses to write about Helena Augusta, Augustine of Hippo, Alcuin of York, Humbert of Lorraine, Hildegard of Bingen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Robert Grosseteste, and John, Duke of Bedford.  These people were chosen on purpose, for it can be argued that these people exhibit the greatest of qualities during the Middle Ages.  Cantor tells of these people by storytelling.  He creates one situation for each character which will exemplify their remarkable personalities as well as show how they had helped their countries through a desperate time.  Because the novel is told through short stories rather than the normal biographical writings, readers can enjoy reading more than if the stories sounded like a dull textbook.  I think Cantor made a smart choice when choosing the format for his book because now the book appeals to readers who aren’t even interested in the Middle Ages.  A lot of the times, only people who are deeply intrigued by a subject will read a biographical text to learn more about the topic; in this text, the stories are so entertaining that everyone can enjoy reading it. 

            Each story brings something new to the text.  Within each story, we are able to gain knowledge about the character being portrayed but also about the time period in which these people lived.  We learn about the social, economic, political, and religious issues going on during the time.  In the story of Helena Augusta, we learn a brief biography of the mother of
Constantine through one event taking place in a bar and the conversation that occurs between
Helena and those who work there.  We learn where
Helena came from, that she is quite an admirer of alcohol, and also that she believes that women are just as equal as the men but understands why they cannot be.  She explains to the barmaid that “it is a Roman Church, after all, and Roman law gives an inferior status to women even in noble families” (9). 
Helena also goes into her opinions on the Christian religion, including her objections.  We are able to capture the noble view on religion as well as the peasant’s, with the responses of the bar workers.  All of the stories are like the one of Helena Augusta.  We get a view of one day in the life of these characters and through their actions and conversations with others, we get a larger view of the social, economic, political, and religious issues of the times.

            I would definitely say that Cantor has achieved his goal of enriching his readers’ knowledge of critical players during the Middle Ages.  He successfully gets his points across through the stories of each individual.  In some of the stories, he even mentions some of the other characters he has written about and ties one person to the other. 

            Though the short stories containing one specific event in time proves to be rather entertaining to the reader and also a quick read, this can pose a problem as well.  We get a glimpse into the lives of these individuals but we do not get the entire picture.  We see their thoughts, their actions, and the responses of others at one particular time of their life.  All of these things can change during the years, from youth to adulthood and from experience to experience.  For example, in the story of Hildegard of Bingen, we are told much of her life as an older woman and the contributions she made to religious writings and also to feminist theories, but we learn very little, if anything at all, of her childhood or how she became who she did.  We are completely unaware of events that led up to her great success.  The background knowledge is crucial to those who are deeply concerned with the Middle Ages, but I believe that this was not Cantor’s only audience when writing this book.  I feel that he wanted to reach out to people of all ages, studies, and interests.  And to accomplish this, he had to make sure he appeals to them all; he had to make his text more simplistic but more interesting that a textbook to appeal to the younger group and also to those not fully interested in medieval studies.  Also, he had to make sure his information was accurate and the most important of the individuals in order to appeal to those that were interested in medieval studies.  In this area, Cantor has been more than just successful; he has dominated in his appeal to all groups. 

            Cantor has succeeding in creating a set of short stories that helps to give explanations in medieval studies.  His choice of scenes taking place at one point in the individuals’ lives is the best of the best.  He couldn’t have chosen a better scene although he could have made a way to show more of their backgrounds.  By telling each of the stories, we as readers are able to successfully enhance our knowledge of the Middle Ages as well as the important people who contributed to the times. 

Karras, Ruth Mazo. “Prostitution and the Question of Sexual Identity in Medieval
Europe”.                                Journal of Women’s History. 11.2. 1999. 159-177.

            Ruth Mazo Karras writes a very enlightening article about sexual identity during the Middle Ages.  As of recently, scholars have decided that sexual identity did not arise until the nineteenth century.  In her essay, “Prostitution and the Question of Sexual Identity in Medieval Europe”, Karras explores the history of the sexual identity and comes to the conclusion that people living in the Middle Ages did have what we would call a sexual identity. 

            Karras begins her essay in a different, yet very interesting manner.  Instead of jumping right into the body of her essay with her main points, she decided to create a paragraph of reviews from critics who completely disagree with her argument on sexual identity in the Middle Ages.  Then she points out implications of siding with these critics and explains how their views are a very close-minded view of things. 

            The first point in the article is that prostitutes are a group in the Middle Ages set aside from the rest of society because of their sexual behavior.  Acting as outsiders in society creates a sexual identity for the prostitutes.  The definition of a prostitute during the Middle Ages differed from what it is today: a woman was called a prostitute if she was a “lustful woman” whereas today a prostitute is known for “accepting money for sex” (161).  Lust is not a behavior that can be abandoned but instead it is a “state of the soul-what we today call an identity” (161).  This passage contains the heart of Karras’s argument. Karras takes the time to explain how the definitions of “prostitution” have changed over the years, which proves to be an excellent tactic for the rest of her essay because the reader is likely to already be convinced that prostitutes had a sexual identity in Medieval Europe. 

            To prove that society treated prostitutes different from everyone else, Karras points out some rules and regulations that these women had to live by.  Many towns regulated prostitution, and in these towns, “officials of low or stigmatized status” watched over the prostitutes (164).  In addition, prostitutes had to “dress according to their station” (165).  This would definitely have made them stand out from the rest of society.  These rules and regulations set prostitutes as outcasts, giving them their own identity. 

            Karras has now proved her point in the essay and she moves into discussing how the identity created for prostitutes may not have been purely negative.  This section seems to move past the point of the essay: proving that people did have sexual identities prior to the nineteenth century.  Society allowed prostitutes to greet important people upon entry into the city, which gave the women a sense of being a “civic resource” for their community; this feeling gave them some self-awareness (168).  Also, taking money for sex gave these women “economic independence” from men (169).  Being independent and a crucial aspect to the community give the prostitutes a positive identity.  Positive or negative, these women have still developed a sexual identity, which is the focus of the essay.

            The first half of Karras’s essay was excellent.  She laid out an organized essay with a clear thesis and points that proved her point as well as interested the reader.  Karras discovered evidence that more than supported her argument.  I believe that Karras should have ended her essay before coming to the point of positive and negative identities.  The last few pages seemed irrelevant to the point in question and the essay seemed like Karras dragged it on longer than it should have been.  Overall, Karras wrote an intriguing and very convincing paper on sexual identity in Medieval Europe.  The last few pages could have been another paper in itself but if you can make it through those few pages, you will be find enjoyment in the paper as a whole. 

Hurtig, Dolliann Margaret.  “’I do, I do’: Medieval Models of Marriage and Choice of Partners in Marie de France’s ‘Le Fraisne’”. The Romantic Review.  92.4. 2001. 363-380. 

            Dolliann Hurtig discusses Marie de France’s concept of love, particularly in her story “Le Fraisne”.  Her concept differs widely from the concept of love at the time, which consisted of courtly love and how a man ought to approach and court a woman. 

            A main problem for Marie de France with courtly love and marriage is that there is no equality.  Marie de France demands equality between the sexes therefore denying the “domination/submission precept of courtly love” (364).  Hurtig argues that Marie first brings up the idea of “true love”.  Hurtig looks at marriages of convenience versus religious models of marriage, and how each one portrays love in the Lais.  She looks at the title “Le Fraisne” which means “The Ash Tree” and how the title represents generations.  The metaphor is that an ash tree “produces more and more branches as time passes” and “it is with families who through marriage extend their branches”, therefore, the story from the beginning is praising marriage.

            Hurtig next acknowledges a modern double standard that appears in “Le Fraisne”.  For the women in the story, “extramarital sex is rigorously condemned for a woman” but for the men, “sexual pleasure outside the marriage bond is an accepted social practice” (369).  No one looks down upon Gurun when he gains a mistress, but the entire community looks down upon his wife when giving birth to twins.  According to the religious model of marriage during the Middle Ages, “Gurun and Le Fraisne may be considered as privately married” because society considered people married if they had both consented to sexual intercourse (371).  However, in the secular model of the time, “there were living openly as lovers” (371).  Being married or not married is big and with this story, we see the how religion failed to influence people because they did not consider each other married after consenting to sex. 

            Now is where Hurtig begins to move away from what she claimed she was aiming at in her thesis.  Instead of discussing the different types of marriage, she goes into talking about hierarchal and patriarchal status in the feudal system affects the story.  She goes on in this manner for several pages, which really takes away from the essay as a whole.  Then at the end of the essay, her conclusion goes back to a main focus: what is Marie de France trying to say about marriage in “Le Fraisne”?  Hurtig concludes that Le Fraisne’s marriage is one of convenience but “also a love match” which would have “the blessing of the Church fathers” (380). 

            Hurtig makes two assumptions at the end of her essay, as a conclusion, but neither one has any evidence to support them.  She decides that the device of twins in the story represent the two models of marriage.  Her other claim, which is a bit more believable than the first, is that Marie de France wants all women “to be queen of their own wedding days” (380).  Hurtig makes it seem like Marie de France is the one who inadvertently switched society from practicing courtly love to true love.  This theory seems a little over the top and neither one of her ending claims appeared with evidence in the rest of the essay. If Hurtig would have continued on the path that she had chosen to take at the beginning of the essay, then readers would be more likely to appreciate what she has found. 

            One main problem with Hurtig’s essay is that she goes on for about three to four pages before she actually begins with her argument.  Her thesis is clear, but it just does not occur at the beginning of the article.  She instead chooses to have a very long introduction, which takes away the reader’s attention from the paper because we become unsure of what her argument really is. 

            Another problem with the article is that it is more of a summary than a critical essay.  Hurtig does little to analyze the story and instead summarizes what any reader can take from “The Fraisne”.  This lessens Hurtig’s credibility as a resourceful critical analyst. 

Oestreich-Hart, Donna J. “’Therefore, Since I Cannot Prove a Lover’. Courtly Love in William Shakespeare, Ovid, and Andreas Capellanus”. Studies in English Literature. 40.2 2000. 241.

            Oestreich-Hart opens up her article with a quote describing “historical” texts versus “literary” texts.  She states her intentions for the essay in the first paragraph: she intends to show how Shakespeare’s “Richard III” compares with Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Ovid’s The Amores, and Capellanus’s Tractatus de Amore. Greenblatt, the owner of the quote that Oestreich-Hart bases her argument, claims that whether a text is “historical” or “literary”, the text will still have the characteristic of “undecidablity”. 

            The body of the essay begins with the issue of “undecidability”.  Oestreich-Hart particularly on the character of Richard, and how critics, as well as leisure readers, tend to describe the man.  She gives examples of differing opinions on Richard III, but she does not acknowledge that all of these descriptions could be correct.  She gives the impression that a man can only have one determinate personality and is unable to act differently in different situations.  The fact that Oestreich-Hart puts this argument as her first gives the rest of the essay a very dim outlook because she has already not proven one of her main points.  To add to her argument on “undecidability” in “Richard III”, she then goes on to describe how people differ in their opinions of Richard once he convinces the woman to be his wife.  To prove her point, she does exactly what she did with the prior example: she gives quotations from critics that are complete opposite in order to prove that the play does consist of the “undecidability” factor.  You can guess that since I was not convinced with her methods on the first example, that the second example proved to be tiring to me.  Now begins the basis of her essay.

            The “undecidability” of the play is not the main concern of Oestreich-Hart, but instead it is just a small point to make in a bigger picture.  She wants to look at courtly love in “Richard III” and how the seduction of Anne is understandable to the reader only after reading the texts of Ovid and Capellanus.  She argues that while the rest of the play is contingent upon texts from the same period, the “wooing” scene is taken more from the past texts.  Part of her argument dealing with the Capellanus text is that the play in question “employs the witty banter of Andreas Capellanus’ love debates” (244).  After making such a general remark, Oestreich-Hart does little to back the remark up.  In fact, she moves right along without ever explaining how the text uses Capellanus-like wit.  However, the wit is not her main point either; it is just another small point, without any evidence, that she makes throughout the essay. 

            It is not until now that Oestreich-Hart finally reaches the meat of her essay.  Richard goes about pursuing Anne as if he had taken instructions from Ovid and Capellanus.  The first instruction was that love should be a “new kind of warfare” (225).  Richard approaches Anne by declaring that it is a “merry war of words” and this one line is the basis for this section of the argument.  One line does not make a credible point.  The line could also be taken out of context; unless we have read the play, we, while reading this essay, have no idea what is being said before and after the line said by Richard, but we are just taking Oestreich-Hart at her word.  This seems very naïve. 

            Her next point is that Richard uses “soft and gentle words” after Anne has continuously insulted him, and according to Oestreich-Hart, this is a tactic given by Capellanus in his eighth dialogue (226).  My problem with this point is that wouldn’t any man who is trying to seduce a woman use gentle language? Just because Shakespeare makes Richard use this gentle language means that he is taking instructions from the text of Capellanus?  I find this a little far off.  I believe that any man would suggest to another man to say sweet things when trying to seduce a woman. 

            The essay continues in this same way.  Oestreich-Hart picks out lines from the play and then relates them to the instructions given by Ovid and Capellanus in their ancient texts.  The other examples range from how Richard looks during the scene to how he blames Anne for everything bad that had happened.  I find this article to be lacking in evidence.  I can see how one might relate her points to Ovid and Capellanus but I fail to believe that Shakespeare based the courting scene in the play “Richard III” primarily on the advice given by Ovid and Capellanus in prior centuries. 

Martin, Priscilla. “Sex, Discourse and Silence.” Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives and Amazons. Macmillan. 1990. 218-230.

            If anyone is interested in the linguistic side of texts, then this essay will be very interesting.  Priscilla Martin discusses how words are an advantage in some situations for Chaucerian women and how silence can work to their advantage in other.  Martin makes a joke at the beginning of the essay about how “loquacious women are a favorite target of medieval satire” (219).  A joke is a great hook because it lightens the essay a little bit but also grabs the attention of the reader. 

            Martin makes many interesting points throughout her essay that draw attention to her argument as a whole.  She claims that “while speaking ill is unattractive in a woman, speaking well is far more subversive” (319).  You could call this sentence her thesis because the rest of the essay focuses on this idea.  This phrase made me stop for a minute though and ponder what Martin was implying.  Any paper than can make its reader stop and think is a good essay; the essay really captures the reader’s attention. 

            Examples are Martin’s specialty.  She does not just take one of Chaucer’s tales to prove her point; she uses over ten different stories to further her argument, which makes her a very credible source, therefore making the essay reliable.  Many of her examples show how “the talkative woman is the examplar of bad wives and her words are weapons, the more piercing if she is eloquent” (319).  Martin uses women from the “Clerk’s Tale” and the “Merchant’s Tale” to support her point.  The bad women in these stories (i.e. the Wife of Bath, etc.) are said to talk very well and all the time. 

            The other hand of Martin’s argument claims that sometimes these women hide behind their silence, which in turn gives them more power.  I think that she should have left out this aspect because her argument is strong without it.  Her examples include Criseyde from Troilus and Criseyde and May from “The Merchant’s Tale”. 

            Martin’s most fascinating point in her essay is when she takes the Clerk from the “Clerk’s Tale” and details how he represents the feminine character in the story.  She says that female qualities include being “coy, still, shy, silent, virginal, feminine”, whereas males should be “confident, active, articulate, experienced, sexual, and masculine” (322).  The Clerk possesses all of the female qualities in the story.  Martin sums this up by saying that “he blurs the binary division by combining maleness with chastity and silence” (322).  Because he has so many feminine qualities, Martin suggests that this should be a warning sign for someone reading his tale.  Nevertheless, she fails to answer why.  Martin brings up some an interesting point as the male portraying female qualities but then I find myself wondering why Chaucer would write something like this. 

            Towards the end of her essay, Martin brings up a theory brought by a Chaucerian biographer, Donald Howard.  Howard claims that “the end of the last story told on the pilgrimage is an overlong speech commending silence. And its last image is a wagging tongue making meaningless noise” (327).  At first, I thought this was the perfect example for Martin.  Then I started thinking, and I do believe that critics really are unsure of which order the stories in The Canterbury Tales go in.  Moreover, if this is the case, then the story that Howard is referring to might not be the last one, therefore his argument could be found invalid. 

            Though there are a few times in the essay where I found that the points were invalid or irrelevant to the essay, this might have been the best and most interesting essay that I have read on Chaucer.  If one can keep an open mind to what Martin has to say, they will find that she is most convincing on nearly all of her points, thus making her argument valid as a whole. 

As we approach the end of the semester, I find myself completely bogged down with work from all of my classes.  It is not that I have waited until the last minute to do everything, or is it?  Throughout the semester, I felt that I was on track in all of my classes.  I have got all of my work done, I have done all of my readings, completed all assignments, written all of my papers, and still managed to maintain some sanity.  But now the sanity might be an issue.

This class, in particular, proves to be one of my favorite classes.  I am really enjoying Troilus and Criseyde right now, probably because I am reading the modernization.  It is difficult for me to understand the actual text, probably because I feel like I do not have the time to really put a great effort into my comprehension of the text.  I am taking four literature classes this semester, so you can imagine that I have a pretty great work load.  When I found the modernization online, I was ecstatic because it was such an easy read but still kept the entertainment factor in tact.  A lot of my texts for other classes have no modernizations that I could get my hands on so I struggle with my understanding of the readings, thus causing time constraints when it comes to my other work.  I really need to learn how to manage my time more effectively between classes.  I tend to spend a great amount of time on one text, between actually reading it and then analyzing it, and then I find myself struggling just to complete the full reading assignment for the next class, much less trying to analyze it.  And now that I am back to working all the time, managing my time has become a necessity. 

This class interests me on many levels.  I do think that the texts that we are reading are interesting but I do not think that is the best part about the class.  For me, I really enjoy how we always tie what we read into many other contexts.  We always bring in other authors and texts, genres, and even time periods.  It is nice to see how everything comes together in the big picture.  I also really like being able to connect something I have read for once class to something from another, especially when I never would have caught the connection before.  I do believe that this is the best part of this class.  I feel like not only my knowledge of Medieval Literature and the times have evolved, but also of things of other natures that I was not expecting when entering the class. 

And now onto this grand research portfolio.   For the first set, I was on task.  I had all my essays picked out weeks in advance and even had my book chosen much before the due date.  This next set is proving to be a little more difficult for me.  It is not that the actual assignment is difficult, it is just finding time to complete the portfolio that proves to be much harder than expected.  I have yet to choose a book that I think I will enjoy reading enough to be able to write  a well thought-out paper on, and I have only gotten one of my essays.  Thanksgiving break will be nothing less than crazy. 

So far so good. That is how I am thinking about this semester as of right
now. The beginning of the semester always seems to go better for me than
the second half. Relating to this medieval literature class, I have been
doing all of the readings though I have to admit that I found it very easy
for my mind to wander as I was reading the Chretien stories. I really
enjoyed the “Erec and Enide” story but I just felt like the stories were so
much longer than they could have been. I found myself having read a
paragraph and then realizing that I had no clue of what I had just read.
Therefore, I had to read each paragraph a couple of times over which was
just very time consuming.
So far my favorite text was the text by Ovid. I thought that the text was
comedic on all levels and it was a quick read. I didn’t necessarily relate
to the text, which is one reason why many people prefer one text to another,
but I just found the text so completely absurd that I found myself laughing
at things Ovid seemed rather serious about.
I am very interested in the idea of chivalry in the Medieval Ages and also
how it more or less died in literature and the arts as a whole. I wonder
how people were able to continue to read the same types of stories over and
over again because it seems like they all had to deal with the “perfect”
knight. I am guessing that this is how the era of chivalric literature
died; people got sick of reading the same story over and over again,
especially when new literature was being produced all around.
The medieval idea on love was really interesting to me as well. Maybe that
is because their idea is so completely different from the idea that we have
today. Women were supposed to be subservient. Everyone knows that. But
Ovid seems to mock the entire idea. And the way he goes around it comes off
as comedy. It’s comedy only because it is completely absurd.
Upon realizing that the portfolio was coming up rather quickly, I made a
trip to Borders in hopes of finding a book that really stood out to me. I
found a book about 8 charismatic men and women and I went ahead and read it
in my spare time. To my surprise, the book was excellent! The stories of
these characters were not told in biographical form but instead through
narratives. I would recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in
medieval history. I haven’t yet begun to look for articles for the
portfolio because I figured the book review would be the most time consuming
and the most difficult. I’ll admit that I haven’t thought twice about the
articles at this time. I figured that the book was the major piece of the
portfolio so the articles would be easier to find than would an intriguing
case study.

Implications of Diction in Baclavret

            Diction is more than just words on a page.  The author chooses each word specifically and for a particular purpose.  In the story Baclavret, the diction allows us to characterize the wife before her actions prove us right.  This diction is not restricted to just things that the wife says, but also words that surround the wife of Baclavret. 

            At the beginning of the story, Baclavret’s wife begs him to explain where he goes for days on end.  He responds by telling her that his secret would risk his safety but the wife continues to “coax him…persuasively” (69).  The word “coax” has connotations of sneakiness and manipulation, as does the word “persuasively”.  One who truly loves another would not manipulate them in any way.  By choosing to use “coax” and “persuasively”, Marie de France allows her reader to characterize the wife before the actual betrayal.  After his continued refusal, she “tormented and harried him” (69).  The degree of the wife’s harassing attitude has reached an extreme at this point.  Not only has she cleverly made her attempts at persuading Baclavret by “coax[ing]” him but now proceeds to torture him until she gets what she wants by “torment[ing]” him.  This behavior is that of an enemy, not someone who is genuinely caring and loving towards you. 

            After Baclavret told his wife everything, she immediately began to think of ways to leave him.  She then remembered a knight “who had loved her for a long time, wooed her ardently and served her generously” (69).  She admits that she “had never loved him” but he was her way out (69).  Due to her dependence upon men, she had to have someone to save her from this wretched husband of hers and she knew she could always count on a guy who had sincere feelings for her.  Marie de France even goes so far as to refer to the wife’s love as a “pledge” (69).  A pledge seems much more official and less from the heart than do one’s precious vows.  Her blatant attempt to find a new husband left her caring no more for the feelings of the new knight than of the feelings of Baclavret.   All of these details are implicated by the diction surrounding the wife. 

            Beyond the apparent malevolent and self-concerning character of the wife shown by the diction, the word choice also shows how the wife is a liar and also very materialistic.  Upon learning that the king was staying near her, the wife decides to dress “elegantly” and also picks up an “expensive present” in hopes of impressing the king (71).    The king gave no impressions of an immoral man but instead seemed very righteous, but the wife felt that she had a better chance of getting what she wanted if she brought gifts and looked very “elegant”.  Later, during Bisclavret’s brutal attack on his former wife, he nose is torn off.  The narrator asks, “What worse punishment could he have inflicted on her?” (71). The wife is too concerned with appearances rather than one’s true self. 

            Along with the wife’s obvious insincerity and materialistic habits, she is also dishonest.  After the beast attacks the wife, the wise man begs the king to ask her if she knows why the thing attacked her.  The wise man declares, “make her tell you”, implying that the wife would not say anything unless made to (71).  The word “make” is a forceful word and if the wise man expected the wife to be honest about why she was attacked then he would have chose to speak a different, more neutral word.