The
Nobel Prize in Literature 2019
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2019
Born: 1942, Griffen, Austria
Residence at the time of the award:
Chaville, France
Prize motivation: "for an
influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and
the specificity of human experience."
English Authors:
The 10 Best English Writers (After Shakespeare)
·
William Blake 1757-1827. ...
·
Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400. ...
·
Charles Dickens 1812-1870. ...
·
George Eliot 1819-1880. ...
·
John Milton 1608-1674. ...
·
George Orwell 1903-1950. ...
·
Harold Pinter 1930-2008. ...
·
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834.
The Old English Period
Poetry
The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who
invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries brought with them
the common Germanic metre; but of their earliest oral poetry, probably used
for panegyric, magic, and short narrative, little or none survives.
For nearly a century after the conversion of King Aethelberht I of Kent to Christianity about
600, there is no evidence that the English wrote poetry in their own language.
But St. Bede the Venerable, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical
History of the English People”), wrote that in the late 7th century Caedmon, an
illiterate Northumbrian cowherd, was inspired in a dream to compose a short
hymn in praise of the creation. Caedmon later composed verses based on
Scripture, which was expounded for him by monks at Streaneshalch (now called
Whitby), but only the “Hymn of Creation” survives. Caedmon legitimized the
native verse form by adapting it to Christian themes. Others, following his
example, gave England a body of vernacular poetry unparalleled in Europe before the
end of the 1st millennium.
Alliterative verse
Virtually all Old English poetry is written in a
single metre, a four-stress line with a syntactical break, or caesura, between
the second and third stresses, and with alliteration linking the two halves of the line; this pattern
is occasionally varied by six-stress lines. The poetry is formulaic, drawing on
a common set of stock phrases and phrase patterns, applying standard epithets
to various classes of characters, and depicting scenery with such recurring
images as the eagle and the wolf, which wait during battles to feast on
carrion, and ice and snow, which appear in the landscape to signal sorrow. In
the best poems such formulas, far from being tedious, give a strong impression
of the richness of the cultural fund from which poets could draw. Other
standard devices of this poetry are the kenning, a figurative
name for a thing, usually expressed in a compound noun (e.g., swan-road used
to name the sea); and variation, the repeating of a single idea in different
words, with each repetition adding a new level of meaning. That these verse
techniques changed little during 400 years of literary production suggests the
extreme conservatism of Anglo-Saxon culture.
The
major manuscripts
Most Old English poetry is preserved in four
manuscripts of the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The Beowulf
manuscript (British Library) contains Beowulf, Judith, and three
prose tracts; the Exeter Book (Exeter
Cathedral) is a miscellaneous gathering of lyrics, riddles, didactic poems, and religious narratives; the Junius Manuscript (Bodleian Library,
Oxford)—also called the Caedmon Manuscript, even though its contents are no longer attributed to
Caedmon—contains biblical paraphrases; and the Vercelli Book (found
in the cathedral library in Vercelli, Italy) contains saints’ lives, several
short religious poems, and prose homilies. In addition to the poems in these
books are historical poems in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; poetic renderings of Psalms 51–150; the 31 “Metres”
included in King Alfred the Great’s translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy); magical, didactic, elegiac,
and heroic poems; and others, miscellaneously interspersed with prose, jotted
in margins, and even worked in stone or metal.
Problems
of dating
Few poems can be dated as closely as Caedmon’s “Hymn.”
King Alfred’s compositions fall into the late 9th century, and Bede
composed his “Death Song” within 50 days of his death on May 25, 735.
Historical poems such as “The Battle of Brunanburh” (after 937) and “The Battle of Maldon” (after 991) are fixed by the dates of the events
they commemorate. A translation of one of Aldhelm’s
riddles is found not only in the Exeter Book but also in an early 9th-century
manuscript at Leiden, Neth. And at least a part of “The Dream of the Rood” can be dated by an excerpt carved on the
8th-century Ruthwell Cross (in Dumfriesshire, Scot.).
But in the absence of such indications, Old English poems are hard to date, and
the scholarly consensus that most were composed in the Midlands and the
North in the 8th and 9th centuries gave way to uncertainty during the last two
decades of the 20th century. Many now hold that “The Wanderer,” Beowulf, and other poems once assumed to have been
written in the 8th century are of the 9th century or later. For most poems,
there is no scholarly consensus beyond the belief that they were written
between the 8th and the 11th centuries.
Religious
verse
If few poems can be dated accurately, still fewer can
be attributed to particular poets. The most important author from whom
a considerable body of work survives is Cynewulf, who wove his runic signature into the epilogues of
four poems. Aside from his name, little is known of him; he probably lived in the
9th century in Mercia or Northumbria. His works include The Fates of the Apostles, a short martyrology; The Ascension (also called Christ II), a homily and biblical narrative; Juliana, a saint’s passion set in the reign of the
Roman emperor Maximian (late 3rd century AD); and Elene,
perhaps the best of his poems, which describes the mission of St. Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, to recover Christ’s cross. Cynewulf’s work is lucid
and technically elegant; his theme is the continuing evangelical mission from
the time of Christ to the triumph of Christianity under Constantine. Several
poems not by Cynewulf are associated with him because of their subject matter.
These include two lives of St. Guthlac and Andreas; the
latter, the apocryphal story of how St. Andrew fell into the hands of
the cannibalistic (and presumably mythical) Mermedonians, has stylistic affinities with Beowulf. Also in
the “Cynewulf group” are several poems with Christ as their subject, of which
the most important is “The Dream of the Rood,” in which the cross speaks of itself as Christ’s
loyal thane and yet the instrument of his death. This tragic paradox echoes a recurring theme of secular poetry and at the same time movingly expresses the religious paradoxes of Christ’s triumph in death and humankind’s
redemption from sin.
Several poems of the Junius Manuscript are based on
the Old Testament narratives Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel. Of these, Exodus is
remarkable for its intricate diction and bold imagery. The fragmentary Judith of the Beowulf Manuscript stirringly embellishes the story from
the Apocrypha of the heroine who led the Jews to victory over the Assyrians.
Elegiac
and heroic verse
The term elegy is used
of Old English poems that lament the loss of worldly goods, glory, or human
companionship. “The Wanderer” is narrated by a man, deprived of lord and
kinsmen, whose journeys lead him to the realization that there is stability
only in heaven. “The Seafarer” is similar, but its journey motif more
explicitly symbolizes the speaker’s spiritual yearnings. Several others have
similar themes, and three elegies—“The Husband’s Message,” “The Wife’s Lament,” and “Wulf and
Eadwacer”—describe what appears to be a conventional situation: the separation
of husband and wife by the husband’s exile.
“Deor” bridges
the gap between the elegy and the heroic poem, for in it a poet laments the
loss of his position at court by alluding to sorrowful stories from Germanic legend. Beowulf itself narrates the battles of Beowulf, a prince of the Geats (a
tribe in what is now southern Sweden), against the monstrous Grendel,
Grendel’s mother, and a fire-breathing dragon. The account contains some of the
best elegiac verse in the language, and, by setting marvelous tales against a
historical background in which victory is always temporary and strife is always
renewed, the poet gives the whole an elegiac cast. Beowulf also is one of the best religious poems,
not only because of its explicitly Christian passages but also because
Beowulf’s monstrous foes are depicted as God’s enemies and Beowulf himself as
God’s champion. Other heroic narratives are fragmentary. Of “The Battle of
Finnsburh” and “Waldere” only enough remains to indicate that, when whole, they
must have been fast-paced and stirring.
Of several poems dealing with English history and
preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the most notable is “The Battle of Brunanburh,” a panegyric on the occasion of King Athelstan’s
victory over a coalition of Norsemen and Scots in 937. But the best historical
poem is not from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. “The Battle of Maldon,” which describes the defeat of Aldorman Byrhtnoth
and much of his army at the hands of Viking invaders in 991, discovers in
defeat an occasion to celebrate the heroic ideal, contrasting the determination
of many of Byrhtnoth’s thanes to avenge his death or die in the attempt with
the cowardice of others who left the field. Minor poetic genres include catalogs (two sets of “Maxims” and “Widsith,” a list of
rulers, tribes, and notables in the heroic age), dialogues, metrical prefaces and epilogues to prose works of
the Alfredian period, and liturgical poems associated with the Benedictine
Office.
Prose
The earliest English prose work, the law code of
King Aethelberht I of Kent, was written within
a few years of the arrival in England (597)
of St. Augustine of Canterbury. Other 7th- and 8th-century prose, similarly
practical in character, includes more laws, wills, and charters. According to
Cuthbert, who was a monk at Jarrow, Bede at the time of his death had just
finished a translation of the Gospel of St. John, though this does not survive.
Two medical tracts, Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, very likely date from the
8th century.
Early
translations into English
The earliest literary prose dates from the late 9th
century, when King Alfred, eager to improve the state of English learning, led a vigorous
program to translate into English “certain books that are necessary for all men
to know.” Alfred himself translated the Pastoral Care of St. Gregory I the Great, the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, the Soliloquies of St. Augustine of Hippo, and the first 50 Psalms. His Pastoral Care is a fairly literal translation,
but his Boethius is extensively restructured and revised to make explicit the
Christian message that medieval commentators saw in that work. He revised the Soliloquies even more radically, departing from
his source to draw from Gregory and St. Jerome, as well as from other works by
Augustine. Alfred’s prefaces to these works are of great historical interest.
At Alfred’s urging, Bishop Werferth of Worcester
translated the Dialogues of Gregory;
probably Alfred also inspired anonymous scholars to translate Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica and Paulus Orosius’s Historiarum adversum paganos libri vii (Seven Books of History Against the Pagans). Both of
these works are much abridged; the Bede translation follows its source
slavishly, but the translator of Orosius added many details of northern
European geography and also accounts of the voyages of Ohthere the Norwegian
and Wulfstan the Dane. These accounts, in addition to their geographical
interest, show that friendly commerce between England and Scandinavia was
possible even during the Danish wars. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle probably originated in Alfred’s reign. Its
earliest annals (beginning in the reign of Julius Caesar) are laconic, except the entry for 755, which records in detail a feud between the
West Saxon king Cynewulf and the would-be usurper Cyneheard. The entries
covering the Danish wars of the late 9th century are much fuller, and those running
from the reign of Ethelred II to the Norman Conquest in
1066 (when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle exists in several versions) contain many
passages of excellent writing. The early 10th century is not notable for
literary production, but some of the homilies in the Vercelli Book and
the Blickling Manuscript (Scheide Library, Princeton University) may belong to
that period.
Late
10th- and 11th-century prose
The prose literature of the
mid- to late 10th century is associated with the Benedictine Reform, a movement
that sought to impose order and discipline on a monastic establishment that was thought to
have grown lax. Aethelwold, bishop of Winchester and one of
the leaders of the reform, translated the Rule of St. Benedict. But the greatest and most prolific writer of this period was his pupil Aelfric, a monk at Cerne and later abbot of Eynsham, whose
works include three cycles of 40 homilies each (Catholic Homilies,
2 vol., and the Lives of the Saints), as well as
homilies not in these cycles; a Latin grammar; a treatise on time and natural history; pastoral letters; and several
translations. His Latin Colloquy, supplied
with an Old English version by an anonymous glossarist, gives a fascinating
glimpse into the Anglo-Saxon monastic
classroom. Aelfric wrote with lucidity and astonishing beauty, using the rhetorical devices of Latin literature frequently
but without ostentation; his later alliterative prose, which loosely imitates the rhythms of Old
English poetry, influenced writers long after the Norman Conquest. Wulfstan,
archbishop of York, wrote
legal codes, both civil and ecclesiastical, and a number of homilies, including Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (“Wulf’s
Address to the English”), a ferocious denunciation of the morals of his time. To judge from the number of extant manuscripts, these two writers were enormously popular. Byrhtferth of Ramsey wrote several Latin
works and the Enchiridion, a textbook on the
calendar, notable for its ornate style. Numerous anonymous works, some of very
high quality, were produced in this period, including homilies, saints’
lives, dialogues, and translations of such works as the Gospels,
several Old Testament books, liturgical texts, monastic rules, penitential
handbooks, and the romance Apollonius of Tyre (translated
from Latin but probably derived from a Greek original). The works of the
Benedictine Reform were written during a few remarkable decades around the turn
of the millennium. Little original work can be securely dated to the period
after Wulfstan’s death (1023), but the continued vigour of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle shows that good Old English prose was written right up to the Norman
Conquest. By the end of this period, English had been established as a literary
language with a polish and versatility unequaled among European vernaculars.
The Early Middle English Period
Poetry
The Norman Conquest worked
no immediate transformation on either the language or the literature of the
English. Older poetry continued to be copied during the last half of the 11th century;
two poems of the early 12th century—“Durham,” which praises that city’s
cathedral and its relics, and “Instructions for Christians,” a didactic piece—show that correct alliterative verse could be composed well after 1066. But even
before the conquest, rhyme had begun to supplant rather than supplement alliteration in some poems, which continued to use the older
four-stress line, although their rhythms varied from the set types used in
classical Old English verse. A postconquest example is “The Grave,” which
contains several rhyming lines; a poem from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the death of William the Conqueror, lamenting his cruelty and greed, has more rhyme than
alliteration.
Influence of French poetry
By the end of the 12th century, English poetry had
been so heavily influenced by French models that such a work as the long
epic Brut (c. 1200) by Lawamon,
a Worcestershire priest, seems archaic for mixing alliterative lines with rhyming couplets while
generally eschewing French vocabulary. The Brut draws mainly upon Wace’s
Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut (1155; based in
turn upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae [History of the Kings of Britain]), but in Lawamon’s
hands the Arthurian story takes on a Germanic and heroic flavour largely
missing in Wace. The Brut exists in
two manuscripts, one written shortly after 1200 and the other some 50 years
later. That the later version has been extensively modernized and somewhat
abridged suggests the speed with which English language and literary tastes were changing in this
period. The Proverbs of Alfred was written somewhat
earlier, in the late 12th century; these proverbs deliver conventional wisdom
in a mixture of rhymed couplets and alliterative lines, and it is hardly likely
that any of the material they contain actually originated with the king whose
wisdom they celebrate. The early 13th-century Bestiary mixes
alliterative lines, three- and four-stress couplets, and septenary (heptameter)
lines, but the logic behind this mix is more obvious than in the Brut and the Proverbs, for the
poet was imitating the varied metres of his Latin source. More regular in form
than these poems is the anonymous Poema morale in
septenary couplets, in which an old man delivers a dose of moral advice
to his presumably younger audience.
By far the most brilliant poem of this period is The Owl and the Nightingale (written after 1189),
an example of the popular debate genre. The two
birds argue topics ranging from their hygienic habits, looks, and songs to
marriage, prognostication, and the proper modes of worship. The nightingale
stands for the joyous aspects of life, the owl for the sombre; there is no
clear winner, but the debate ends as the birds go off to state their cases to
one Nicholas of Guildford, a wise man. The poem is learned in the clerical
tradition but wears its learning lightly as the disputants speak in colloquial and sometimes earthy language. Like the Poema morale, The Owl and the Nightingale is
metrically regular (octosyllabic couplets), but it uses the French metre with
an assurance unusual in so early a poem.
Didactic poetry
The 13th century saw a rise in the popularity of long
didactic poems presenting biblical narrative, saints’ lives, or moral
instruction for those untutored in Latin or French. The most idiosyncratic of these is the Ormulum by Orm,
an Augustinian canon in the north of England. Written in
some 20,000 lines arranged in unrhymed but metrically rigid couplets, the work
is interesting mainly in that the manuscript that preserves it is Orm’s
autograph and shows his somewhat fussy efforts to reform and regularize English
spelling. Other biblical paraphrases are Genesis and Exodus, Jacob and Joseph, and the vast Cursor mundi, whose subject, as its title suggests, is
the history of the world. An especially popular work was the South English Legendary, which began as a
miscellaneous collection of saints’ lives but was expanded by later redactors
and rearranged in the order of the church calendar. The didactic tradition continued into the 14th century
with Robert Mannyng’s Handling Sin, a confessional
manual whose expected dryness is relieved by the insertion of lively
narratives, and the Prick of Conscience,
a popular summary of theology sometimes attributed to the mystic Richard Rolle.
Verse romance
The earliest examples of verse romance, a genre that
would remain popular through the Middle Ages, appeared in the 13th
century. King Horn and Floris and Blauncheflour both are preserved in a
manuscript of about 1250. King Horn, oddly
written in short two- and three-stress lines, is a vigorous tale of a kingdom
lost and regained, with a subplot concerning Horn’s love for Princess
Rymenhild. Floris and Blauncheflour is
more exotic, being the tale of a pair of royal lovers who become separated and,
after various adventures in eastern lands, reunited. Not much later than these
is The Lay of Havelok the Dane, a tale of princely love
and adventure similar to King Horn but
more competently executed. Many more such romances were produced in the 14th
century. Popular subgenres were “the matter of Britain” (Arthurian romances
such as Of Arthour and of Merlin and Ywain and Gawain), “the matter of Troy” (tales of
antiquity such as The Siege of Troy and King Alisaunder), and the English Breton lays (stories
of otherworldly magic, such as Lai le Freine and Sir Orfeo, modeled after those of professional Breton
storytellers). These relatively unsophisticated works were written for a
bourgeois audience, and the manuscripts that preserve them are early examples
of commercial book production. The humorous beast epic makes
its first appearance in Britain in
the 13th century with The Fox and the Wolf,
taken indirectly from the Old French Roman de Renart. In the same manuscript with this work is Dame Sirith, the earliest English fabliau. Another sort
of humour is found in The Land of Cockaygne, which depicts a utopia better than heaven, where rivers run with milk, honey, and wine,
geese fly about already roasted, and monks hunt with hawks and dance with nuns.
The lyric
The lyric was
virtually unknown to Old English poets. Poems such as “Deor” and “Wulf and
Eadwacer,” which have been called lyrics, are thematically different from those
that began to circulate orally in the 12th century and to be written down in
great numbers in the 13th; these Old English poems also have a stronger
narrative component than the later productions. The most frequent topics in the
Middle English secular lyric are springtime and romantic love; many rework such themes tediously, but some, such as
“Foweles in the frith” (13th century) and “Ich am of Irlaunde” (14th century),
convey strong emotions in a few lines. Two lyrics of the early 13th century,
“Mirie it is while sumer ilast” and “Sumer is icumen in,” are preserved with
musical settings, and probably most of the others were meant to be sung. The
dominant mood of the religious lyrics is passionate: the poets sorrow for
Christ on the cross and for the Virgin Mary, celebrate the “five joys” of Mary,
and import language from love poetry to express
religious devotion. Excellent early examples are “Nou goth sonne under wod” and
“Stond wel, moder, ounder rode.” Many of the lyrics are preserved in manuscript
anthologies, of which the best is British Library manuscript Harley
2253 from the early 14th century. In this collection, known as the Harley
Lyrics, the love poems, such as “Alysoun” and “Blow, Northern Wind,” take after
the poems of the Provençal troubadours but are less formal, less abstract, and
more lively. The religious lyrics also are of high quality; but the most
remarkable of the Harley Lyrics, “The Man in the Moon,” far from being about
love or religion, imagines the man in the Moon as a simple peasant, sympathizes
with his hard life, and offers him some useful advice on how to best the
village hayward (a local officer in charge of a town’s common herd of cattle).
A poem such as “The Man in the Moon” serves as a
reminder that, although the poetry of the early Middle English period was
increasingly influenced by the Anglo-Norman literature produced for the courts, it is seldom “courtly.”
Most English poets, whether writing about kings or peasants, looked at life
from a bourgeois perspective. If their work sometimes lacks sophistication, it
nevertheless has a vitality that comes from preoccupation with daily affairs.
Prose
Old English prose texts were copied for more than a
century after the Norman Conquest; the homilies of Aelfric were especially
popular, and King Alfred’s translations of Boethius and Augustine survive
only in 12th-century manuscripts. In the early 13th century an anonymous worker
at Worcester supplied glosses to certain words in a number of Old English
manuscripts, which demonstrates that by this time the older language was
beginning to pose difficulties for readers.
The composition of English prose also continued without
interruption. Two manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle exhibit very strong prose for years after the
conquest, and one of these, the Peterborough Chronicle, continues to 1154.
Two manuscripts of about 1200 contain 12th-century sermons, and another has the
workmanlike compilation Vices and Virtues, composed
about 1200. But the English language faced stiff competition from both Anglo-Norman
(the insular dialect of French being used increasingly in the monasteries) and Latin,
a language intelligible to speakers of both English and French. It was
inevitable, then, that the production of English prose should decline in
quantity, if not in quality. The great prose works of this period were composed
mainly for those who could read only English—women especially. In the West Midlands the
Old English alliterative prose tradition remained very much alive into the 13th
century, when the several texts known collectively as the Katherine Group were
written. St. Katherine, St. Margaret, and St. Juliana, found
together in a single manuscript, have rhythms strongly reminiscent of those of
Aelfric and Wulfstan. So to a lesser extent do Hali
Meithhad (“Holy Maidenhood”) and Sawles Warde (“The Guardianship of the Soul”)
from the same book, but newer influences can be seen in these works as well: as
the title of another devotional piece, The Wohunge of Ure Lauerd (“The
Wooing of Our Lord”), suggests, the prose of this time often has a rapturous,
even sensual flavour, and, like the poetry, it frequently employs the language
of love to express religious fervour.
Further removed from the Old English prose tradition,
though often associated with the Katherine Group, is the Ancrene Wisse (“Guide for
Anchoresses,” also known as the Ancrene Riwle, or
“Rule for Anchoresses”), a manual for the guidance of women recluses outside
the regular orders. This anonymous work, which was translated into French and
Latin and remained popular until the 16th century, is notable for its humanity,
practicality, and insight into human nature but
even more for its brilliant style. Like the other prose of its time, it
uses alliteration as ornament, but it is more indebted to new
fashions in preaching, which had originated in the universities, than to native
traditions. With its richly figurative language, rhetorically crafted
sentences, and carefully logical divisions and subdivisions, it manages to
achieve in English the effects that such contemporary writers as John of Salisbury and Walter Map were
striving for in Latin.
Little noteworthy prose was written in the late 13th
century. In the early 14th century Dan Michel of Northgate produced in
Kentish the Ayenbite of Inwit (“Prick of
Conscience”), a translation from French. But the best prose of this time is by
the mystic Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, whose English tracts
include The Commandment, Meditations on the Passion,
and The Form of Perfect Living, among others. His intense
and stylized prose was among the most popular of the 14th century and inspired
such later works as Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Julian of Norwich’s Sixteen Revelations of Divine
Love, and the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing.
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