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Silvia Ballabio

Voices

Alessandra Brunetti

1 THE ORIGINS

6th century–1066 2 THE MIDDLE AGES 1066–1485 3 THE RENAISSANCE AND THE PURITAN AGE 1485–1660 4 THE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE 1660-1776 5 THE ROMANTIC AGE 1776–1837

in Literature, Art and Global Issues

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Voices in Literature, Art and Global Issues

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GENRES IN TIME Evoluzione nel tempo dei generi letterari

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CONTENTS

GENRES IN TIME Fiction Poetry Drama

4 6 10

YOUR TEXTS EXPLAINED 1 THE ORIGINS (6th century–1066) • Beowulf The fight with Grendel Beowulf’s death

• The Wanderer

12 13 14

2 THE MIDDLE AGES (1066–1485) • Lord Randal

• Geordie

• Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales General Prologue The Wife of Bath

17 18

3 THE RENAISSANCE AND THE PURITAN AGE (1485–1660) • Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus Faustus’ last hour

• William Shakespeare, Sonnets Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? That time of year thou mayst in me behold My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

20 21 22

• William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet With a kiss I take you The balcony scene

23 24

• William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Doting for an ass

• William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice Am I not human? Are we not all in need of mercy?

26 27

• William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Hamlet, the man of inaction Oh fair Ophelia! Oh wicked mother!

28 29

• William Shakespeare, King Lear The sweet and bitter fool The storm scene

31 32

• William Shakespeare, Macbeth I have done the deed A tale told by an idiot

33 35

• William Shakespeare, The Tempest Master and servant We are such stuff as dreams are made on

36 37

• John Donne, Songs and Sonnets The Sun Rising

• John Donne, Holy Sonnets Batter My Heart

• John Milton, Paradise Lost Satan’s speech 2

41 © Casa Editrice G. Principato SpA

4 THE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE (1660–1776) • William Congreve, The Way of the World Provisos

• Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave We are men, not brutes and not slaves

• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe Are cannibals like us? Friday, the ideal ‘savage’

43 44

• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels The right way to break an egg Slaves of perfect reason

45 47

• Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling The foundling

5 THE ROMANTIC AGE (1776–1837) • William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience The Lamb The Tyger London

49 49 50

• William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes I wandered lonely as a cloud Composed upon Westminster Bridge

51 52

• Samuel T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner The killing of the Albatross Lost in the land of the bright sun Life-in-Death. The horror! The horror!

53 54 55

• Samuel T. Coleridge Kubla Khan: or, a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

• George G. Byron, Oriental Tales – Lara The Byronic Hero

• George G. Byron, Don Juan Donna Julia cuckolds Don Alfonso

• Percy B. Shelley Ozymandias

• Percy B. Shelley, Ode to the West Wind Oh, if I were like you, Spirit!

• John Keats, Great Odes Ode on a Grecian Urn

• John Keats La Belle Dame sans Merci

• Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho A love for nature A Gothic world is born

64 65

• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus The miserable wretch Will you love me, father?

66 66

• Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat The spirit of perverseness The final horror

68 69

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice Mr and Mrs Bennet, an old couple Know yourself © Casa Editrice G. Principato SpA

70 71 3

GENRES IN TIME Fiction Literary prose can be divided into fiction (novels, novellas and short stories) and non-fiction (essays, letters, diaries, biographies and autobiographies). This genre is usually associated with the use of prose.

Before the novel (from the origins to 1720s)

The Bildungsroman, or novel of formation

The earliest prose works were non-fiction, for example the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was begun under King Alfred the Great, and John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible. During the Renaissance, non-fiction mainly consisted of sermons and biographies. Prose works which told a story appeared for the first time, for example John Lily’s prose romance Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1551).

The Realistic novel was born in the 1720s with the depiction of middle-class individual experiences; it had a moral purpose that was appreciated by middle class (bourgeois) readers. Realism was most clearly seen in Daniel Defoe’s and Henry Fielding’s styles and in their need to defend themselves against accusations of lying. The use of letters, the pretence of having found an old manuscript or the journey of exploration and adventure were all meant to support this illusion of authenticity. Swift’s satire, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), was the first example of satire not in verse, but in prose, in line with the satirical intent of More’s Utopia. However, the convention of realism (characters and settings similar to real people and life) was so dominant that Swift used precise descriptions of the various lands and their inhabitants, with their customs, manners and institutions, to make the imaginary places that Gulliver visits on his four journeys more convincing. Realism remained a dominant feature of the novel in the Victorian Age. The popularity of the novel increased again, thanks to the growth of the middle classes and their demand for literature that could both educate and entertain at the same time.

The Bildungsroman (educational novel) narrates the growing up and maturing of a sensitive person who searches for his or her own identity. The final goal of the Bildungsroman being moral and psychological maturity, the character passes through moments of conflict with society and makes mistakes until he or she is accepted into society and accepts societal values. The fundamental features of the form included a rebellion against the father and the social values he represents. A core feature of the Bildungsroman is the reader’s identification with the fictional hero. Although Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) in the Augustan Age has some of the features of a Bildungsroman (his protagonist undergoes character development while growing up in the country, experiencing adventures while travelling, and searching in London for the young woman he loves), Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1795– 96) is usually credited with being the first Bildungsroman in the form of an epistolary novel. Like its predecessor, it explores the moral and sexual education of its main protagonist, Werther, a young bourgeois man who tries to reconcile an intensely powerful emotional life with life’s practicalities. The genre became extremely popular in France with Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert, who greatly contributed to its development, and with Victorian novelists, such as Charles Dickens with Oliver Twist (1837–39) and David Copperfield (1850), Charlotte Brontë with Jane Eyre (1847), Emily Brontë with Wuthering Heights (1847) in the UK, and Mark Twain with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) in the US. The genre was deeply transformed in the age of Modernism, which rejected both the convention of realism and bourgeois values.

The Bourgeois novel, or novel of Manners

The Gothic novel and Gothicism

Feelings also found their way into the Augustan novel, in the Bourgeois novel or novel of Manners, or Sentimental novel, as exemplified in the work of Samuel Richardson, who chose the epistolary form to present the emotional and psychological reality of his heroines. In the early 19th century, Jane Austen abandoned the epistolary form in favour of an extensive use of dialogue and a thirdperson narrator who comments ironically on her own narrative and characters. Sentimentalism was therefore avoided, to be replaced by irony aimed at the manners and customs of the characters in their specific environments.

In the Romantic Age, the Gothic novel was born with Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe and later with Mary Shelley. The themes were no longer connected to the role of man in society, but to the sublime, the supernatural, and extreme emotions. The style became magniloquent, with frequent hyperbolic language, and the narrative deliberately loose, with room left for descriptions of typical Gothic settings. The themes and style of the Gothic novel continued in the US in Edgar Allan Poe’s horror stories; his contribution was paramount to develop the genre – Gothicism – from the psychological point of view; tormented characters commit

The Realistic novel

Genres in time – Fiction

horrible crimes and descend into madness. A touch of Gothicism and therefore melodrama, with extreme situations, feelings and moods, was to be found also in novelists of the Victorian Age, for example, in Charles Dickens’ novels in the 1850s–60s, with their melancholy settings and dark characters, and in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Like Mary Shelley and Poe, Stevenson added deeper themes to the tradition of Gothicism, such as the critique of Victorian society and the dual nature of man.

The Historical novel The Historical novel originated in the Romantic Age as the result of the renewed interest in folklore and national traditions. The typical setting was a period of history with fictional or historical characters, and it shared with the novel of Manners the attempt to capture the spirit of an age. The first Historical novel, Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), was remarkable in its ability to reconstruct the second Jacobite rebellion thanks to the vicissitudes of a fictional character, Edward Waverley, an honorable English gentleman. Bonnie Prince Charlie, the leader of the rebellion, is portrayed as a charming figure.

The social-problem novel, or the novel with a purpose Social-problem novels, also known as ‘industrial’, ‘social’, or ‘condition-of-England’ novels, depicted the condition of the working classes in the Victorian Age between 1832 and 1867: poverty, dirt, disease, industrial abuses such as sweated labour, child workers and factory accidents. Largely written by middleclass writers, the novels also exhibit fear of (potentially violent) collective action, such as Chartism and Trade Unionism. This type of novel has also been defined a novel ‘with a purpose’; 19thcentury novelists saw themselves as reformists of society. Some of Dickens’ novels can be classified as novels of purpose. The novel of purpose was particularly influential in the United

States in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century. Movements for social reform – including causes such as antislavery (abolitionism), temperance, moral reform, women’s rights and racial improvement – permeated American society. An example is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).

The Modernist novel The last twenty years of the 19th century and the Edwardian Age saw the emergence of a totally new concept of the novel. The innovations of Joseph Conrad’s style, with its oblique narration, subjectivism and symbolism made the limitations of the realistic tradition clear. This led to the stream-of-consciousness novel, one of the main innovations of the Modernist revolution, with James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Consciousness indicated the entire area of mental activity, from pre-consciousness to the highest levels of rational communicable awareness, and the problem of character depiction became central to streamof-consciousness fiction. Characters, it was claimed, would be presented more accurately and more realistically in interior monologues, and adopting a non-omniscient narrator capable of continuously shifting focalisation. The treatment of time was also a crucial issue, as the consciousness experiencing time as duration would not be properly presented to the reader in chronological narration, but rather through analepsis (flashback) and prolepsis (flashforward). In the present act of the consciousness of the Modernist novel, what was seen as past and future in the Realistic novel exists simultaneously. Symbolism was often present as it helped show how the mind establishes ‘correspondences’ through associations. The stream-of-consciousness novel is still represented as a specific genre in contemporary literature, for example in Zadie Smith’s novels, but its lasting influence on many contemporary works can be traced back to the revolutions it introduced in its treatment of time, characterisation and language.

CHECK OUT 1 List the main features and the main examples of the following fictional forms: • From the origins to 1720s • Realistic novel • Bourgeois novel, or novel of Manners • Bildungsroman, or novel of formation • Gothic novel and Gothicism • Historical novel • Social-problem novel, or novel of purpose • Modernist novel

GENRES IN TIME

Poetry

The epic poem and the mock-heroic poem

Epic poetry is a form of narrative verse of considerable length and elevated diction. Epic poetry of oral origin was recited and transmitted from generation to generation, for example the Greek Iliad and Odyssey, the Latin Aeneid; Beowulf (late 8th century) in England. Beowulf, and in general Anglo-Saxon poetry, used alliterative verse which gave poems a harsher, more guttural sound. John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) was a unique example of a poem following epic conventions but with a religious subject from the Genesis. The French medieval epics, such as the Chanson de Roland (the most popular of the Chansons De Geste), came later in comparison with those of England, Germany and Iceland, but they started the tradition of the mock-heroic poem – satires or parodies that mock common classical stereotypes of heroic literature (Luigi Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore in 1478, Matteo M. Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato in 1483, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in 1516 and later Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata in 1580). From the late 16th to the early 18th century, the epic was considered the best of all genres. In the 18th century, its narrative function passed to the novel, but the mock-heroic poem survived. Its satirical purpose made it very popular in the Augustan Age with Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock (1712). It was abandoned in the Romantic Age, with the exception of George Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1824). The revolution of language and form in the early 20th century led to a renewed interest in the epic form with the American writer Ezra Pound and his unfinished Cantos (1925). Other artists reinterpreted the form in less grandiose terms, in poetry with Thomas S. Eliot with The Waste Land (1922) and William Carlos Williams with Paterson (1946–58) and in prose with James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). The popularity of these modern works brought others to revisit the form on a new basis. Omeros (1990) by Derek Walcott went back to verse, adopting the ‘terza rima’ as the stanzaic form of the work.

Romance

The process of transformation of the romance has been so complex that in modern English the word ‘romance’ (derived from Old French romanz) can mean either a medieval narrative composition, or a story about an idyllic love affair, or even about the marvellous, i.e. strange or unexpected events and developments. In this definition, all popular genres – mysteries, horror, thrillers, science-fiction and romantic love novels themselves – are ‘romances’. Verse romances in England first appeared in the mid-14th century; the main themes were courtly love and chivalry, with adventures, supernatural encounters and events in exotic settings. Political concerns were also present; Arthurian material in particular explored disputes over political borders and territories. The first major change came in the second half of the 15th century, when romance shifted from poetry to prose in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1470), a prose reworking of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. Romance flourished, almost totally in prose, in popular literature, including love stories, mysteries and thrillers. The combination of a love story and fantastic elements is also present in some Shakespearean plays, therefore identified as romances. The subgenre that led the revolution against the Realistic novel was the Gothic novel between the 1790s and 1820s. Its Gothicism extended to mysteries, horror and romantic narratives, which have been identified as romances, i.e. ‘popular’ literature.

In Western literature, poetry began in oral form. Historically the use of verse was also extended to epic poetry and to drama, for example Elizabethan drama. Through time, some poetic forms have shifted to prose and even redefined themselves completely, others have remained stable.

Genres in time – Poetry

The ballad

The ballad as a popular form developed in the Middle Ages as part of the oral tradition of storytelling; it survived thanks to oral transmission. Composed to be sung and danced, popular ballads were highly musical, with many sound devices whose purpose was to aid memorability and add musicality to the poems. Most ballads were written in quatrains, the so-called ballad stanza (a quatrain with alternating four- and three-feet lines rhyming ABCB). By the 15th century, it was serving as a commoners’ alternative to the more formal and complex forms. By the end of the 16th century, ballad broadsides (single sheets of paper upon which poetry was printed) had spread across the English countryside and into popular culture. In the Romantic Age, a renewed interest in national and local folklore resulted in the publication of written collections of many ballads. The medieval popular or folk ballad inspired the literary ballad of the Romantics; they used this verse form to write narrative poems, for example in Germany as G.A. Bürger’s Lenore (1774) and J.W. Goethe’s Erlkönig (1782), and in England S.T. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). Themes common to both popular and literary ballads were the supernatural and tragic love. The ballad remained a popular poetic form with the Victorians, too. The most original transformation was the presence of religious themes, as seen in Christina Rossetti’s devotional poems. The association of balladry with the rediscovery of one’s roots returned to the forefront with William Butler Yeats and the Irish revival in the early 20th century. Later in the century, English folk and American blues musicians and later rock singers found the ballad structure ideal for their music; balladry has partially returned to its origins: poetry with music.

Verse satire

The great age of verse satire was the Augustan Age. Neoclassicism influenced satirists to look back on two of the main models for satire in Latin literature: the Horatian and Juvenalian. Horatian satire, named after the Roman satirist Horace (65–8 BCE), is the mildest form; its aim is to amuse so as to teach with ironic humour, wit and light-hearted mockery, avoiding negativity. Juvenalian satire originated from the Roman satirist Juvenal in the late 1st century CE; his works are characterised by irony, sarcasm, moral indignation and personal invective against individuals, governments and organisations to expose hypocrisy and moral transgressions.

GENRES IN TIME

The most common form of this Juvenalian satire is political satire, which attacks politicians and political commentators. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) was the first example of Juvenalian satire, while Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock was an example of Horatian satire.

The sonnet

The sonnet has proved to be a useful form for innovation as it is very compressed, but internally flexible, and capable of allowing a variety of themes. It developed throughout medieval Italy, with poets such as Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti writing both physical and platonic love poems, and Francesco Petrarch refining the form in Canzoniere (1336–74). Renaissance poets, such as Michelangelo, Baldassarre Castiglione, and Torquato Tasso, wrote in Italian, while the French poets Joachim du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard created the first body of sonnets in French. Although the standard format is a 14-line poem, many variations have been developed since Salvatore di Giacomo originated it in the 13th century. Four variations are the most prominent: Petrarchan, Curtail (a ten-line sonnet), Elizabethan/Shakespearean, and Miltonic. The Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet is a 14-line poem made up of three quatrains and a couplet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG), a variation on the Petrarchan sonnet which has an octave of two quatrains and a sestet of two tercets (ABAB CDCD EFE EFE). The two forms, the Elizabethan and Petrarchan, can interact in the same sonnet. In an effort to bring the sonnet back into vogue in the Puritan Age, John Milton returned to the Petrarchan sonnet; he simplified the rhyme scheme into ABBAABBA-CDCDCD, with the sestet being susceptible to change, and placed the volta, the turning point, in the middle of the seventh line, with many run-on lines. The tone is also different from the Elizabethan sonnet and more similar to John Donne’s, being more personal and reflective, though not as passionate and original as Donne’s. After Milton, the rules of the sonnet were followed less strictly, and it went out of fashion until its revival with William Wordsworth, John Keats and Percy B. Shelley. The English revival continued with the Victorian poets, who used it intensively; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti introduced female desire into sonnets, and Gerard M. Hopkins reintroduced the curtail sonnet. The popularity of the sonnet remained very high with both American and English poets, despite the battle by the Modernists against any codified form, with the poems of Wystan H. Auden, Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney, to give some of the most important examples, and innovation within tradition is widespread.

The ode

The ode was an elaborate form of verse produced by the Greek poets Alcaeus, Anacreon and Sappho (7th–6th century BCE) and made popular with Bacchylides and Pindar in the regular arrangement of strophe, antistrophe and epode, three ‘movements’ corresponding to those of the Chorus in Greek drama. The Pindaric ode – the public celebratory form – was to praise and glorify individuals, successes and victories with the help of music. The Romans Catullus, Horace, Juvenal, and Ovid got rid of the music and moved the ode in the direction of lyrical poetry; the Horatian ode developed along the same lines, its only limitation being the repetition of the same stanzaic form regularly throughout the poem. During the Renaissance, the Pindaric structure, together with other models, was revived in France, Italy and in England, and these contributed to the popularity of the form, which was fashionable with Ben Jonson and John Milton and adapted to religious themes. In the Romantic Age, poetry was an area of intense exploration, and the ode also caught the attention of Percy B. Shelley and John Keats in meditative and lyrical terms. After the Romantic Age, the ode disappeared from view until the English poet Wystan H. Auden and the American Allen Tate revived it in the early 20th century.

The dramatic monologue

Genres in time – Poetry

The dramatic monologue differs from the epic not only because of its brevity, but because, unlike the epic, it is a short presentation of one occasion. Most importantly, the epic is an expression of a national consciousness through the heroes, while in the dramatic monologue the characters are strictly individual. The dramatic elements are seen in its portrayal of individuals revealing their own motives in a flash but, unlike drama, it does not need a plot. © Casa Editrice G. Principato SpA

It was in the Victorian Age that the dramatic monologue underwent the development which entitles it to the rank of a new genre. Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning employed the form extensively, but each developed it independently from the other. In Tennyson, the spirit of the poem was that of a reflective lyrical form. Browning’s form was, on the other hand, essentially dramatic; character is revealed by turning a light upon a soul in a great crisis. In Modernism, Ezra Pound and Thomas S. Eliot were fascinated by the form. Pound’s dramatic monologues in Personae (1909) specifically follow Wilde’s theory of multiple masks, and the fragmentation of the self is exemplified in Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917). Edgar Lee Master also followed the model in the original ‘confessions’ of the dead speaking from their tombs in Spoon River Anthology (1914–15). In the 1940s and 50s, the form was still used by some poets such as Langston Hughes as an instrument of social critique until it experienced a revival in the 60s, mainly through the work of Richard Howard in America and Edwin Morgan in Scotland, who both used it to focus on the issues of communication and representation. In the present age, the dramatic monologue is experiencing another remarkable revival, but no longer as a separate verse form, but in plays and song lyrics, for example, Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising (2002). Written in response to the dramatic events of September 11th 2001, he adopts different personae, achieving a very interesting effect.

Free verse

While free verse is irregular and unmeasured by line counts and stanzas, metrical and rhythmic precision remains just as vital as in other poetic forms. In free verse, a rhyme scheme is not necessary, although rhymes may be used for emphasis; the line tends to be iambic but with a changing number of feet. Stanzas may also have a changing number of lines, make liberal use of line breaks and have unusual layouts. Diction is generally affected, with a preference for everyday language or a mixture of everyday with elevated and with none of the formal limitations in force. American literature has been particularly rich in free verse, which first appeared in the fluid verse of Walt Whitman, modelled on Bible hymns and songs, and also in Emily Dickinson’s poems. In the late 19th century, Vers Libre, a French Counter-Romanticist movement, was led by Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. It came into prominence in the experimentation of Imagism in the US, with William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings and Amy Lowell, and the term ‘free verse’ was first used in a 1915 anthology. Thomas S. Eliot was the major innovator, and the one who defined free verse as the “liberation from form”. Free verse was followed by the Beatnik poetry of the 1950s and 1960s, when Allen Ginsberg and others took centre stage.

CHECK OUT 2 List the main features and the main examples of the following poetic forms: • Epic poem and mock-heroic poem • Romance • Ballad • Verse satire • Sonnet • Ode • Dramatic monologue • Free verse

Drama

GENRES IN TIME

Drama originated in Ancient Greece, the birthplace of Western culture; Aristotle defined the genre presenting tragedy and comedy as distinct genres in dramatic theory. However, dramatic production has redefined genres.

Tragedy

The word ‘tragedy’ comes from the Greek tragodìa, formed by tràgos ‘goat’ and odé ‘song’. It meant a song sung during the sacrifice of a goat, or a sacrificial song. Tragedy derived from the poetic and religious traditions of Ancient Greece; it depicted the downfall of a noble hero or heroine, the victim of either pride, misfortune, or the will of the gods. Aeschylus is acknowledged as being its creator and Sophocles and Euripides as the other two great tragedians. The philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics (4th century BCE) claimed that the tragic hero should have a character defect or make some mistake (hamartia). The hero does not need to die at the end, but must undergo a change in fortune and achieve some revelation or recognition. When his decline and fall come, we are left with a sense of pity, and we feel the greatness of a man or woman condemned to death and ruin. Roman drama followed different staging practices from the Greek, but adaptations of Greek stories in imitation was common, as in Seneca’s revenge plays. Aristotle’s definition remained for most Elizabethan and Jacobean plays but their protagonists became overreachers, speaking the language of rhetoric and with a political dimension derived from the medieval conception of the world. The principles of the ‘three unities’ (time: the events were to take place within 24 hours; place: the setting was never to be changed; action: there was to be only one plot, without subplots) and theatrical decorum, which Humanism reintroduced to drama theory, dominated 17th-century French and Italian tragedy. English Renaissance tragedy, however, remained flexible and more open to dramatic action, with a baroque theatre of action and tragedy (murders and rapes) being very popular with Jacobean dramatists. Domestic tragedies, whose protagonists were not from the aristocracy, also appeared, thus breaking the norm that only characters of noble lineage could be protagonists. The neoclassical vogue that started with Restoration drama led to a long period of inattention to the tragedy in the particular form that Renaissance drama had developed. Near the end of the Victorian Age, the vitality of the tragicomedy enabled dramatists to adopt forms of bourgeois comedy and tragedy. Henrik Ibsen’s bourgeois tragedy introduced social drama, and redefined the tragedy because now the hero could be bourgeois and defined by circumstances. Arthur Miller’s essay Tragedy and the Common Man (1949) exemplifies the modern belief that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings, and his works All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Crucible (1953), are examples of successful modern tragedy in the US.

Comedy

The term ‘comedy’ comes from the Greek komodìa, that is kòmos ‘festival’ and odé ‘song’, and it meant a song sung during the Dionysian festivals. According to Aristotle, the protagonists were not noble and its primary concern was with men and women in society. In Ancient Greece, comedy established two main models, one more satirical and committed, the other lighter and more humorous, respectively with Aristophanes’ Old Comedy (c. 5th century BCE) and with Menander’s New Comedy (mid-4th century BCE). Menander’s comedies were subtler in psychological presentation and provided the basic model for European comedy through the 18th century. The genre further developed with Plautus in Rome; his comedies focussed mostly on daily life and average people, like the Menandrean comedy, but Plautine characters are stock types, with lecherous old men, criticising wives and bombastic soldiers. During the Middle Ages comic drama survived in medieval folk plays and festivals, in the Italian commedia dell’arte, which also benefited from the stock types of Old Comedy during the Renaissance, and in the farcical elements of miracle and morality plays. It became popular again with the imitation of Plautus and Terence in the Renaissance. William Shakespeare’s various comedies followed many of the conventions of Plautine comedies, but he experimented with the genre creating dark comedies or problem plays, with melancholy settings.

Genres in time – Drama

A shift in purpose and style came with Ben Jonson, whose comedies were realistic observations of contemporary manners and moral conventions, and didactic in intent. The Restoration comedy of French influence, instead, was satirical while the sentimental comedy promoted virtue. In the late Victorian Age drama went back to the mechanisms of New Comedy and Old Comedy with Oscar Wilde’s comedies of Manners and George B. Shaw’s problem plays (instrument for social correction, along the lines of Old Comedy but on the basis of Ibsen’s bourgeois drama).

The tragicomedy

The combining of tragedy and comedy took place at the beginning of the 17th century and was defined as a specific genre – the tragicomedy – also in Italy by Italian poet Battista Guarini in his Compendium of Tragicomic Poetry (1601). The form established itself on the English stage with Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, and despite the closure of theatres between 1642 and 1660, it continued uninterrupted at the Restoration. The tragic, which is elevated, serious, and capable of arousing pathos, could exist in the same play with the comedic, which is low, ridiculous, and capable of arousing derision, but also compassion and pity (so far reserved to tragedy). The sentimental comedy remained popular also in the Augustan Age, as it was considered to be egalitarian and perfectly suited for its didactic purpose, though the plots were still of Plautine and Terencian derivation. Only Oliver Goldsmith’s and Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedies briefly reintroduced comic gaiety to the English stage, but the sentimental play continued to dominate the English comic stage for over a century to come. At the turn of the 20th century, the sense that tragicomedy was the only adequate dramatic form for projecting the unreconciled contradictions of modern life grew, as shown in the plays of the Italian Luigi Pirandello, where the contradictory nature of experience is shown in the search for absolute answers in the middle of endless change. A similar existentialist feeling was shown in the tragicomedies and farces of the Theatre of the Absurd by Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. They employed the various forms of comedy — from tragicomedy to farce — to convey the vision of an exhausted civilisation and a chaotic world. The changing sensibilities of the 60s and 70s, with their unrest and political and social issues, led dramatists to embrace a tradition of didacticism and satire as exemplified by the movement of the Angry Young Men with John Osborne. In the 1980s and later, dramatists such as Tom Stoppard made a new, original choice. Most contemporary playwrights have rejected the political drama of the 70s and 80s: Barnes (Laughter; Red Noses), Griffiths (Comedians), Bond (Restoration) and Churchill (Cloud Nine; Serious Money), turned towards political themes and non-didactic forms, avoiding thesis comedies. This implied a departure from a polemical brand of comedy influenced by Shaw and Brecht, and characteristic of the radical drama of Edward Bond and Peter Barnes.

CHECK OUT 3 List the main features and the main examples of the following dramatic forms: • Tragedy • Comedy • Tragicomedy

YOUR TEXTS EXPLAINED YOUR TEXTS EXPLAINED

1 THE ORIGINS

(6th century-1066)

T6 VOICES 1

p. 48

The fight with Grendel

Beowulf

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The monster has silently crept into the hall and is having his human meal. What do you and the Danes hear from the outside? Silence, for a short while. And soon after that the hall shakes as if it is falling down. The sound of muscles burst apart, bones quailing and recoiling. Who has won?

Beowulf’s winning strategy

The defeat of Grendel

The monster’s point of view

In Hrothgar’s hall Beowulf doesn’t immediately confront Grendel but is silently watching his moves. The monster strikes immediately. He grabs one of the Geat warriors and devours him: he drinks his blood and tears his lumps off with his teeth. After that he turns to Beowulf who is lying on his bed. The hero has watched Grendel kill one of his comrades but he hasn’t emerged from his place because he probably wishes to maintain an element of surprise. However, before the monster seizes him with his open claws, Beowulf swiftly gets hold of his arm with a powerful hold. Grendel is taken aback by the hero’s strength: Beowulf’s handgrip in fact is so mighty that it is unlike anything Grendel has ever experienced before. The monster’s only desire is now to flee to his den but he can’t because Beowulf overpowers him and forces him to the ground. Desperate and afraid, the monster realises that he is not allowed to escape. While his strength abandons him, Grendel again longs for his cave but understands that the end is near: that has been the worst – and the last – trip he has taken to Heorot. It is interesting to note that only the monster’s point of view is presented. We do not know what Beowulf is thinking while we are informed in detail about Grendel’s astonishment when he realises that Beowulf is much stronger than him and his despair when he sees that it is impossible for him to escape to his den again. The atmosphere of the passage is grim and violent, and the reader is shocked by the description of Grendel’s brutal killing of the Geat warrior. Then, as the situation evolves and Beowulf, “mighty and canny”, dominates the scene, we are gradually involved into Grendel’s defeat. It’s the monster’s turn now to be frightened while the hero is overpowering him. Grendel’s bones quail and recoil, and he cannot escape to the place he is longing for, his den. “The captain of evil, the dread of the land, the terror-monger” is now desperate to flee while his power weakens and death is approaching.

YOUR VOICE The fight between good and evil is ending with the hero’s supremacy over the monster. Beowulf’s handgrip is so powerful that even Grendel, the monster who has terrorized Hrothgar and his people, is in turn subjugated by the hero’s strength. However, there is something in the description of the fight between the two that puzzles the reader. Why doesn’t Beowulf intervene when one of his men is devoured by the monster? How can he be so indifferent?

The origins (6th century-1066)

T7 VOICES 1

p. 50

Beowulf’s death

Beowulf

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

That was so tragic, so noble, so sad: to see my lord Beowulf burn, to collect his weapons, to hear his last words, still full of love for us, his people. But he died in honour, and that is what we live and die for: fame.

Beowulf’s last words and wishes

Beowulf’s inevitable fate: death

Fusion of pagan elements and Christian themes

Beowulf is about to die but he is not alone on his death bed. Wiglaf is beside him, a young kinsman who has helped him in the fight against the dragon. Beowulf’s last words express gratitude to the Lord who has allowed him to bequeath to his people the treasure that he found in the dragon’s den. With death imminent, the old King orders the construction of a great burial mound on the coast as a reminder of his own glory. The tumulus will loom on the horizon and the sailors navigating past that place will call it Beowulf’s Barrow. Beowulf then appoints Wiglaf as his successor passing on to him his own golden collar, the token of a glorious past to be perpetuated, together with his own war shirt and gilded helmet. This acts as a symbolic investiture, accompanied by Beowulf’s words on his inevitable fate. All the warriors of the Waegmund family, in fact, have died and the old King must now follow them accepting his destiny with resignation. The last lines are about the “furious” fire that will burn Beowulf’s pyre. His body will disappear, but the fame of his deeds will live on and his soul will survive among “the steadfast ones”. The reference to the soul has a strong Christian connotation. The fusion of pagan elements (the dragon, Beowulf’s power and material legacy, the hint at fate, the death-pyre) with Christian themes and values (gratitude, self-sacrifice, generosity, moral legacy) creates a dramatic tension that results in a sense of both sadness and tenderness for the old hero. The dying Beowulf is the emblem of values and ideals which still appeal to us today, probably because they are difficult to find in our society: courage, determination, self-sacrifice for a higher purpose, for the common good.

YOUR VOICE Beowulf has risked his life several times and he has sacrificed himself to guarantee the survival of his people. He now faces death with his usual courage, as he has faced the many trials life has forced him to deal with. His force has always resided in his patience, strength and faith. The reward for this is incomparable. Beowulf’s Barrow will “loom on the horizon … and be a reminder” for everybody. This is what heroes in the 8th century were like. What is your reaction to such a generous, heroic character? How much do today’s heroes have in common with Beowulf?

T10 The Wanderer

YOUR TEXTS EXPLAINED VOICES 1

p. 54

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

I am the anhaga, the lonely one, doomed to wander in solitude through icy waves and winter’s mists. Gone are the joyful times when the company of my lord and my friends could warm my heart! Nothing else remains. To rove alone for the rest of my days, that’s my wyrd, my inexorable fate.

The Wanderer’s lament

The theme of exile and banishment

The wanderer’s inexorable fate

An elegy laments the loss of beloved persons, places, or things. The protagonist of The Wanderer, one of the most popular elegies contained in The Exeter Book, perfectly reflects this characteristic. The main part of the elegy is the wanderer’s impressive lament for his present condition as an exiled man expressed in a tone of anguish and reminiscence of the past joys he has lost. The flow of time, the grief and isolation of exile in a harsh environment (the “icy waves”) are the most common themes of this elegy. The eardstapa (the ‘wanderer’ in Old English) is a warrior who has been banished from his land after a battle followed by the deaths of fellow kinsmen and the funeral of his lord. In complete solitude he now meditates over these losses and compares his present life to the time when, as a young man, he served his lord and feasted together with his comrades. Now the inexorability of fate (wyrd) has condemned him to ramble alone along the path of exile in a cold, inhospitable environment. The theme of exile, as physical and mental isolation from a social system, is a common denominator in the Anglo-Saxon elegy and is persistent throughout the poem. In the Anglo-Saxon world exile and banishment were methods for maintaining social order, instruments of the complex system of friendship, peace, feud, and revenge that kept tribal societies together. As such, they were crucial means for the exercise of power and authority. The elegy begins with a third-person narrator who introduces the subject of the poem, the anhanga (the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘solitary man’), the context and concludes highlighting fate’s inexorability. After that, the wanderer’s monologue begins. He laments his present situation as an exiled who wanders alone over the cold, icy sea. For many years, in vain, he has been looking for friends and a home, a “meadhall” where he could recover and find peace and warmth, because only his lord’s hall is a secure place for the banished warrior. (It is interesting to notice that the term meadhall had already been used in Beowulf by both Hrothgar and Beowulf to refer to Heorot, Hrothgar’s hall and the site of Grendel’s attacks.) On losing his lord (and his lord’s protection) the warrior becomes an outlaw: without a protector he lacks legal standing. However, the search for a new hall will probably make his journey useless, since his fate has already been written: he has no choice but to be in exile forever, with sorrow as his only companion.

YOUR VOICE As the poem develops, the Wanderer realises that his only true companion is cruel sorrow. He then decides he will no longer look back to the past. He will stop lamenting and concentrate on a spiritual escape. He will therefore look for a spiritual place where he will be able to find spiritual peace. What is this ‘place’ in your opinion?

The origins (6th century-1066)

YOUR TEXTS EXPLAINED

2 THE MIDDLE AGES (1066-1485)

T12 Lord Randal VOICES 1

p. 80

The development of Lord Randal’s tragic fate and his final will

Language and style of the ballad

Climax of the ballad

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Lord Randal and a lady full of mystery meet, and tragedy erupts. What can a poor mother do but ask one, two, three more questions? “I can tell my son is sick, mothers have a heart for that; he is not just tired, he is dying. She poisoned him, and he was the more deceived”. In the end all that is left of a young knight’s life is just livestock, gold and silver, houses and lands for his mother, sister and brother. And an everlasting curse for the femme fatale who killed him: who killed my son?

The ballad opens with two people speaking. There is no precise reference to where and when the conversation is taking place, but we can infer that the setting is a castle and that it is (late) afternoon since the man has just come back from hunting. He is tired and sick and tells his mother a strange story. The young man went hunting in the “wild wood” where he met his lover. She prepared him fried eels for dinner; his dogs and hawk ate the leftovers and died soon after. There is no more doubt: Lord Randal’s true-love wanted to kill him for some reason that the reader doesn’t know. In the end, the mother, who is now aware of her son’s destiny, asks how he intends to share his worldly goods among his family. In his will he is leaving his cows to his mother, gold and silver to his sister and his houses and lands to his brother. These presents reveal Lord Randal’s love for and attachment to his family. They also reveal that he is a rich man. There is no direct reference to his social status, but from his oral will we know that he owned cattle, gold and silver, land and houses. Once his properties have been divided, his last words are a curse for his true-love to whom he leaves “hell and fire” because he wants revenge for his death. The ballad develops through repetition of a stanza with slight modifications as the story advances, until the final revelation. The repetition of vocatives (e.g. “Lord Randal my son/my handsome young man/ mother”) is another device generally used in ballads, which were generally sung. Repetitions worked as refrains sung by a chorus, while a single voice sang the new lines. There are two main parts in the story. In the first part (stanzas 1-5) we are informed of Lord Randal’s ride, his visit to his lover and the food (fried eels) that she prepared for him. In stanza 5, we have a sneaking suspicion of what has happened when we learn that the dogs and hawk died after eating the leftovers. In the second part, what has happened is finally revealed to Lord Randal – and the audience/ readers: the young Lord has been poisoned and is going to die. This part also contains the so-called oral testament, a device typical of the folk ballad in which, through the usual repetition of questions and answers, the main character is asked what he will bequeath to various people after his death. Like most ballads, this one too has two climaxes, which introduce two moments of ‘surprise’ into the story. The first climax is at line 21 (“O I fear you are poisoned”, which is no longer a question but a statement) and is marked by a change in the structure of this and the subsequent stanzas, which all now start with “What”.The second climax instead appears in the last stanza, when we learn that Lord Randal has actually been poisoned by his true-love. YOUR VOICE Though this traditional Scottish border ballad is one of the oldest narrative poems we know, it is alive and still sung today because it deals with timeless subjects. What is there in this ballad that makes it appealing for you? Are there any ballads from contemporary songwriters that attract and intrigue you? © Casa Editrice G. Principato SpA

T13 Geordie

YOUR TEXTS EXPLAINED VOICES 1

p. 84

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

He is noble, and a thief, yes, I know, but only of the deer of the king, not of the cows of poor people. And he never hurt anyone … I just love him, and I’d give up my babies to save his life. Is not my love strong enough to save him?

The story

The characters

The woman’s defence of Geordie

The woman’s relationship to Geordie

Narrator and style

In this Scottish ballad the narrator overhears a woman crying for her man, Geordie. He is a nobleman who stole sixteen of the king’s deer and sold them in Bohenny. The woman runs to the court to plead for his freedom. The judge tells her that the man has already been condemned to death, and will be hanged by a golden chain. She ends her petition in despair. Geordie is a nobleman; he will be hanged by a golden chain that is not for ‘commoners’, and he is said to come from a royal family. The condition of the woman is not known; what the ballad emphasises is her love for him, her condition – she is expecting her third baby – and her determination. She wants to save her lover at all costs; she is willing to ride her horse despite being pregnant, and she would even give up her children for him. The woman claims that he only stole the king’s deer, not the cows of poor people. She adds that he never hurt anyone. However, the judge does not seem to consider her words valid enough and tells her that the man has already been condemned. She calls him “my Geordie”, a clear sign of affection and concern, and they have certainly been lovers as she has had two babies with him and is expecting a third. However, it is not clear whether she refers to herself when she mentions the lady he was lost to (maybe in an unhappy marriage he did not choose); if she does not mean herself, she is Geordie’s lover, and not his wife. The narrator is not involved in the story he tells. He acts as an objective impersonal reporting voice. The atmosphere is melancholic and tragic at the same time because the woman’s lament fills the ballad and she loses all hope of saving her lover after the judge’s words. Repetitions are very important in the poem. In particular, the last quatrain combines previous lines to make up a ballad stanza in the woman’s final words of acceptance of Geordie’s tragic destiny.

YOUR VOICE Geordie has won the heart of the woman and she would do anything to save him from death; but there are only a few clues about their love. Can you imagine it in full, adding details that may be coherent? Does this make their story more or less interesting?

The Middle Ages (1066-1485)

T14 General Prologue

Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales

VOICES 1

p. 90

The rebirth of man and nature in spring

Pilgrimages: the rebirth of the spiritual soul

A realistic picture of the different social classes

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

We have never seen spring before reading this, have we? This is life, not just of rain and wind, flowers and plants, birds and people, but of the spirit of man, who sets out on the journey of life to find himself, as the pilgrims found Becket, at his shrine, and others like them on the way to Canterbury. That’s the law of pilgrimages: you walk on and on and on, but there’s a goal: to find new life, for you, again.

The General Prologue opens with the image of spring, the season of rebirth for all creatures. Chaucer contrasts March, a cold wet month with its “drought” (l. 2) with April with its “sweet showers” (l. 1), the blossoming of flowers and the singing of birds. The first lines convey an image of peace, calm and harmony between man and nature. The sun has gone through the second half of the zodiac, Aries, the “Ram”. Around this time of year, inspired by the rebirth of nature, people begin to feel the desire to go on pilgrimages to seek spiritual regeneration. Pilgrimages, therefore, bring new life to the soul in the same way as April brings new life to the soil; pilgrimages represent a symbolic journey towards spiritual salvation but at the same time they also preserve their peculiar function of holiday-making and an opportunity for amusement. Many devout English pilgrims set off to visit shrines in distant holy lands, but most people choose to travel to Canterbury to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, where they thank the martyr for helping them when they were in need. From the narrator (Chaucer himself), we learn that London was the usual departure point for pilgrims. Chaucer meets his twenty-nine fellow travellers at the Tabard Inn in Southwark – a London suburb just across London Bridge – on the night before their journey to Canterbury. We can imagine that numerous company to be quite picturesque and colorful, since the pilgrims belonged to different social classes. Besides giving us some interesting information about the pilgrimage, the last lines of the text also provide a particular link between the work and its author. In fact, by allowing Chaucer to “take the way to Canterbury” with them, the “company” turns the poet into a true eyewitness and makes his narrative more realistic.

YOUR VOICE You are at Tabard Inn when Chaucer and his fellow travellers arrive. It is sunset. The air is mild, full of the perfumes and sounds of spring. Inside the inn you can smell hot soup, roasted meat, baked potatoes… Around you people of all sorts, standing or sitting at the tables. Some are talking, others are listening, a few young people are singing in a corner. Plunge into this atmosphere and imagine… Who are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? What has brought you here? What is your reaction to the group of people who have just arrived?

T15 The Wife of Bath

YOUR TEXTS EXPLAINED VOICES 1

Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales

p. 91

The Wife of Bath: a symbol of social emancipation and gender equality

Her personality

Her physical appearance

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

She is the stubborn independent woman who made money and a career; she is proud of her wealth and position, she is rich and vain, and so delightfully funny. Big hat, big hips, big list of dead husbands, big ego, everything’s big with her. The first feminist portrait in English literature by the first great realist of English literature, Chaucer. Not so bad for medieval times, right?

The Wife of Bath is a core character in The Canterbury Tales. She represents the rising middle class, since she is a merchant and cloth maker from Bath, an important centre of the weaving trade at the time. The overall image Chaucer gives of the Wife of Bath is that of a wealthy, independent, skilled, sociable and adventurous character, who is class-conscious and proud of her wealth and status. She is described as an emancipated and skilful business-woman, and for this reason some critics consider her the first feminist portrait in English literature. In presenting her, Chaucer reveals several aspects of her personality, job, life and social condition and comments with mild irony on her appearance and behaviour. The first thing we learn about her is her skill at weaving, a profession in which she is much better than her colleagues in Belgium in Ypres and Ghent. She is also a very religious woman. Every Sunday she goes to mass but gets angry when other believers precede her to the altar for the offering. This fact reveals that mass is a social rather than a religious event for her. She pays extreme attention to her clothes, which reflects her vanity. She wears fine quality heavy “headkerchiefs” and expensive shoes with scarlet red stockings. Scarlet red is the colour of passion and anger and Chaucer associates the colour with her temper: she gets angry easily but she also has a deep sensuality. Evidence of this is the fact that she has been married five times and is experienced in love affairs (she knows “the remedies of love”). The Wife is lively and likes chatting to people, too. She has travelled widely, on pilgrimages through Europe (to Rome, Boulogne, Cologne and to Santiago in Spain) and to Jerusalem. As for her physical appearance, Chaucer tells us that she is “gap-toothed” and also a bit deaf which, as he says, “was a pity”. She is an expert horse rider and on the pilgrimage to Canterbury she wears a large mantle, a wimple and over it a hat that is broader than a shield. With this simile, Chaucer adds one more detail to the description of the character. Her skill, her temper, her many husbands and lovers, the clothes and the colours she wears and the places she has been to give us a detailed portrait of this woman, who is not a stereotype but a full human being with her qualities and defects. The rhyme scheme is that of a couplet: the two lines rhyming together (following the pattern AABB) give the narrative a particular rhythm that, at times, resembles the sound of the galloping of the Wife’s ride towards Canterbury.

YOUR VOICE Chaucer’s description of the Wife of Bath is not old-fashioned, rather it seems tailor-made for today’s readers. Chaucer chooses a woman to best represent the newly-born middle class in a society that was on the brink of great transformation, which would bring about the end of the Middle Ages and the feudal system. Our world too is undergoing enormous changes. What aspects of today’s society are portrayed in this character?

The Middle Ages (1066-1485)