Medieval Lyrics

1
Medieval Lyrics

• Great poetic diversity
• Greek lyrics sung to lyre
• Roman lyrics read silently
• Medieval lyrics performative and public
• Diverse vernacular traditions from various
  cultures
• Diverse poetic styles

2
Medieval Lyrics

• Common themes
• Love/Courtly Love
• Religion
• Autobiography
• Rise and fall of cultures
• Courtly love presented romantic love, social
  manners, and mode of existence
• Relation between physical and spiritual love
• Psychology of love

3
Courtly Love

• Formal and conventional system of love
  represented throughout medieval tales and verse
• Doctrine of heterosexual love
• Elaborate system of manners
• Concerned with relations of aristocratic lovers
• Troubadourscredited with establishing the
  conventions of courtly love in Provençal
  (Southern France)

4
Courtly Love

• Physical love shown to have erotic and spiritual
  qualities
• Spiritual love upheld as noblest earthly passion
• Courtly lover idealizes and idolizes beloved
• Subjects himself to her discretions and attitudes
• Often scandalous love of bachelor for married
  woman

5
Courtly Love

• Lover suffers agoniesphysical and spiritual
  sickness
• Often a capricious woman
• Often alternative deceptive and dangerous women
• Male lover remains loyal
• Manifests such loyalty by completing challenges,
  performing tasks, fighting battles, and setting
  out on quests

6
Courtly Love

• As much about social manners and modes of
  behavior as it is about love
• Highly stylized and structured
• Becomes influential on develop of sonnets
• Popularized in England through Arthurian material
  translated and adapted

7
Poetic Terminology

• Allusionreference in literary text that lacks
  definitive and specific identification
• Assonanceform of alliteration in which similar
  vowel sound is repeated usually in stressed
  syllables
• Consonanceform of alliteration in which there is
  a repetition of pattern of two or more consonant
  sounds with change in intervening vowel

8
Poetic Terminology

• Cacophonyalso known as dissonancedenotes
  language that is harsh, rough, and unmusical
• Euphonydenotes language that strikes the ear as
  smooth, pleasant, and musical
• Conceitstriking parallel between ostensibly
  disparate things, scenarios, or possibilities
  usually with elaborate development

9
Poetic Terminology

• Homonymsplay on words that turn on identical
  sound
• Ironyartfully-produced meaning that is different
  from intended or expected meaning
• Verbal Ironyexpression in which implied meaning
  differs notably from that which is apparently
  expressed

10
Poetic Terminology

• Sarcasmnot the same as irony exaggerated and
  often ridiculing use of apparent laudation for
  criticism
• Socratic Ironybased upon Socrates common
  performance of ignorance and seeming willingness
  to hear others views views of others inevitably
  are exposed as faulty

11
Poetic Terminology

• Dramatic Ironysituational irony
• within narrative, audience or reader shares
  authors knowledge of events or future
• character remains ignorant character behaves in
  manner that we know is incorrect
• character may also anticipate outcome in way
  unintentionally

12
Poetic Terminology

• Meterrecognizable rhythm of structured stresses
  one way to mark verse from prose
• Personificationform of figurative language in
  which either inanimate object or abstract concept
  is presented as endowed with life or human
  qualities or emotions

13
Walahfrid Strabo Elegy on Reichenau

• Elegyinitially referred to elegiac meter
  becomes formal lament for the death of particular
  person usually provides consolation follows
  conventions
• Latin
• Invokes muse
• Elegy on monastery on lake island on Swiss/German
  border
• Lament for pain

14
Walahfrid Strabo Elegy on Reichenau

• Harassed from land of fathers because of penury
• Seeks wisdom
• Leaves homeland in exile
• No teacher or guide
• Cold winter
• Cold bed
• Wisdom would warm him
• If only older monk were there to guide him

15
Walahfrid Strabo Elegy on Reichenau

• Tears for happiness of Reicheneau from long ago
• Prays that island will long serve as his mother
• Foundations of island firm, despite being
  immersed in water
• Always recalling the happiness of the isaldn
• Prays that island will flourish
• Prays that he may return
• Asks Christ for redemption

16
Notker Balbulus, A Hymn to Holy Women

• Hymnsong that expresses divine admiration or
  religious sentiments intended for use in
  religious services
• Latin
• Cross as ladder and stake in dragon
• Dragon at foot of ladder
• Cant climb 1st wrung without being torn
• Ascent of ladder stopped by devil
• Young radiant man at top
• Ladder of Christ made free for holy women

17
Notker Balbulus, A Hymn to Holy Women

• Women can now reach top
• Questions worth of Devils seduction of Eve
• Christ born of virgin
• Now girls defeat Devil
• Girls now avenge Eve
• Women as heroes for spurring on sons

18
Anonymous, The Ruin

• Anglo-Saxon
• Marvelous wall-stonesmashed
• Decaying ruins
• Master builder dead
• Recalls glorious civilization
• Ruins fall where once was proud civilization
• Elegant stone halls with bathsKingly

19
Anonymous, Song of Summer

• Latin
• Woodlands alive
• Catalogue of birds
• Birds everywhere celebrate songs of summer
• Bee as ideal of chastity
• Only matched by Virgin

20
Abu-L-Hasan Ibn Al-Qabturnuh, In Battle

• Arabic
• Recalled beloved in battle
• Passion of war compared to passion of bodily love
• Lanes imagined as body of beloved
• Lover goes toward lances

21
Hildegard of Bingen, A Hymn to St. Maximinus

• Latin
• Maximinus was patron of Benedictine nuns at Trier
• Dove peers in window
• Balm rains down from Maximinus
• With sun, purest heart blooms
• Maximinus compared to architectural masterpiece

22
Hildegard of Bingen, A Hymn to St. Maximinus

• Magnificent architecht
• Calls Maximinus mountain and valley
• Brave and gentle
• Max continues to plead cause of his people

23
The Archpoet, His Confession

• Latin
• Asks us to hear declaration
• A fool
• Wanders aroundnot tied to anything
• Finds depravity
• Follows bidding of Venus
• Young and unregretting

24
The Archpoet, His Confession

• Aims to save skin since soul is dead
• Dies sweet death
• Courts young woman
• Wants her to join him to go to Pavia
• No road in Pavia leads to Chastity
• Gambler
• Will never scorn tavern
• Hopes to die in tavern

25
The Archpoet, His Confession

• Battle between Apollo and Dionysus in writing
  poetry
• Can only write poetry with food and drink
• Better wine, better poetry
• Let the sinless cast 1st stone

26
Rabbi Ephraim Ben Jacob, The Sacrifice of Isaac

• Hebrew
• Alternative account of Abrahams attempted
  sacrifice
• To recall fathers names
• Recalls divine request for sacrifice
• Ishmaels taunting of Isaac
• Prepares Isaac for sacrifice
• Abraham binds Isaac

27
Rabbi Ephraim Ben Jacob, The Sacrifice of Isaac

• Isaac and Abraham embrace
• Slaughters son
• Resurrecting dew
• Abraham prepares to slaughter him again
• Angels ask Abraham to take pity on Isaac
• Taken to Eden
• Free of guilt

28
Rabbi Ephraim Ben Jacob, The Sacrifice of Isaac

• Lord now offers ram for sacrifice
• Abraham now sacrifices ram
• Blessing of Temple site
• Sacrifice to now save families from disaster
• Asks God to remember and fulfill promises made to
  Abraham

29
Bertran de Born, In Praise of War

• Provençal
• Loves EasterSpring
• Great joy also when knights go to war
• Great pleasure in seeing war
• Pleased when attack beingsled by lord
• Men gain worth by fighting and being fought

30
Bertran de Born, In Praise of War

• Urges men to be proud of fighting
• Win more worth dead than alive
• Savors sights of war
• Calls leaders to go to war

31
Heinrich von Morungen, The Wound of Love

• German
• Man wounded by womanto mortal core
• Mans great desire for woman
• Commends his lips to steal kiss
• Now hates her rose-red lips
• Still troubled by her refusal
• Would rather burn in hell than keep serving this
  woman

32
Arnaut Daniel, The Art of Love

• Provençal
• Becomes better man each day by serving noblest
  lady
• Pays for masses for her
• Has no defense against her love
• Fears he may lose her by loving her too well
• Doesnt want empire of Rome
• Needs to be cured with kiss or he will die and go
  to hell
• Needs kiss by New Years Day
• Identifies himself at end

33
Meir Halevi Abulafia, A Letter from the Grave

• Hebrew
• Written upon death of his sister
• Writes to father in name of sister
• Doesnt want to overwhelm her father with sorrow
• Tells father she is now touched by hand of God
• Imagines eschatological reunion with father
• Suggest God has made her father cry

34
Hadewijch of Brabant, The Cult of Love

• Flemish
• Birds long silent
• Would sing again if summer came
• Laments loveweighs us down
• Relies upon mighty lovers
• Love can teach lovers by love

35
Hadewijch of Brabant, The Cult of Love

• Carpe diem componenturges us to aspire to cult
  of love
• Carpe diemseize the daycommon literary motif
  in lyric poetry in which speaker urges auditor
  (often a virgin) to make the most of present
  pleasures
• Speaker rides on when help/companion comes
• Dashed down--pain

36
Alexander the Wild, Strawberry Picking

• German
• Long ago, when we were children
• Once found violets where cattle now leap for
  flies
• Used to compare pretty girls
• Time goes by
• Used to search for strawberries
• Forester told them to go home

37
Alexander the Wild, Strawberry Picking

• Forester told them to go home
• Shepherd told them forest was full of snakes
• Must get out of forest or will lose joy
• Allusion to 5 foolish virginsloitered in
  meadowlands

38
Anonymous, Aubade

• French
• Aubadeearly morning song that usually relates
  urgent request to a beloved to awaken
• Orchard scene
• Lady holds lover
• Watcher announces dawn
• Daybreak comes too soon
• Defies jealous husband
• To create new love sports

39
Christine de Pizan, Alone in Martyrdom

• French
• Left alone in martyrdom in desert of this world
  by lover--dead
• Martyr of what?
• Leaves beloved in grief
• Lived secure with lover since childhood
• Left in great distress
• To bewail lovers death forever

40
Anonymous, Lament of the Virgin

• Of all women ever . . .
• Addresses to all women
• Dear son dead
• Picks out thorns from dead son
• Holds dead son
• Identifies wounds
• Hands suffered for their sons
• Great holes in sons feet

41
Anonymous, Lament of the Virgin

• Virgin now tells women to think of her son when
  they worry about their children
• Her son sends young their sons fortune and health
• Tells women not to weep for their children
• Weep for it
• Virgins son would again bleed for your love
• Virgins son will bring you to bliss

42
Other Poetic Genres

• Balladnarrative song with history of oral
  transmission
• Broadside balladmedieval ballad that was printed
  on single side of a broadside usually dealt with
  current events or person
• Dirgeverse-based expression of sorrow
  memorializing persons death shorter than formal
  elegy usually to be sung

43
Other Poetic Genres

• Doggereldenotes rough and inconsistent verse
  usually marks inept poet but can be intentional
  for satiric or comic purposes
• Epithalamionpoem that memorializes and
  celebrates a marriage
• Jeremiad--text that recounts and explains sorrows
  and troubles of an era as just penalty for social
  and moral evils maintains hope for happier and
  more just future

44
Other Poetic Genres

• Light Versegreat diversity of poetic texts that
  depend upon ordinary speaking voices and simple
  informal manner to treat subjects lightly
  defined by tone of the verse
• Limerick5 line light verse poem that rhymes
  aabba can be satiric, bawdy, or ceremonial and
  decorous
• Odeextended lyric with serious subject and
  formal structured style

45
Other Poetic Genres

• Pastoral Elegyconventional elegy that employs
  pastoral machinery (e.g. shepherds, rural fields)
  to emphasize natures complicity in sorrow and
  role in providing consolation