Hello everyone. Welcome back to English
Literature, Introduction to English Literature
course at the Islamic University. Last time we had
a sort of probably uninteresting discussion on a
major Middle English figure whom we described as
the father of English literature. His name is
Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer is a major literary
figure in the Middle English literary traditions.
Geoffrey Chaucer originally was influenced by
several European, mainly Italian and French
writers. But in time, he realized that he has to
work on something more significant than imitating
European writers, which is the British identity,
the English identity. And his major text, as we
said last time, is The Canterbury. The Canterbury.
The Canterbury. Tales. You should know the name.
The Canterbury Tales is, again, the long poem of
24 tales in poetic forms by Geoffrey Chaucer. We
discussed some extracts from the poem, and we
reflected on how these poems, how these lines, in
a way or another show a wide range of lifestyles.
We discussed, for example, how the nun as a woman
is trying to challenge her community by not
following the rules of the church, as we probably
guessed. We've seen how the knight was not the
knight we read about in Old English. He's no
longer Beowulf. The knight is selfish, each man
for himself, and there is no other. And we've seen
how the philosopher is more interested in
collecting money, gold, and how, again, Chaucer
uses irony to talk about this. So Middle English.
The English language started to be shaped. The
English, as we know it now, started from Middle
English. When we look at the Middle English text,
we can figure it out. The spelling is different,
but some words can be easily figured out. We spoke
about new themes. Cultural, British cultural,
English cultural, issues started to materialize in
a way or another. We spoke about new themes, new
people, especially again women started to appear
in poems. At the beginning, they were objects of
desire. Not good, not good enough. But we've seen
how the nun was in a way or another showing women
how to struggle and how to show her humanity, her
identity as a woman rather than as a character of
desire or someone controlled by a man. So going
back to that class, we see again the major themes,
major issues. Number one, the old English hero has
become A man of love, a man of romance. A man
interested in, again, collecting money. A man
interested in improving his own personal status
rather than sacrificing himself for the society,
for the people. And then old values of religious
idealism. We've seen how Kadaman, remember, now we
must praise God. These religious, pure idealistic
religious values have started to change, and
people started to look for worldly gains. Women
started to appear first as objects of desire, but
later on, sometimes once in a while, there were
strong women. We've seen this in Chaucer himself.
At the beginning, again, remember, there has
always been European influence. But at this time,
England was working hard to shape its own
identity. When I speak about the English identity,
it's like what it takes to make an English text
English. Not only the language, but also the
culture and the setting maybe takes place in
England. It talks about English themes and
lifestyles. And again, important poets, important
figures like Chaucer started to work on the
national identity, to create a sense of national
identity. People now can identify as English and
be proud of this identity. Literature did a great
deal of help here. Okay? Now, one of the greatest
national myths of that time we'll come back to
this, is King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table. We'll talk about him in a bit. King Arthur
is said to be from the fifth and sixth centuries
around this time. It was an oral tradition. And
later on, probably hundreds of years later, it was
written down. The story tells of King Arthur.
We're not sure whether there was a king. Probably
there was a king whose name is Arthur. And he had
knights, warriors, fighters. around him. Those
fighters always stood against evil, always stood
for good. Until this very moment, King Arthur
still, in a way or another, like once in a while,
shows up here in literatics and novels and poetry.
These are significant English names. We speak
about the rapidly changing society and how English
as a language and a culture was developing at that
time. We will go back to summarize the main ideas
about Chaucer. Can you remind me of the major
issues we mentioned about Chaucer last time,
ladies? Yeah? Don't look here, don't look. Yes,
please, one. He was an excellent poet, an
important figure, okay? He was the father of
English literature. What did he do? What features
does his poetry have?
A wide picture of the English life. His poetry
describes the life mainly the middle class, the
ordinary people. In Old English, remember, you had
to be a religious person or a hero to be in
poetry. But now more and more people started to
show up. Yes.
Important point here. Irony started to be used as
a tool where you say something and you mean the
opposite. You say something and you mean something
else in essence. So we've seen how the philosopher
has a little gold in his coffer. For a moment, we
pity the philosopher. Oh my God, he only has a
little gold. But then we remember that a
philosopher is supposed to be interested in
knowledge.
And a little gold is still probably a lot of
money. So this is iron. It makes us think, oh,
interesting. It makes us reconsider our positions.
Okay, more? Can we talk more about Chaucer, about
what things he did, what he introduced to English
literature, please? He used
rhyme more clearly, but rhyme already was there.
In a way or another, there was music and rhyme and
rhythm, and this is Europe, remember, and the
alliteration. But he also continued using the
musical aspects of the rhyme and the rhythm and
the music. More? Please. He wanted.
OK. Now, The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer is an
uncompleted work. He intended it to be about 120
stories, but he only finished 24. So he had a plan
for more stories. Don't forget how, again, Chaucer
brings more and more women to his poetry. And
we've seen the nun in his poetry is a strong
character. She's a nun, and we know what a nun is.
It's supposed to be modest and coy, subjected to
particular rules of the church, rules mainly
devised by men. But she's all sentiment and tender
heart, as he says. In a way, we probably guess
that the nun, in a way or another, is rejecting
these rules. Because if a nun is supposed to be
modest, even in her smiling, like... But here we
have a nun who is all sentiment, all about
emotions and love and feelings. This could be,
again, part of the problem in the society he's
discussing, showing how people are hypocrites, how
people claim to be one thing, but in reality they
are another. But could this tell us more about the
nun trying to change the image of women? Probably.
Probably. Yes. OK. Today, we introduce more
English texts, more English poetry. But we're not
going to go in detail here, just in brief. The
first text is Confessio Amantis by someone called
John Gower. Look at the name. The words are not
English. In English, this means a confession or
the confession of a lover. Confessio Amantis. And
this, again, shows how the writer is affected very
good, is influenced by by other European
literatures, mainly French and Italian, probably
German. This is a long, long poem. Remember how
long Beowulf was or other texts? This one is 33
,000 lines. That's a huge, huge text.
Epic and not epic, it's a romance in a way. Now,
as the name suggests, this tells us the story of a
person, a man who spends most of his life pursuing
women, chasing nothing, not heroism, not fighting
their enemies. Again, this is the changing society
here, but chasing women in a way or another. And
at one point in the poem, the main character
decides to give up love. He says, I've done too
much chasing women. I want to change. I want to be
a different human being. Which is good. OK?
Probably we think he's going to be a reformed
person. But then we realize that he only does this
because he's a very, very old man. So he only
gives up love when he becomes like what? 95? 100
maybe? I don't know. So on a first reading, we
say, oh, interesting. But then when we think of
it, wait a minute. You're only giving up love
because you are a very old man, not because you
want to. And again, this is another use of iron
here, where people are made fun of. In a way,
we're told that this is a noble man. He's a good
man because he stops doing something that is not
Completely good. And then we realize he doesn't
stop because he wants to, but because he's an old
man. So that's Confessio Amantis. The other text
is Pierre Plouman. The author is William Langland.
This is also a long poem around a long poem. Also,
I'm not sure how many lines, but it's also a long
poem here. Now, William Langland, Pierre Plouman,
he also uses satire and irony. So remember, in
early English, old English, we had little irony
and more religion, more heroism. But here, people
started gaining new styles, ways of life. And now,
it's easy to criticize people because people are
selfish, hypocritical.
And remember the dream vision we spoke about
before? It's still a technique. So in a way, this
story is told, this poem is part dream, part
reality. The dream, what is a dream vision? It's a
poem that feels like someone is dreaming or
someone telling us a dream. So these are two main
texts from two main poems from Middle English. The
last major text here is Sargawen. And we'll stop
for a moment here to talk about Sargawen.
Now, Sargawen and the night, the green night, is a
very important text, about 3,000, 3,000, or 2,500
lines. We don't know the author of Sagawain. The
author is anonymous.
The author is anonymous.
Sagawain, the word sir means he's a knight. And it
is said that Sagawain is one of the knights of the
round table. Remember the round table? of King
Arthur. So now, Sagawain is a knight. The first
moment we hear the word knight, we remember very
quickly. We remember Beowulf. Beowulf. What is a
knight? What is a hero? What is a sir? A man who's
supposed to be honest, honorable, brave, selfless.
a man who sacrifices himself for the sake of
others to protect others, to bring safety, like
Beowulf. And this was the major idea behind King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Now,
what happens in this poem, this long poem of 2,500
lines, is that one knight, a huge green knight,
dressed in green, disguised in green, A man, a
knight, on a green horse shows up at the place
where King Arthur was. And he says, I challenge
any one of you to a duel, to a fight.
This challenge includes someone to cut the green
knight's head, to chop off his head. Not only
killing him, cutting off his head. If you manage
to do so, in a year, after exactly a year or a
year and a day, I will come back and I will cut
your head off. And at the moment, no one wants to.
See how changed the knights are? And then King
Arthur says, OK, I'll do it. But Sagawin, who is a
relative of King Arthur, steps up and says, OK,
I'll do it. And he cuts the head of the green
knight. His head rolls down. And of course, he's
not dead because he uses magic. And this is a
myth. It's a myth. It's a fictional story. So far,
so good. Sargawen is good. He's strong. He's
brave. He, in a way, sacrificed himself for King
Arthur. Now, when the end of the year nears,
Sargawen goes out to look for the green knight. He
finds a palace. He stays there for a while. And in
a way or another, he is tempted. He's seduced by
the wife of the lord. A woman there seduces him,
tempts him. In a way, he falls in love with her.
Although he was in a mission to, in a way, to pay
the debt. Because he gave, he vowed, he promised,
and a knight shouldn't break his word. So after a
long story, Sagawin is given some kind of a belt
by the woman, by the lady of the palace. And this,
if he puts on this belt, he can't be killed. No
one can kill him. What does he do? Aha. Now
originally, a knight, a seer, should not be, will
not be, cannot be, must not be deceitful. He
shouldn't lie. He's honorable. He's honest. He
doesn't break his promise. Now he goes searching
for the green knight, and the green knight tries
to kill him, but he fails.
And then at the end, we realize that the green
knight is the man, the lord of the castle. He's
the husband of the woman who gave him the belt. So
he discovers this whole thing, like he uncovers
this whole thing. And now Sagawin is highly
embarrassed. Oh, please. I beg of you. Don't tell
people what I did. Please, I'm a knight. Don't
defame me. And he begs for forgiveness. I'm sorry
I lied. I'm sorry I cheated. And for this, the
green knight forgives him. He goes back to King
Arthur. Now, when he comes back, it's like, whoa.
Sagawin is supposed to be dead, right? Because he
cut off the head a year ago, and his head should
be cut by now. But when he comes back, people
think that he is the hero, the fighter, the man
that cuts off the head of the knight, and the
knight can't cut his head off. So he's celebrated
as a hero, as a brave hero. But in reality, as
readers, as audience, we know that he is a
deceitful, a liar, and a cheater. My question is,
who is the main character in this poem, this long
poem? Saqawain. He's the main character. The main
character is the character who takes a lot of
space. In a way, he's the hero. But what does he
do? Does he achieve something? Does he do
something like Beowulf? Is he a hero hero? He's a
main character. He's a fake hero. He's a false
hero. He's exactly as we have here in the book.
He's an anti-hero.
An important term we should know. In modern
literature, in movies nowadays, there are so many
anti-heroes. The main character who basically does
nothing. Now, the first antihero in the history of
English literature is probably Segaway.
And see how people at that time were thinking
ahead of their time. This is something new and
modern, where a main character is not the hero. So
what is antihero again? Do heroic things. It's a
main character who, unlike, for example, Beowulf,
doesn't do anything, doesn't do heroic, doesn't do
important things. Later on, this will be a major
theme and a major technique in English literature
and world literature, and even in movies in the
20th century. What does this tell us again about
the time? It tells us how the society was
changing. People were changing values. Yeah, they
started to use, for example, deceitful ways to get
to their aims. Now that's Segawin. In brief,
Segawin, as a knight, he's supposed to be honest
and honorable, right? Is he honest and honorable?
He's not that honest. He's not that honorable. He
basically does nothing. And Segawin is the
antihero, perhaps the first in English literature.
We move from poetry to drama. We're not going to
go into detail here because we'll focus on
Renaissance drama next week. But again, basic
things about medieval drama is that it was highly
biblical drama.
The stories of the drama of that age were taken
from the Bible. That's the basic thing we need to
know. So they would take a story of some saint, a
story of certain prophets or certain people, bad
or good, from the Bible, and they would be
performed either in the church or around the
church. Don't forget the Bible was in what
language at that time? Latin. It was Latin. So
perhaps the actors will be talking about
something, and the audience, the English people,
would be like, huh? What's going on? But again,
because of the drama, because of the drama and the
performance, it's easier. The difference between
poetry, listen, drama was written in verse, even
until the 17th century. Drama was written in
verse, in poetry. But the difference between
poetry and drama Very good. Drama was supposed to
be acted, was composed to be performed on a stage
and poetry was written basically to be sung. But
both are written in poetry. The drama of this time
is called mystery drama or miracle drama, any of
the terms, because they would take miraculous and
mysterious events or people from the Bible, and
they would act them. The purpose is to teach
people good values, religious values, how to be
good, how not to be bad, this basically. Is this
an act of literary expression? Could be. But it
was mainly the church aiming to educate, to teach
people the Christian values. And again, we go back
how the church itself took care, wrote down many
old English texts. And now the church is also part
of the development of the play. Now, a very
important, probably the most important
Invention in the history of literature in general
and production and writing and books is the
invention of the printing press. What is the
printing press?
What is the printing press? Okay. It's the
invention of the machine.
Okay, how do you think people made books before
this? Copying, copying down. They would copy down.
Sometimes, in the videos I think we're going to
watch in a bit, it says that sometimes it took
over a year to copy one copy of the Bible. One
year. I'm not sure how many people would it take.
Probably one, probably two or more. And you spend
one whole year copying a book. That is why books
were very rare and very expensive. Wasn't easy to
produce them. Wasn't easy to also buy them.
Probably expensive. Now there's this very famous
man called Gutenberg. And as the name suggests,
he's German. Although some people say, no, it
wasn't Gutenberg who first invented the printing
press. But it's a very important invention. Why is
it important? Because now there is mass production
of books. You don't just make one, two, ten
copies. You can easily make hundreds of copies.
Not easily, but still a lot easier than copying
the book by hand. So the printing press was the
invention of, as many people suggest, Gutenberg.
He's a German man. What we care about is what
William Caxton did. William Caxton here in the
1470s, in the second half of the 15th century.
That's almost 500 years ago. He brought the
printing press to London, to England. And soon
after, the first book that was published, was
printed, was the Bible. Of course, the Bible. It
is said that Gutenberg himself, in two years, made
100 copies of the Bible. 100 copies in two years.
We just said that probably it takes more than one
year for one person to copy one copy of the Bible.
Made it very easy, probably cheaper, and faster.
And that's the most important thing. This is what
we call mass production. We'll talk about the
technique in a bit. But this is what we care about
more here. William Caxton, a very famous name.
Listen, he's not the inventor of the printing
press. He brought it to England. And the first
book naturally to be printed is the Bible.
Literary book is King Arthur. King Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table. It was the first
literature book to be printed by...
In England. And the first literary book. In
Germany and also in England, yeah. Now, other
books that were, of course, printed at that time,
Chaucer, probably Beowulf. Okay, so don't forget
this. Let's see this video, this very short video
of the printing press. Now, again, look at this,
watch and we'll comment on this video.
The apprentice here is shown operating a replica
of Gutenberg's press. As you can see, this type of
printing took a lot of work, but was quicker than
hand copying books. In just under two years,
Gutenberg was able to print nearly 190 Latin
Bibles. Normally, the scribe would take the same
amount of time to copy one Bible by hand. See this
press in action at passages. The exhibit is
currently on display in Springfield, Missouri. OK.
So basically, the printing press at that time
would, again, very quickly replace handwriting,
hand copying. So we have almost 200 copies of the
Bible in two years, the same period that would
take one person to copy one copy. Now generally,
the idea was to have so many letters of the
alphabet, A, A, B, B, et cetera, C, and C capital,
and small, and to have as many letters as possible
in middle. And then you put the letters. If you
want to write a particular page, whatever the page
is, you arrange the letters to give you this text.
OK? Like first, God created the world. Or let's
say, assume, because this text was not already
written by then. But April is the cruelest month.
So what they do is they bring people to arrange
the letters to produce this whole page. You have a
whole text written, as we saw in the video, and
they bring the letters to make the text they have
on a particular page. Could be one page, could be
two pages. And what happens is that they solve
this with ink. They put a lot of ink. And they
bring hundreds of pages, of sheets of paper. And
they start to make, for example, this is when they
arrange this. I'm not sure how long it takes to
arrange the letters of one page, one day, two
days, not sure. It takes a bit of time. But once
you have the text here of a particular page, And
the ink, you make as many copies of this as
possible. If you want, okay we want a hundred
copies, you make a hundred pages and you put it
aside and you go to the second page and you
scramble the letters and you start over again. And
then you bring them together, and you have 100,
200, 300 copies of a particular book. It's still
slow, still very hard work, but a lot faster. It's
not faster. It's a lot faster, because again,
almost 200 Bibles in two years. And we have
probably the same amount of time that would take
one man to handwrite one copy of the Bible. This
is the most important invention here, because it
helped mass production of literature. Mass
production of literature. Do you have any
questions so far? So in brief, in addition to
Chaucer, we have other minor texts like Confessio
Amantis and Piers Plowman. And then we have a
major text, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. Who's
the author? Anonymous. What is it about? It's
about the rapidly changing society about false
knighthoods and knights, et cetera. Now, a final
name in Middle English is someone, some poet
called John Skilton. Before we comment on John
Skilton, can someone please read his poem and
raise your voice as much as possible? Vengeance.
by way of exclamation on the whole of nation of
cats, wild and tame, God send them sorrow and
shame. Very good. Yeah, one more. Say vengeance.
Vengeance I ask and reply by way of exclamation.
Exclamation.
Exclamation point, you know exclamation mark?
Yeah, by way of Yes.
Very good. One more. Over there, please.
Very good. One final reading. Loud and clear.
Vengeance I ask and cry by way of exclamation on
the whole nation of cats wild and
tame. God send them sorrow and shame. God send
them sorrow and shame. What is this poem about? By
the way, it seems to be like a text for kids that
is written probably around these times, right?
Because the text is about cats. Someone is
complaining about cats, probably a bird or a rat
or a mouse. What does the text communicate with
you? Tell you. What do you notice about the text?
It's between cats and sparrows. OK. So the main
character, the speaker here, is no longer a hero,
no longer a man even. New characters, new themes,
new people started to appear. This is a bird, a
pit bird by the name of Philip the sparrow. He's
complaining about all cats, not only wild cats,
but also tame cats. He's asking for revenge. He's
wishing for revenge. And at the end, we have this
prayer to God. The prayer is no longer a prayer
for you to be good and to go to paradise, to
heaven. God, send these cats sorrow and shame.
This is a funny, very humorous text, very funny
text. Listen, for so many people then, poetry
should be the texts, the literature of the elite,
the high class. Only important educated people,
the king, the queen, the palace, serious language,
serious themes. But again, we have in the Middle
English era people who started to change this, to
include other things. In a way, in my opinion, I
think this is a text that was written for
children, for kids, to challenge again the idea
that poetry is serious and poetry is for the rich
people, the famous people, the educated people.
This is the poet telling us, John Skilton telling
us, poetry is for everyone. It could be also about
anything. It doesn't have to be serious, highly
sophisticated or difficult language. It could be
anything. Another explanation could be the fact
that this is a symbolic poem. You know symbolism
when you use animals instead of people or an
allegory. Like the stories, the fables of Aesop
when the mouse and the lion We love these stories.
We appreciate them. We memorize them. We remember
them. But we also learn some values. We learn some
lessons. Is probably the bird here someone, a
person, an ordinary person, a poor man complaining
about the rich people, the king, the church, the
government maybe?
But cats still?
can threaten a mouse, a bird, a pet. So we end
here by commenting on John Skilton. John Skilton
is one of the late Middle English poets. He
brought new themes, new styles. He used humor and
fun. For him, poetry is for all. Poetry is about
everything. It doesn't have to be about battles
and wars and irony and knights. It could be about
cats and birds.
Poetry is for everyone. And leading to the most
important conclusion here, he shows the perfect
example of strong sense of English language and
English identity in literature, in language, in
thinking. England, in a way, was trying to free
itself from the influences of Europe and European
countries like Italy and France and Germany and
Latin. Do you have any question so far? Go on.
Does cats and birds symbolize something specific
or the right of children? What do you think? Do
cats here symbolize Something, does the bird
symbolize something? Think of this. We probably
can talk about this later on. But like, we have
this in Arabic. Paratha al-tha'ala bi-yawman for
Ahmed Shawqi. It's a poem we love. It's a poem for
kids. We can sing. We can enjoy singing. But there
is a political message, yes. Muqti'un man zanna
yawman, anna al-tha'ala bi-dina. is a political
message against the British occupation of Egypt at
that time. But why would people use symbolism and
animals instead of using real characters?
Punishment. Thank you to avoid punishment. Also to
make it easier for people to remember and
memorize, to understand this unimplied message
here, finally.
He wants his poem to be published. If he
criticizes the political establishment,
they're going to say, no publishing for you. OK,
thank you very much. We stop here. We end our
discussion of major texts in Middle English. Next
time, we do Renaissance literature and
Shakespeare.