Tanmayee Yenumula: Class Notes (1.24.11-2.4.11)

Medievalism and Allegory
- Medieval Literature: refers to texts written during Europe's "Middle Ages" (Circa. 500-1500 AD)

• Many texts during this time period were not attributed to a specific author, especially the older they became
• Connection: British Literature classes last year spent the majority of the year focusing on Middle Age text such as Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, John Donne poems, The Rape of the Lock, and many more.

- Allegory: a type of extended metaphor in which objects and persons within a text represent meanings that lie outside the text

• In contrast to symbolism, which is more ambiguous and represents a rich texture of possible meanings, an allegory is a strict one-to-one correspondence between the representer and the represented
• Allegories also create a unified message about the represented ideas, persons, events, etc.

- Medieval Allegory: a literary technique so prominent during the Middle Ages that it is something of a hallmark of Medieval literature

• Allegorical figures were commonly personified as abstract qualities such as envy, truth, or gluttony, or personified such as death...and were commonly named as such
• An allegory is usually concerned with "important" matters- the meaning of life and death, and the route to salvation (or damnation)- but it was also sometimes used for satirical purposes

- Everyman: the main character who represents all of humankind

• In the allegorical sense, an Everyman figure in the modern texts is where the character is unnamed or given vague and general personal characteristics, especially when the setting seems somehow "mythic" or has a fairytale quality or is otherwise somehow "outside" of time

- Divine Comedy: an epic poem written by Dante Alghieri between 1308 and 1321; an allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife

• The poem is still widely read, as it is considered to be both emblematic of the medieval worldview and one of the greatest works of Western literature

^^These notes were taken from the Medievalism and Allegory Lecture^^
Everyman

• Best surviving example of the type of Medieval drama known as the morality play
• The moralities employed allegory to dramatize the moral struggle Christianity envisions universal in every individual
• Brief Plot Summary: A complacent Everyman is informed by Death of his approaching end. The play then goes on to show the hero's progressions from despair and fear of death to a "Christian resignation that is the prelude to redemption".
• The play makes the grim point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given
• Connection: The Everyman story reminds me about the tales of Beetle and the Bard and the story of the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, of course!). The third brother had hidden from death from a long time but ultimately resigned himself to death as he parted with the cloak and "left with Death as though they were the best of friends". 

^^These notes were taken from the Everyman worksheet^^
Why Dante? Who Cares?
- It has been argued that Dante's Divine Comedy is not simply a fictional depiction of hell, purgatory, and heaven from Dante's personal point of view; it is also an allegorical depiction of the Western cultural mind
- Background:

• It is a three-part epic (consisting of Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso)
• Written in terza rima: an interlocked series of rhymed lines in sets of three and then finished in a couplet

- Plot:

• On the Thursday before Good Friday, Dante ("The Pilgrim") travels between hell, heaven, and purgatory
• Dante is guided through the Hell and Purgatory by poet Virgil and through Heaven by his dream woman, Beatrice
• At the end of his journey, Dante sees God who is embodied by three equal circles of light, "three in color, one is circumference", in a poetic reference to the Holy Trinity

- Connection to the Western Mind

• Dominance of the circle as a symbolic form: 
• Western culture values the circle as a symbol of ordered and eternal universe
• With no beginning or end, it is a highly regular and symmetrical shape, and has a clearly defined center point
• The "center point" is a ideal place to conceive as "God's realm"- the hub of his power, equidistant from all other points in the circle
• The Great Chain of Being:
• In middle ages, relative distance to god was everything for philosophers
• Consists of co-centric circles with different radii (to symbolize how close to God)

^^ These notes were taken from the Why Dante? Who Cares? worksheet^^

Archetypal and Mythological Criticism

- Archetype v Myth

• An Archetype: can be a plot, a character, a setting, a symbolic object, or any element of fiction that we see repeated over and over with its core meaning intact
• A Myth: a complete story, of ten believed to be true by cultural insiders but false by cultural outsiders

- People Important to Archetypal and Mythological Criticism

• James Frazer
• Carl Jung
• Joseph Campbell
• Northrop Frye

- Narrative Pattern: A common, culturally learned, expected sequence of events
- Romance

• A story that depicts a hero overcoming obstacles on his way to accomplish a socially desirable goal
• Confirms the social order and man's place in it
• Most popular in ancient times through the early Middle Ages

- Tragedy

• A narrative pattern that involves the movement from a desirable world into an undesirable world
• Tragic hero is a "better-than-average" man and, we can examine the nature of the particular society he leads, through his actions
• Often takes place in the realm of fate
• Most popular during Renaissance

- Comedy

• A narrative pattern that involves the movement from an undesirable world into a desirable world
• Comic hero is often an average man through whom we can examine questions about the place of the individual in society and what is "natural" to humankind
• Often take place in the realm of fortune
• Dominant form in 18th and 19th centuries

- Irony

• Structural concept; "Anti-Romance"
• Negates social order, depicting society descending into tyranny and disorder and postulating a meaningless world
• Less-than-average hero
• Dominant from late 19th century through present

^^ These notes were taken from the Archetypal and Mythological Criticism Lecture Summary worksheet^^

The Novel

- Novel: a fictional prose narrative of considerable length (usually between 30,000 and 100,000 words) and complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience
- Many types of novels (see worksheet for the many types)

^^These notes were taken from the Novel and What Makes it a Novel? worksheets^^

Literary Terms

• Well, this is not as important because you should all be studying vocabulary terms on your own. ;D
• But, the terms that you DO need to know are as follows:
• Anaphora
• Antistrophe
• Polysyndeton
• Alliteration
• Assonance
• Consonance
• Antithesis
• Chiasmus