I found the varying settings and, for lack of a better word, levels of this story very striking. They were varied and interesting, causing me to pay way more attention to setting and plot details. First, our narrator is lamenting his recent lack of sleep. Then he tells us of a story he read one night. Afterward, we transition to his call upon the gods and the subsequent dream sequence. Within the dream itself, we have the hunt, the exploration of the forest, and the discovery of a knight in mourning. The knight then begins to tell his own tale and only when it is finished does our narrator wake up from his dream. Even though it was a challenging read with the subplots making it even more confusing at times, I did enjoy it, although perhaps I missed the purpose of so many stories within a story. I’m not really seeing a deeper meaning for the use of this technique. I’m sure we’ll talk about this in class, but am I missing the obvious here?

I found some of The Book of Duchess very hard to follow but one of the most interesting aspects of piece that I enjoyed was the religious and mythological references.  I found it very interesting that there is no mention of the Christian afterlife, not even in a hopeful way.  One of several references is when the man in black says “God yive me reste” (683).  Also, toward the beginning of the story during the telling of King Seys and Queen Alcyone, the speaker doesn’t mention an afterlife when he refers to their deaths even when the widow is grieving for her late husband, she does not find comfort in any Christian ideals, but instead turns to Juno from Greek mythology.  Although there is mention of helle or being damned if you commit suicide, there is no hopeful thoughts of heaven.

Like other medieval texts we have read, there is a combination of religions or spiritualities.  I find it fascinating that the line between Christian texts and Greek mythology, for example, is so ambiguous.  Texts evoke Christian God and Greek gods. Like our readings from last week that talked about Wyrd and fate, this piece refers to Fortune as a powerful force.  The mixtures of powers and religions is sometime confusing, but all in all very interesting.

Wow, so this reading took me awhile. Though I didn’t hate it, I can’t say it was my favorite. However, I feel like there was a decent amount of things that went over my head so I’m hoping tomorrow’s discussion will help me better appreciate the text. The main thing I felt I missed out on was all of the references. Even though there were footnotes to explain each one, I still felt like I didn’t know enough about the background/story of them to really understand the significance. A group of references that I did enjoy were in stanzas 1085-87; “She was as good, and nothing lyke, / Though hir stories be autentyke; / Algate she was as true as she.” The footnote explains that the knight compares his lady to great, renowned women, but then goes beyond that and claims she is greater than even them. Another line I found to be quite humorous was “And never to false yow but I mete,” which essentially means “I will never be false to you, unless I’m dreaming” (1234). I’m not sure how I would react if someone that I cared about said the same of me.

Another place I experienced a bit of confusion was after the knight confesses his love for his lady. It seems as if he says she rejected him and he went into a state of deep sorrow, but then he claims she accepts his love and they live happily ever after (until her tragic death). Yet again, something I’m looking forward to clearing up during class tomorrow.

All in all, I did enjoy the piece. Because of it’s length and the constant going back and forth between translations and footnotes, it got a bit monotonous for me, especially when the knight is telling the speaker for what seems like the 5th time that “thou nost what thou menest; / I have lost more than thou wenest” (1137-38).

I found the Exeter Ellegies to be evoking and powerful — excellent examples of how emotion or “feeling” can be expressed in literature and transcend time and culture.  My favorite, however was “Wulf and Eadwacer” which the introduction calls “one of the most obscure poems in Old English” (40).  Even though we have little or no context on the background or narrator of the elegy, I still found it a moving poem.  The battle imagery of the first two stanzas seems to introduce us to the narrator’s internal conflict and heartache.  Wulf, who is a “bold warrior” embraces the narrator and “it was sweet to me, yet I also despised it” (lines 11-12).  As the introduction suggests, the female speaker is married, but loves Wulf who seldom comes and perhaps takes the child of the married couple–lines that can be translated in multiple ways.  The last two lines of the elegy, “One can easily split what was never united,/the song of the two of us” stood out to me (18-9).  The poem and these last beautiful lines in particular, can be interpreted in so many ways, but still, the speaker’s “feelings” come across, and somehow we can sympathize with her heartache.

I found the depiction of Wyrd in these poems absolutely fascinating. Fate seems to only be thought of as something  relentless and uncontrollable. The narrators in both The Wanderer and The Seafarer woefully succumb to what they feel Wyrd has planned for them, as she is “fully fixed” (41). The preoccupation with Fate’s intentions, and why she allows so many troubles to overwhelm the world, seems to be a trend in most of the elegies, even though some speakers are able to come to some sort of acceptance about the inevitability of Wyrd through their personal revelations about God.

The Ruin was my favorite of the elegies. As the text explains, I really appreciate the physical “decay” of the poem, both the unintentional and intentional. I would be interested to see the look of the original manuscript. This elegy also seems to be one that, in my opinion, best describes the ruthlessness of Wyrd on the physical world. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why other speakers are able to find solace with God – he represents something intangible, and thereby is unable to succumb to the Ruin of what beauty Earth and Man creates.

Overall, I found these elegies to be all quite beautiful, even though they are rather depressing at times. They certainly evoke emotions of sadness, pity, and even triumph in modern day readers, showing yet again the transcendence of certain emotions through time.

The found the connections between The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Deor, including the lack of agency and the references to Wyrd to be very interesting.  Both The Wanderer and The Seafarer begin with a description of suffering and sorrow that is unavoidable, then at a turning point the speakers begin to reference the greatest of God and the goodness of salvation that will come after all the suffering.  The Seafarer begins with a description of the hardships and suffering that he cannot escape as a seafarer, as The Wanderer and Deor begin with a lament of a devastated and destructed place that destroyed building and took loved ones and kinsmen.  At the turning point of The Seafarer, the speaker rejoices in the opportunities and gifts God has given him and begins to look at his life as a seafarer as an adventure and a chance to travel which God has granted him, similarly to the turning point of The Wanderer where the speaker expresses acceptance of suffering and suggests that if one turns to God for mercy they will one day have salvation.  While both The Wanderer and The Seafarer shift from a lamenting, lonely, suffering attitude to an acceptance of the suffering, Doer lacks this happy ending. Instead of ending with a prayer to God or a hope in salvation, Doer ends with a continuation of the description of never ending decay and no hope and no agency.

These elegies, especially Doer reminded me of the naturalist literature of the mid-nineteenth century. This literature was characterized by a lack of agency and lack of control of fate, which I felt the elegies also contained. Although two of my three examples ended with an acceptance and hope for the mercy of God, the speakers still lacked agency in their sorrowful lives and looked at Wyrd as unchangeable, like naturalistic literature saw fate and nature as uncontrollable and set in stone.

While reading this article, I was most surprised by how easily historians of the past have simplified the emotions felt during the Middle Ages. “Child-like” is a term that was often used to describe the displays that were prevalent during that time period. Like Rosenwein herself, I saw this as unfair. Even if they expressed emotions differently than we do today (although much of what they did was not all that different from the present), historians should not have belittled the complexity of such emotions. The emotional range and reactions of humanity, then or now, should not just be summed up with a term such as “child-like.” Like the conclusion states, “there were many medieval emotional communities,” each calling forth different reactions and emotions, and none of which were simple (485).

When reading this article, my mind first went to the concept of the emotions of the elite during medieval era.  The beginning of this article focused on the feelings of the common folk and even mentioned that the elite must be dismissed and their emotions dismissed in order to gather data for what they call “genuine emotionology”.  I find this dismissal ridiculous and feel that the emotions of the elite are highly pertinent to the overall temperature of emotions at that time.  No one is without emotion.

Further,  I found it interesting that Elias was quotes as saying that while people in this era were found to have less restraint he also spoke of differentiating the so called super ego of this culture from another – something that I do not thing can be done.

Barbara Rosenwein explores the history of Western emotion by offering viewpoint of professionals in different areas of study. Each individual present a different explanation for how emotions were managed in the pre-modern and modern periods, one explanation building on or countering another. Most of the experts presented argue that emotions were untamed in the pre-modern world and that civilization comes with modernization from either: education, religion, psychology, social construct, social status, or female presence, each offering an argument for one influence or another.

In my opinion emotional expression is shaped by a combination of these influences as Rosenwein suggests in the last pages of the essay. She asserts that emotional configurations of home-life and outside influence shape emotional behavior, and I agree to certain extent. In addition to home life and outside influence, I also share Reddy’s perspective that emotions are managed by an individual’s personal feelings. The appropriate outward response to those feelings are defined by what society deems expectable and, therefore, are influenced by an individual’s culture, which is slightly altered overtime.

There is no one factor responsible for managing emotion, or a set point at which emotions became constrained because society constantly redefines what is acceptable based on present values, but this topic is open for interpretation. Thoughts?

This article takes an interesting approach to history through the emotional.  This method and the prevailing and improving theories of the history of emotions is a great way to approach literature.  The liquid theory of emotion that discusses that emotions are almost like a liquid in the body wanting to seep out, which usually manifests itself in writings.  While this theory has been displaced by a more improved method it shows an interesting to understanding prevailing emotions of a period and the ones being suppressed.  By examining this method to literature of a certain period we can better understand a certain author’s approach or meaning in a text.  For example, if a Medieval writer is discussing courtly love we could decipher certain meanings from what is highlighted in the language or omitted.