A glance at literature through time, history, and the human condition
If a class were given the assignment to read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, they would discover how gifted Chaucer was in the art of social commenting. After reading the tales, the class would now have knowledge on the inner workings of a medieval society. However, if students were to read the Canterbury Tales just for pure entertainment, they would be neglecting to understand why Chaucer was imparting this knowledge through his texts. Literature, as a whole, is a main part of our cultural make up. Through literature we are able to view our customs and traditions in many different ways. Some words that can help emphasize the way in which literature shapes culture are words
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like instructive, magnificent, entertaining, heartbreaking or calamitous. History is a central part of literature because through historical context we are able to get a sense of the political atmosphere, the people that lived in that particular time through the author, and how the framework of society worked during those times. The claim brought out through historicism is one that could be discussed through lengthy discourse. Plain and simple, the claim states that literature is merely a result of its time, and that the interpretation of its content is only learned through inserting that piece of literature around other works of that same time period. In Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest we are able see that just because something was written in a specific point in history does not mean that the themes are not applicable in today’s society. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf makes a statement that women need two things in order to become writers.
Why, out of all things needed in order to write, were these two things relevant? Woolf had a problem with the way men and women were treated when it came to money. Statements such as, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,” support the claims she made about simply dining.
The food that they ate at the university was not a scrumptious women’s dinner that was served to them, but rather dull and not tasty. The food that was provided demonstrates how much money the colleges were bringing in. Basically, the meals showed how the male colleges are so wealthy while women’s colleges are so poor. The investment in men was so clear, and she makes this discovery rather quickly. If women were given the same amount of importance for their schooling, they would excel in whatever profession they were in due to funding. If women are just to given scraps to play with, they will only produce
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scraps. Woolf also gives an important account of the time she went to the British Museum that is located in London. While perusing through the books, she realized that men wrote the books written about women. She saw this as problematic considering there were no books about men written by women. She also observed that the books written about women were angrily written. One could wonder how these men wrote about a topic they probably had little insight on. Throughout time, women have stood as the image of inferior gender in society. Perhaps the reason the men wrote with such disdain was so they could continue claiming the position of higher rank. In reading about a friendship between two women, stumbled upon the sentence “Chloe liked Olivia.” As we can see, this sentence gave no depth or insight, but rather describes to the reader without any elaboration of the friendship these two women have. Men wrote women in such a way because they did not have the proper insight needed for such discussions. Women in literature were seen as just an accessory men needed to propel their writings. In today’s society, the fact that women are viewed as inferior is just an outdated, antiquated, and certainly archaic form of thinking.
The light that Virginia Woolf shed not only on women in literature in 1929, but on women’s equality as a whole, has finally paid off. Throughout the decades succeeding her book, women have been climbing their way up the social ladder inch by inch. The historical meaning of A Room of One’s Own started off as this almost plea for a woman’s voice to be heard. Though women have the same rights as men, are they suddenly seen as the same, or are there times where the word “equality” just becomes a social appearance? This theme of wanting to be heard, and women’s equality still resonates with the gender today. Women can look back and realize how far they have come. Women are now heard through mediums such magazines, books, poems, novels, lectures, and essays to name a few. Women are able to understand this text that Woolf gave them and use it as a tool to remember that power in literature comes great responsibility. The responsibility here is to maintain, progress, and preserve the important role women play in society by means of educating men. Women should also not think of themselves, in this generation, as superior to men just because they are now regarded in the same manner. “All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of
human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot.” Woolf’s statement here confirms that there is no need for the two sexes to be different, because ultimately we are all trying to achieve the same goal: understanding. Upon thinking about the ways in which we are essentially different from our predecessors, I found Oscar Wilde’s satire, The Importance of Being Earnest, to be applicable in the way in which we are able to reflect on the world that once was. This play satirizes life in the Victorian era. Wilde paints a picture of how every day life for the people like Worthing or Algernon, two men who create double lives for themselves, are just trivial. For example, at the beginning of the play we are introduced to both of these men. They have a discussion on whether or not a cigarette case does in fact belong to Worthing or not. These types of exchanges showed how Wilde viewed the people in his time period to be so focused on the insignificant things in life. Another example of the nonsense that Wilde wanted to point out was when, in the play, the character Cecily was complaining about her education. She hated to study though she had nothing better to do with her time. This showed how though these high class people were looked at as gods, they actually didn’t care to take the opportunities given to them, and that gossip and love interest were all they truly cared for. Looking back at the historical context of written works, we are able to see how not much of what Oscar Wilde wrote has differed through time. The life of luxury and triviality he satirized in his play is still applicable in today’s society. In our generation, we are constantly put in front of the displays of the media. Every time we turn on the T.V., the life of the rich and famous are right in front of our faces. Celebrities like the Kardashians, who have no talent and spend their time complaining about the insignificant things in life, are comparable to the certain exchanges Worthing and Algernon acted out in Wilde’s play. Things like the birth of a celebrity tends to be national news, the makeup a certain actress wears is now something that is coveted by millions of girls all over the world, and not to mention that men and women are willing to change their appearance to resemble those they idolize. So we ask ourselves, “are we able to fully understand the meaning behind such irony and satire, though it was written so long ago?” The simple, less complicated answer is yes. We can see that though the culture has changed, the human condition has not. These people live for the sake of living and prove that these historical texts are able to transcend through time. There will always be those groups of people who are better off than others and the people who trivialize the simple things in life. We are able to reflect on literatures historical contexts, and understand its fundamental meanings because we are still living in those days. In reference to The Importance of Being Earnest, we are able to reflect on how greed and vanity are still a main part of the human condition in our era. Each time period in history has significant and impacting literature that leaves a mark on its contemporaries. Nonetheless, significant literature affects not just its own time period but also many more to come. Though our lives in 2015 are fundamentally different than Woolf’s or Wilde’s, we look back and consider what they were writing about. Woolf was concerned with how the treatment of women in literature was viewed in her time. She observed how the women were written about, and how the women of her time were not given the same rights men had in order to express themselves freely. As we reflect on her writings, we are able to see that the times are not different. We are able to understand the struggle she went through, but also celebrate the fact that women now have the same opportunities as men to be heard through the written word. Being able to compare the past with the present helps readers comprehend what the writers were trying to convey. Another example in which we have the capacity to understand what life and literature was like in the past was through Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. He draws a portrait to show how triviality in the form of greed, pride, and vanity, affected the people in the era in which he lived. As readers, it helps us to reflect on our lives today. Though we aren’t the same people that lived through these time periods, we can always draw similarities as we reflect on our own day and age.
In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer fully explicates the cultural standard known as curteisye through satire. In the fourteenth century curteisye embodied sophistication and an education in French international culture. The legends of chilvalric knights, conversing in the language of courtly love, matured during this later medieval period. Chaucer himself matured in the King's Court, and he reveled in his cultural status, but he also retained an anecdotal humor about curteisye. One must only peruse his Tales to discern these sentiments. In the General Prologue, he meticulously describes the Prioress, satirically examining her impeccable table manners. In the Miller's Tale Chaucer juxtaposes courtly love with animalistic lust, and in various other instances he mentions curteisye, or at least alludes to it, with characteristic Chaucerian irony. These numerous references provide the reader with a remarkably rich image of the culture and class structure of late fourteenth century England.
In the predominantly male worlds of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh (Book I)”, the women’s voices are muted. Female characters are confined to the domestic spheres of their homes, and they are excluded from the elite literary world. They are expected to function as foils to the male figures in their lives. These women are “trained” to remain silent and passive not only by the males around them, but also by their parents, their relatives, and their peers. Willingly or grudgingly, the women in Woolf and Browning’s works are regulated to the domestic circle, discouraged from the literary world, and are expected to act as foils to their male counterparts.
Throughout Virginia Woolf’s writings, she describes two different dinners: one at a men’s college, and another at a women’s college. Using multiple devices, Woolf expresses her opinion of the inequality between men and women within these two passages. She also uses a narrative style to express her opinions even more throughout the passages.
One of the most fascinating elements that female authors bring to light is their use of perspective—something that’s most commonly illustrated through the eyes of a man, a male author, or, more often than not, both. Women writers offer a different voice than their male counterparts, even if it’s simply by the subtle inclusion of their own experiences within the narrative of the central character. With that in mind, the question must be asked—how do these female authors present their male characters? It’s common for male authors to stick to stereotypes and caricatures of the women they include in their works; but do female authors choose to follow this style as well? How do they represent the “modern man” within their texts? Through Woolf’s
Woolf utilizes a rhetorical question in order to develop her call to action, which is that women should overcome their fears and express themselves. In the last paragraph, she states, “But this freedom is only a beginning; the room is your own, but it is still bare. It was to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be shared. How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it, and upon what terms?” The author is building upon the metaphor of life being like a room; it should not be bare, for a bare room...
It is not hard to apply Chaucer's description of the greedy doctor to today's medical system, nor is it difficult to find modern-day people with equivalent personalities to those of many of Chaucer's other characters. However, it is the institutions of his time as well as their flaws and hypocrisies that Chaucer is most critical of; he uses the personalities of his characters primarily to highlight those flaws. The two institutions that he is most critical of have lost much, if not all, of their influence; in many instances, the Church has only slight hold on the lives and attitudes of the people as a whole, and the strict feudal system has entirely disappeared. Few institutions today are as clearly visible and universally influential as those two forces were in the Middle Ages, so, if Chaucer were writing his tales today, he would most likely turn to the hypocritical attitudes of the general populace and the idiosyncracies of our daily lives. He gives some emphasis to these in the Tales (for example, he mentions the prioress's ladylike compassion for even the smallest creature in the Prologue, but has her tell an anti-Semitic tale later), but, in today's American culture, he would be most likely to criticize businessmen, middle-class parents, and the demand formust instantaneous gratification.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, (written c. 1387), is a richly varied compilation of fictional stories as told by a group of twenty-nine persons involved in a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury, England during the fourteenth century. This journey is to take those travelers who desire religious catharsis to the shrine of the holy martyr St. Thomas a Becket of Canterbury. The device of a springtime pilgrimage provided Chaucer with a diverse range of characters and experiences, with him being both a narrator and an observer. Written in Middle English, each tale depicts parables from each traveler.
My presentation is based an article titled The Inhibited and the Uninhibited: Ironic Structure in the Miller’s Tale it s written by Earle Birney. The literary theme that Birney is discussing in his essay is structural irony. Structural irony is basically a series of ironic events and instances that finally build up to create a climax. The events and the climax the Birney chooses to focus his essay on are the events that lead towards the end when almost each character suffers an ironic event:
In Virginia Woolf’s feminist essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” (16) if she is to write fiction of any merit. The point as she develops it is a perceptive one, and far more layered and various in its implications than it might at first seem. But I wonder if perhaps Woolf did not really tap the full power of her thesis. She recognized the necessity of the writer’s financial independence to the birth of great writing, but she failed to discover the true relationship to great writing of another freedom; for just as economic freedom allows one to inhabit a physical space---a room of one’s own---so does mental freedom allow one to inhabit one’s own mind and body “incandescent and unimpeded.” Woolf seems to believe that the development and expression of creative genius hinges upon the mental freedom of the writer(50), and that the development of mental freedom hinges upon the economic freedom of the writer (34, 47). But after careful consideration of Woolf’s essay and also of the recent trend in feminist criticism, one realizes that if women are to do anything with Woolf’s words; if we are to act upon them---to write the next chapter in this great drama---we must take her argument a little farther. We must propel it to its own conclusion to find that in fact both the freedom from economic dependence and the freedom from fetters to the mind and body are conditions of the possibility of genius and its full expression; we must learn to ‘move in’: to inhabit and take possession of, not only a physical room, but the more abstract rooms of our minds and our bodies. It is only from this perspective in full possession of ourselves that we can find the unconsciousness of ourselves,...
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
Chaucer uses these initial character portraits to identify the specific characteristic that each class contains. This creates the idea of a completely separate class societal that lacks unity and maintains grievances towards the other. We see this throughout The Canterbury Tales as each pilgrim’s tale belittles another class. Specifically, the Reeve and Miller’s tales are perfect examples of pilgrim’s tales belittling one another. By satirizing other classes by pilgrims of different classes exemplify the stereotypical perception for each medieval class and the shortcomings that a member of the class would not admit too.
Over the course of the semester, this British Literature course has adequately exposed myself to a variety of works of differing styles coming from a millennium of English authors and poets. With this literary immersion, some works have proved more memorable than others. Out of these select few, I hope to choose the literary work which demonstrates the greatest combination of entertainment and morals for future readers to take away from the text. After some deliberation, I found the solution obvious, as I had to write about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. While in reflection of the readings this semester, I could not deny that Chaucer’s collection should be preserved as the author succeeded what his stories were meant to accomplish: to “delight and instruct”. With the alluring variety of characters and entertaining situations which are described in well-chosen detail, each story provided by the pilgrims. Additionally, as each of the chosen tales (as stated in the course reading syllabus) provided a lesson that is still relevant after five centuries, the “instruction” comes from these universal morals. Therefore, in the
Chaucer's society represents every social class. In doing so, it shows what it takes to actually make a society function. The different people carry different stories to share. These stories carry lessons learned in hopes of sharing them with others so that they may not end up in the same predicaments. After all, that is the main point of sharing stories, isn't it?
In The Canterbury Tales, author Geoffrey Chaucer writes of the journey several pilgrims make from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. Many of the pilgrims are discussed at great length, from their physical appearance to their personality traits. Many of these pilgrims represent a paradigm of their role in the 14th century when this set of tales was written. For example, the knight represents chivalry and honor to the highest degree, while the pardoner embodies Chaucer’s view on several negative aspects of the religious system at the time. These characters are the opposite extremes of Chaucer’s totem pole of morality, but most characters reside somewhere in the middle. Two of these characters are the Sergeant of Law
Many female writers see themselves as advocates for other creative females to help find their voice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing.