Placeholder Image

字幕列表 影片播放

  • welcome to lecture 8

  • for English 250 this is on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  • I've entitled this context beginnings. it's hard to date exactly

  • the time of writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  • your text will tell you somewhere around 1360

  • I think that's probably a fairly good date, it is part of a tradition

  • something called the alliterative revival

  • the alliterative revival,

  • old English literature was written

  • in half lines so that the controlling

  • consonant sound across the entire line of poetry will be the same

  • so if say for example a G that shows up in one word

  • the poet will try to use words that have G's throughout or

  • R's or S's or T's, something like that. That tradition

  • in writing it fell out of favor in certain parts of England

  • but in the part of England the southwest part of England

  • where Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written

  • it continued so we call that and poems

  • of its type using this particular verse form, works of the

  • alliterative revival. We haven't talked much about

  • manuscripts, Beowulf exists in a single manuscript for us today

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exists in a single manuscript

  • along with several other poems and the other poems

  • that are included in the main script probably tell something about

  • the reception of the poem, perhaps the writer of the poem

  • and how we might interpret it.

  • The first poem that I have listed here for you is a poem entitled Pearl.

  • Pearl is a poem up religious consolation in the Christian tradition

  • the speaker in the poem has a

  • young daughter whose name is Pearl who has died and he's coming to terms with

  • that death, that loss which you can understand

  • he sees her on the other side she reminds him

  • of important bits of scripture that interestingly enough often wind up as

  • part of

  • funeral services today as a kind of consolation

  • at the end of the poem he is convinced that she is

  • okay where she is, it's a poem of Christian consolation

  • or the death of an infant. Infant mortality was very high in the middle ages

  • Patience is a retelling of

  • the Jonah story from the work of and Jonah in the Hebrew Bible

  • or Old Testament. A very interesting and

  • colorful retelling the story fairly close to a biblical paraphrase there are a

  • couple unusual things

  • the writer's obviously interested in Noah's

  • no I'm sorry Johna's journey to

  • Nineveh, and there's a great deal of attention to

  • boat rigging's and that sort of thing they tell us that our poet was interested in

  • sailing and navigation. Purity

  • is a collection of biblical exampla particularly from the book of Daniel

  • The Feast of Belshazzar dealing with temple

  • ornaments and ritual practices

  • the notion that purity was something

  • which in order to be acceptable there was both an external and an internal

  • quality

  • associated with it. So what you hear with those three is

  • this is a poem a manuscript

  • with religious poems which leads us to an interesting question

  • how on earth is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the midst of these?

  • Because Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is

  • a romance. Romance

  • is not about love it is about the concept of adventure

  • keep that in mind, it's not about love

  • it's about adventure, it's the world nights

  • it's the world of ladies its the world court splendor

  • it's the world of quests and of course the quests are asscoiated with that adventure

  • in this segment of our course we will look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  • and we will also look at the Wife of Bath's tale both

  • of which are medieval romances

  • the tradition of course is French in origin

  • this particular romance puts a particular

  • virtue on trial

  • I want to look at that for a minute I've given you a definition

  • you want to remember this one "courtesy"

  • courtesy we think today about courtesy as essentially

  • holding the door for someone else, saying excuse me I didn't mean to

  • cut in front of you in line, that sort of thing for the Middle Ages courtesy

  • particularly among the knightly classes

  • meant something like this " it's a traditional speech in action

  • in which the person resigns his or her will

  • over to another person" think about that

  • so I will do something because you want me to do it

  • I might not want to do it myself but out a deferrance to you

  • I will do it now if you're thinking in terms of ethical

  • considerations you realize very quickly

  • that that can get us into a bit of hot water really fast

  • we're going to watch Sir Gawain in, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  • tread lightly among

  • his various levels of being courteous to

  • the knight of the castle and the knight's wife.

  • and we will look at that in some detail

  • I want to think about Arthur's Court first of all

  • at the opening of the poem and this begins in your text on page 186

  • the poem is divided into something called fits

  • section 1 section 2 section 3 section 4

  • is certainly the way to think about that. Were at the Christmas season

  • so there's been feasting going on and by the way the feasting has been going

  • on for 15 days, a fortnight

  • is 2 weeks and one day would be 15 days.

  • so these people really do know how to live it up

  • the twelve days of Christmas got extended as it were

  • everybody it Arthur's Court

  • is spoken of in superlatives, there are

  • are the most chivalrous knights

  • the most wonderful ladies in the world this is indeed the world of splendor

  • but there something very unusual about this

  • we might expect Arthur

  • to be this sort of giant of a figure

  • but indeed in the poem he is represented in some ways being

  • rather boyish

  • are and in fact when our

  • green knight arrives he is going to insult

  • those sitting in the court and essentially say that they're just a

  • bunch of boys

  • one thing to remember about this initial feast that we have in this is on page 188

  • we will look in class at some very detailed descriptions in this poem, this

  • poem

  • is very rich in detail and

  • an introductory lecture simply can't cover the entire range of possibilities, but

  • more less to set out a way that you can think about it.

  • Notice the seating description

  • beginning on page 188 and this begins at

  • line 109 "Good sir Gawain is seated by

  • Guinevere and at Arthur's other side

  • sits Agravain a la dure main on the other side sits, both the king’s sister-sons and full sure knights;

  • Bishop Baldwin above, he begins the table, and Ywain, Urien’s son, ate alongside him.

  • notice everybody has a certain spot

  • and you've got to notice in this one Bishop Baldwin

  • has the most important seat so our representative of the church

  • at the feast has the most important seat, even more than that of Arthur

  • by the way Arthur has not taken his seat yet because he is waiting

  • to hear an adventure little does he know that he's going to see one

  • what do you make in this green knight?

  • green his horse is green,

  • and of course there's this gold embroidered thread

  • that runs around the garments that he wears

  • he laughs a lot, in fact laughter is very important in the poem.

  • Laughter is an interesting emotion once you began to think about it

  • but let's think about this green knight

  • what would green represent? all colors have traditional associations with them

  • green for a medieval world

  • we are of course in the middle of winter so green showing up at that particular point

  • indicates the possibility of

  • maybe an early spring or the renewal of life

  • in fact in in the Eastern Church

  • the celebration of what is traditionally called old Christmas

  • maybe as late as January the 7th with the idea that

  • if you look under logs you already see life

  • bursting forth from the ground, so those notions

  • even during the holiday season of the renewal of nature,

  • so in some ways he's associated with renewal of

  • nature. Green is also associated with another thing however

  • for the medieval world its also associated with evil and the demonic.

  • no wonder no one wants to take on

  • his challenge but there's also another important association with the color

  • green

  • that is the concept of contemplation reading a lot of the

  • medieval mystical texts or text that

  • tell you how you can become a mystic

  • Walter Hilton's scale of perfection, other works

  • the victirnes. you find that green is associated with contemplation

  • the notion that in contemplating the very color itself

  • you were able to think about even the very depths of your own soul

  • and your own situation that's going to become very important

  • for Sir Gawain in the last part of our poem

  • no one wants to take the challenge, the challenge

  • come forward chop off my head and a year hence

  • you come to my place and

  • I'll chop off your head, well that doesn't quite sound like a game

  • it sounds like indeed once it happens it's over

  • well indeed he continues to taunt

  • around line 280 was that reference that I meant with regard to

  • he is insulting the manhood of those at Arthur's Court

  • something is unusual here though Gawain steps forward

  • amidst all the laughter that would that would have grieved for Arthur himself.

  • he says that he is the weakest and feeblest of the Warriors at line 354

  • and then you're asking yourself is this simply

  • a humility toe post a kind of thing

  • or you may have friends who say you know I'm not very good at playing the guitar

  • you hand them your guitar and you know you get a world-class performance

  • it could be that kind of humility to oppose, whatever it is

  • Gawain is going to become the representative of Arthur's Court

  • will he stand the challenge? can he stand the challenge?

  • and how will he stand challenge?

  • sure enough he chops off the Knights head

  • but there's an interesting detail that the poem notes

  • that the knight picks up the head and turns the head

  • so that will be facing Guinevere

  • mmm keep that in mind and of course he reminds

  • Gawain that he is to meet him on

  • New Years Day a year hence

  • part 2 of the poem Arthur is wondering what's going on here

  • but he doesn't say anything, line 467

  • he doesn't say anything.

  • in fit 2 the year passes very quickly and

  • Gawain is leaving on a religious holiday

  • November the 1st typically refers to as All Saints Day

  • for the beginning of his activity he travels around through the area of Wales

  • Christmas Eve comes and being a good

  • medieval Christian he knows that he needs

  • to receive the Eucharist

  • the mass for Christmas

  • and he prays that he will find a

  • castle that will provide him with a place to stay

  • and he's going to stay here for several days, something is going to happen

  • a series is going to fall in place whereby

  • he is going to

  • accecpt a challenge from the knight

  • of the castle, that they will exchange winnings

  • whenever the knight wins in his quests

  • he will exchange with Gawain in the evening and Gawain will exchange

  • whatever he wins at the castle

  • doesn't seem like it would be very much in exchange does it?

  • stay tuned we will find out.

welcome to lecture 8

字幕與單字

單字即點即查 點擊單字可以查詢單字解釋

B1 中級 美國腔

Lecture8 YouTube EdX (Lecture8 YouTube EdX)

  • 14 2
    Chia-Yin Huang 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
影片單字