The Christian Tradition in English Literature

Paul Cavill, Heather Ward

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780310861355
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Literature & the Arts in Christianity

Features: •Wide chronological coverage of English literature, especially texts found in the Norton, Oxford, Blackwell and other standard anthologies•Short, punchy essays that engage with the texts, the critics, and literary and social issues•Background and survey articles•Glossaries of Bible themes, images and narratives•Annotated bibliography and questions for class discussion or personal reflection•Scholarly yet accessible, jargon-free approach – ideal for school and university students, book groups and general readersCreated for readers who may be unfamiliar with the Bible, church history or theological development, it offers an understanding of Christianity's key concepts, themes, images and characters as they relate to English literature up to the present day.

Section 1

THE MEDIEVAL
PERIOD

1

OVERVIEW: THE MIDDLE AGES

INTRODUCTION

The most important point to note about literature of this early period is that we must dismiss all prejudices about its ‘primitiveness’. The poet of Beowulf is a master of his language and a subtle theological thinker; Chaucer is one of the most delicate and deadly accurate of English satirists; the poet of The Dream of the Rood makes a magnificent drama of the *crucifixion; and Mak the sheep stealer is a character who can be compared, within limits, to Shakespeare’s greatest comic creations. What will not be obvious from some anthologies, the Norton and Oxford anthologies especially, is that alongside the great verse of the Old English period there was a large and varied corpus of often vibrant prose. There are delightful stories (Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies and Lives of Saints, see the samples in BAOME pp. 116 f), powerful sermons (Wulfstan’s Homilies, see the Sermo Lupi, BAOME pp. 226 f), vivid and fast-moving historical narratives (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, see extracts in BAOME pp. 20 f), all originally composed in Old English, as well as fine translations of the Bible and Latin works such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.

CONVERSION AND HEATHENISM

Before the conversion to CHRISTIANITY there was no discursive writing in Old English. Some brief runic inscriptions survive from this time, but writing, using the Roman alphabet and the technology of ink and vellum, came with Christianity and remained under the influence of the church. Before writing, and contemporary with it, poets composing their verse extempore entertained warriors in their halls with tales of past heroes and celebrations of more recent heroic exploits. The oral style of alliterative verse, with its incremental variation and its heroic focus, survives to some extent in Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon; the metre itself is preserved several hundred years longer in the Brut of Layamon of the twelfth century (see extracts in BAOME pp. 359 f) and in Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight of the fourteenth century. While the setting of Beowulf is heathen, and it records heathen practices such as cremation of the dead, it is nevertheless Christian in its outlook and preoccupations, and in fact heathenism in its particularity is hard to find in Old English literature.

Bede’s History tells the story of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. In fact, Bede’s great theme, his grand narrative, is the conversion to Christianity. He records the story of Cædmon because it marked a further development of God’s plan as Cædmon converted the teaching of the church into ‘delightful verse’ for the people, using their own language and poetry to encourage them in their faith. Though he was closer in time to English heathenism than any other major writer, he records nothing substantial about its practice. There is greater depth of Christian learning in synergy with the prevailing culture in Bede and The Dream of the Rood than appears almost anywhere before the ‡Reformation in the sixteenth century. Though the theological aspects may be less prominent than in these particular examples, that concern to engage with the developing and changing culture is a persistent feature of medieval literature.

THE EARLIEST ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Norman Conquest of 1066 did not bring an end to English literature: Ælfric’s ‡homilies and Bede’s History (and more) continued to be copied and used throughout the Middle English period (c.1100 – 1500), and Layamon and others adapted French materials to the native verse style and English language. What might be called the ‘origin myth’ changed, though. The Anglo-Saxons were concerned with conquest, secular and religious, and the discontinuities between themselves and the Celtic people they replaced, and heathenism itself. The French conquerors were paradoxically more concerned with the continuities between themselves and the Celts, their pre-Christian and magical traditions. In Middle English literature the confrontation between Christianity and culture ceases to be central, and the Christian religion becomes part of the mental and spiritual furniture, both ubiquitous and unremarkable. That is not to say that Middle English lacks depth or passion with regard to Christianity: one has only to read the lyrics to feel the power of the *crucifixion story (Ye that Pasen by the Weye, Sunset on Calvary¹), or to see how the theme of †love is transmuted in Christian consciousness (I Sing of a Maiden, Adam Lay Bound). But the issues are more ‘modern’: namely, how the challenge of the Christian message may be framed for those to whom it seems familiar and dull; how, indeed, those whose lives are shaped by the tradition may be helped to find it fresh and vital.

Chaucer takes the path of satire, showing the contempt of his ‡Monk for the ‘olde thinges’ and the callousness of self-interest in his ‡Friar, ‡Summoner, and ‡Pardoner. Langland opts for seriousness, with his ‡allegorical figures pointing to eternal realities; the Gawain poet, and to some degree the author of the Ancrene Riwle, explore the similarities and points of contact between knightly ideals and Christianity; Julian and Margery write with the immediacy of visionary experience and combine other-worldliness with earthy detail; the medieval plays often exploit broad comedy to make their point and bring the biblical message into the experience of ordinary people.

ENGLISH, FRENCH, AND LATIN

In many ways both language and literary styles in Middle English are more flexible than in Old English. In Old English there is one verse form, the alliterative metre depending on repeated consonant or vowel sounds within a strict four- or six-stress pattern in each line. Prose tends to eschew complex time relationships because of the two-tense verbal system and sometimes echoes the alliterative patterns of verse.

The Norman Conquest brought French courtly poetry with its variety of line length and rhyme arrangement, and with it, more complex syntax and new vocabulary. There are now different registers, broadly the popular (Anglo-Saxon), the courtly (French), and the learned (Latin). In the lyrics Ye that Pasen by the Weye and Sunset on Calvary all the vocabulary is of Anglo-Saxon origin; and in Adam Lay Bound only ‘clerkes’ and ‘Deo Gratias’ are respectively French and Latin, obliquely indicating the French dominance of the spheres of learning and religion. Chaucer’s Knight ‘loved chivalrye / Trouthe and honour, freedome and curteisye’ (General Prologue, 45 – 6), and here the French and English terms are interleaved: though the senses of the English words ‘trouthe’ and ‘freedome’ are rather different today, in Middle English they nevertheless are still less abstract than ‘chivalrye’, ‘honour’, and ‘curteisye’. Chaucer’s Doctor can hardly be described without the learned Latin-derived French words ‘apothecaries’, ‘letuaries’, ‘mesurable’, superfluitee’, ‘norissing’, and ‘digestible’; Chaucer drily notes ‘his studye was but litel on the Bible’ (General Prologue, 440).

It was in this linguistic context that John Wyclif advocated the translation and use of the Bible in English. Wyclif ’s major works were in Latin and included attacks on the authority of the church and the ‡pope. The translation project was carried through by Wyclif ’s followers and published in 1389, five years after Wyclif ’s death. A brief illustration may serve to show some of the qualities of the work. At John 10:12, the Wyclif version reads,

Forsoth a marchaunt, and that is not schepherde, whos ben not the scheep his owne, seeth a wolf comynge, and he leeueth the scheep, and fleeth; and the wolf rauyschith, and disparplith the scheep.²

Chaucer’s ‡Parson:

kepte wel his folde,

So that the wolf ne made it nought miscarye:
He was a shepherd and nought a mercenarye.

— GENERAL PROLOGUE 514 – 17

The difference between the two passages, apart from the fact that the Wyclif version intends to translate as closely as possible the Latin Vulgate (which it does, almost word for word: ‘mercennarius et qui non est pastor cuius non sunt oves propriae . . .’³), lies in the choice of vocabulary: the Wyclif version chooses two words of French origin, marchaunt and disparplith. The first of these is imprecise, the same word used for the merchant of Matthew 13:45, a trader in pearls (see the *parable of the pearl of great price): contrast Chaucer’s precise and effective use of the Latin word mercenarye. The second, disparplith, is a rare and now unfamiliar word meaning ‘scatters’; Chaucer’s word miscarye has two main senses, ‘destroy’ and ‘bring to abortive birth’ (the latter sense common from the sixteenth century), both of which capture clearly what wolves do to sheep.

Although the Wyclif translation is from the Latin (not the original Hebrew and Greek), and although it is over-literal and difficult to read, so far as the authorities were concerned it was subversive. In 1428 Wyclif ’s bones were dug up and burned at the order of a church council (the Council of Constance, 1415) by way of executing judgement on his theological ‘errors’. In many ways the ideas in Wyclif ’s work anticipated the great upheaval of the ‡Reformation over a hundred years later, when again the issues of authority and access to the Bible in the vernacular would divide the nations of Europe.

By the end of the Middle English period, literature in English had broken down some of the divisions that helped maintain social, political, and ecclesiastical structures of authority. Literacy was more common than at any time before; French and Latin vocabulary, courtly and learned literary styles, had been assimilated into the vernacular. The Bible was accessible to some people in their own language. The time was ripe for a flowering of literature, a renewal of popular Christianity; a sense of potential in its widest sense is to be found. The power of Shakespeare or Milton is not a sudden descent of genius after the barrenness of the so-called Dark Ages; it arises out of the creative resolution of tensions, linguistic, social, and theological amongst others, of the Middle English period.

QUESTIONS

1. Compare and contrast The Dream of the Rood and Ye that Pasen by the Weye and Sunset on Calvary. What appeals to you about each of them, and what do you think are the most striking differences between them?

2. Do you agree that ‘the confrontation between CHRISTIANITY and culture ceases to be central’ in Middle English literature, whereas it remains the core focus for Old English literature? Choose some examples to justify your view.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and Their Work: Middle English Literature and Its Background, 1100 – 1500, rev. edn, London 1993.

David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence, London 2003, is a recent and full treatment of the origins and development of English biblical translation.

An excellent introduction to Christian themes and images in medieval literature is Dee Dyas, Images of Faith in English Literature, 700 – 1550: An Introduction, London 1997.

For an overview of Old English literature, its language, styles, and themes, see Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, Cambridge 1991.

For Wycliffite writings, both translations and expositions, see Anne Hudson, ed., Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, Cambridge 1978.

David Wallace, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge 1999.

NOTES

1. Also known as Now goth sonne under wode, its first line.

2. The quotation is from the normalised version of Rev. Joseph Bosworth and George Waring, ed., The Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels . . . with the Versions of Wycliffe and Tyndale, 3rd edn, ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION: HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
• ABBREVIATIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
• SECTION 1: THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD
• SECTION 2: RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND REPUBLIC
• SECTION 3: THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
• SECTION 4: THE ROMANTICS AND VICTORIANS
• SECTION 5: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
• SECTION 6: THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION
• SECTION 7: GLOSSARY
• ABOUT THE PUBLISHER