Public Dreams and Private Myths: Perspective in Middle English Literature

PMLA ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell A. Peck
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
William Carlos Williams ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Pointing Device ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Using Joseph Campbell’s aphorism “Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths” as a pointing device, this essay explores the resilience and breadth of medieval literature as it incorporates into a single purview many perspectives that seem incongruous to the literary taste of later times. The argument maintains that the presence of a common myth to which the society generally adheres accounts for most essential differences between medieval and modern poetry, affecting not only the multiple ways in which the language functions but also the relationship of poet to idea and poem, and the vigorous interplay between poet and audience. The essay treats half a dozen Middle English lyrics, a poem by William Carlos Williams, and a fabiliau by Guerin.

Aurality

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Oral Delivery ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Abundant Evidence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
Relationship Of

Orality—understood as the oral delivery of texts—is often assumed to have given way to literacy—the private reading of texts—over the course of the medieval period. The two entities are mutually exclusive and can be placed in a relationship of evolution that has preoccupied scholars of Middle English literature. Orality differs from “aurality,” which is defined as “the shared hearing of written texts” and combines aspects of both orality and literacy. Most scholars steer around the subject of aurality for a variety of reasons. This article explores some of the issues involved in aurality, explicates the practice of aurality, and considers some of the many potential directions for future research. It focuses on reports of British reading, with occasional references to the more abundant evidence about French and Burgundian reading, as well as recreational literature.

Liturgy

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Holsinger
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
English Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early English ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Common Prayer

In medieval England, liturgy was a looming presence in so many aspects of English literary production. Yet many fundamental questions concerning the relationship between liturgy and vernacular literary production have remained unaddressed. This article explores the liturgical character of Middle English literature and how liturgy links the pre- and post-Conquest eras. In pursuing a liturgical history of early English writing, it outlines a detheologizing vision of liturgy and its objects. It also discusses the phenomenology of the modern theologized category of the “service book,” how previous theologizing habits of liturgical understanding have affected the Middle English religious lyric, and the writing and dissemination of the Book of Common Prayer.

Literature and Law in Medieval England

PMLA ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
pp. 941-951 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Alford
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Middle English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Piers Plowman ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Literature And Law

The use of law in Middle English literature is not extraneous but grows naturally out of a profound faith in law as the tie that binds all things, in heaven and in earth: all law—divine, natural, and human—is, in essence, one law. Hence, Christ's victory over Satan is dramatized in the language of Westminster, the promise of salvation is seen in terms of the emerging law of contracts, and our place in heaven is treated as real estate. The process is seen most clearly in the Château d'Amour, Piers Plowman, Pearl, and “Quia Amore Langueo.” With the disintegration of the belief in a single, coherent law, however, the legal metaphor lost most of its force and economy. As heirs of that disintegration, we must be careful not to impose it unwittingly on Medieval literature and thus fragment a vision that was whole.

Introduction: Reading sacred space in late medieval England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Varnam
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The introduction establishes the methodology for reading sacred space in Middle English literature through an examination of the fifteenth-century text ‘The Canterbury Interlude’, in which Chaucer’s pilgrims arrive at Canterbury Cathedral, visit the shrine of Thomas Becket and argue over their interpretation of the stained glass. The chapter explores the relationship between texts, buildings, visual art, and lay practice in the production of sanctity and sets up the theoretical framework for discussing the church as sacred space. The chapter argues that sacred space is performative and must be made manifest, with reference to Mircea Eliade’s concept of the hierophany, and suggests that sacred space is a powerful tool in the negotiation of social relationships. Finally, the chapter discusses sanctity as a form of symbolic capital in an increasingly competitive devotional environment.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

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