Literature test sic! answers

Some of the Anglo-Saxon literature test answers invariably brought about quite frequent moments of amusement, or even jaw-dropping surprise. Here's a sample.

1. The name of the first English historian, the Venerable Bede, yielded the following sic! alternatives: Bede de Venerable, Beve, J. Bede, Venerable Ben, the Vunerable Bede, Venerable Bene, Venerable Babe (!), Winarable Bed [somebody must have had a great need to sleep].
2. Hrothgar, the king of Danes who couldn't come to terms with Grendel, might be surprised if someone addressed him in the following manner: Heorothod, Hurirgat, Horthot, Hrothal, Hotghart, Hoerod.
3. The English word "consonants" proved problematic for a handful of people. Here are the most inventive attempts: unvowels, componants, conounts, constonances, contanents.
4. The word "metaphor" was slightly easier, though not without its own interesting possibilities: methafor, methafory.
5. Finally, we know remarkably little about the Anglo-Saxon sex-life, but according to a student they merit the name "Anglo-Sexons". Interesting...

The medieval literature test wasn't as eventful as the Old English one. The word "peace" found its sic! variant spelling *pice* (well, the more frequent mistake was "piece", but that's pretty *dysorydżinal*); a branch of holly that the Green Knight was holding in his hand miraculously turned into *a bunch of holy* and then into *a brunch of holly*; the word "fellowship" was supplanted by *failoship*; "unfaithful" became *unfairful*; "helmet" was turned into *hamlet*; the Tabard Inn was changed into *Tabor* and its owner *appears to be* a certain Thomas Becket (sic!); Queen Guinevere was re-christened into *Ginerva* (or, alternatively, *Quinevre*); The Canterbury Tales became *Canterbury Teles*and finally, Geoffrey Chaucer's name was creatively changed into *Choser*. Oh well, nothing can be perfect...

My advice: be aware of the potentials of irregular spelling, but refrain from experimentation in tests and colloquia ;)

Joseph Andrews

Text:
Bibliomania edition

Quotes:

• "A comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose." (H. Fielding, from the "Preface" to Joseph Andrews)
  
• "Life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous." (ibid.)
• "The Monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the Ridiculous to describe than to paint." (ibid.)
• "It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures seem to breathe; but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause, that they appear to think." (ibid.)
• "To discover any one to be the exact reverse of what he affects, is more surprising, and consequently more ridiculous, than to find him a little deficient in the quality he desires the reputation of." (ibid.) --> showing hypocrisy in action is better for achieving the effect of the ridiculous than revealing somebody's vanity.
• "Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller faults, of our pity; but affectation appears to me the only true source of the Ridiculous." (ibid.)
  

Contexts:

• a wiki article
• dmoz links on Fielding

Terms:
comic epic in prose; picaresque; Bildungsroman; novel of the road; intrusive narrator; digressions; the ridiculous; burlesque.

Pamela

Samuel Richardson, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded

Text:
The Project Gutenberg text

Context:
Pamela wiki article
Richardson links at the IPL
A Uni. of Michigan article

Terms:
epistolary novel; conduct book

Gulliver's Travels

Text:
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver or Gulliver's Travels (Part IV)

Quotes:
"Nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison." (part II)
"In reality all things imaginable are but Nouns." (part III)
"My principal Design was to Inform, and not to amuse thee." (part IV)

(for other quotes from the Travels see here)


Contexts:

• A wiki bio of Jonathan Swift
• Cummings's study guide of Gulliver
• Cummings's study guide of the "Modest Proposal"
  
• The rise of the novel form -- a wiki article

Terms:

• Liliput, Man-Mountain, Brobdingnag, Laputa, Yahoo, Houyhnhnm

• political satire; verbal irony; verisimilitude

Rape of the Lock

Text:

The Rape of the Lock (with notes by Cummings)

Quotes:

• "A little learning is a dangerous thing" (from the Essay on Criticism)
• "Those rules of old discovered, not devised, /Are Nature still, but Nature methodized" (ibid.)
• "A perfect judge will read each work of wit / With the same spirit that its author writ" (ibid.)
  
• "To err is human, to forgive, divine" (ibid.)
  
• "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread" (ibid.)
• "The proper study of mankind is man" (from the Essay on Man)
• "Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, / A being darkly wise, and rudely great..." (ibid.)
  

Contexts:

• RotL study guide by Cummings
• RotL study guide @ SparkNotes
  
• RotL article on Wikipedia
• Alexander Pope article on Wikipedia
• Pope on CHEAL
  

Terms:
mock-heroic; heroic couplet; epigrammatic style; hyperbole; juxtaposition; satire; Augustan; classicism; the Age of Reason; Enlightenment;

Paradise Lost

Texts:

• Book IV

• Book IX

Quotes:

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
[...] Sing, Heav'nly Muse... [Book i. Lines 1-6]

***

[...] what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. [Book i, I.22-26]

***

Yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible. [Book i. Line 62]

***

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. [Book i. Line 261]

***

Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven. [Book iv. Line 73]

***

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.
Evil, be thou my good. [Book iv. Line 108]

***

Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost. [Book ix. Line 782]

Contexts:

• Arnie Sanders' summary of PL: Books I and II; Books IV, IX and XII

• SparkNotes on PL
• PL study guide by Cummings
• PL study guide at Bibliomania
  

• A good introduction to PL

• Norton Anthology overview of PL

• PL on Wikipedia
  

• John Milton on Luminarium

• Andrew Marvell's poem as a preface to PL
  

• Major events in the 17th century
• Historical background: age of Milton and Marvell (at Bibliomania)
  

Terms:

epic; epic hero; in medias res; ab ovo; epic (extended) simile; soliloquy; flash-forward (prolepsis); flashback (analepsis); focalization (point of view); blank verse;

hubris; prelapsarian; felix culpa;

Civil War; Commonwealth; Puritans; Roundheads; Cavaliers; Restoration, Great Fire of London.

Metaphysical Poetry

Texts:

• Grierson's take on Metaphysicals

• John Donne

• George Herbert

• Henry Vaughan

• Andrew Marvell

• Ben Jonson

Listen to John Donne's “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

Quotations:

• Dull, sublunary lovers' love... (from “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”)

• Our two souls therefore, which are one, [...] / Like gold to aery thinnes beat. (from “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”)

• As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, / To taste whole joys. (from “To His Mistress Going to Bed”)

• Busy old fool, unruly sun... (from “The Sun Rising”)

• Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; (from “Sonnet 6”)

• Batter my heart, three-personed God; (from “Sonnet 10”)

• Gather ye rosebuds while ye may... (from Robert Herrick's “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”)

• I saw eternity the other night / Like a great ring of pure and endless light... (from Henry Vaughan's “The World”)

• Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, Lady, were no crime. (from “To His Coy Mistress”)

• But at my back I always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near; (from “To His Coy Mistress”)

• Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes. […] the essential quality of transmuting ideas into sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind.
  T.S. Eliot “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921)

• The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
  Samuel Johnson “The Life of Cowley” (1779)

Contexts:

• Metaphysical poets at Luminarium

• Early 17^th century poetry at Luminarium

• Grierson's intro to Metaphysicals

• Early 17^th century at Norton Topics Online

• Historical background -- age of Donne (at Bibliomania)
• Historical background -- from Donne to Dryden (at Bibliomania)
  

• John Donne study guide at Bibliomania
  
• On Donne's metaphors in "Valediction...Mourning"

• "Valediction" study guide by Cummings
• "Death be not proud" study guide by Cummings
  
• "To His Coy Mistress" study guide by Cummings
• Marvell study guide @ Bibliomania
  
• "To Celia" study guide by Cummings
  

• 17^th century major events

• Arnie Sanders' take on John Donne and George Herbert

• Google directory on 17^th century British literature

Terms:

Metaphysical ; Cavalier; Sons of Ben; conceit; emblematic conceit; microcosm-macrocosm analogy; paradox; coincidentia oppositorum; oxymoron; juxtaposition; discordia concors; concordia discors; hyperbole; shaped / pattern verse; aubade; pun; wit; masque; mannerism; baroque; counterreformation.

King Lear

Texts:

• Full text of the tragedy, with variations, annotations and commentary.

Quotations:

• Nothing will come of nothing. (Lear I.1.90)

• Thou, Nature, art my goddess. (Edmund I.2.1)

• Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend... (Lear I.4.257)

• How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child! (Lear I.4.287-8)

• I am a man / More sinned against than sinning. (Lear III.2.59-60)

• Is man no more than this? (Lear III.4.101)

• As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport. (Gloucester IV, 1.36-7)

• Humanity must perforce prey on itself, / Like monsters of the deep. (Albany IV.2.50-1)

• When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools. (Lear IV.6.182-3)

• The wheel is come full circle. (Edmund V.3.177)

Contexts:

• It's probably best to start looking around here, a Shakespeare vortal

• KL on SparkNotes

• Arnie Sanders' take on KL

• Cummings' KL study guide
  

• How to enjoy King Lear

• A nice introduction to King Lear

• A Joyce Carol Oates essay on KL

• An essay on the role of foreshadowings in the play

• The lunar calendar and temporal references in KL

• A Christian perspective

• Read about the British Theatre at the time of Shakespeare

• A .pdf text by Wheeler on tragedy, with quotes and explanations of basic terms

• A .pdf text by Wheeler comparing tragedy and comedy

• Shakespearean pronouns by Cummings
  

Terms:

tragedy, English Renaissance theatre, Elizabethan tragedy, Jacobean tragedy, tragic curve, peripeteia, tragic hero, fatal flaw, hubris, anagnorisis, catharsis, soliloquy.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Texts:

• Annotated edition by Basia Siedlecki
  
• Midsummer Night's Dream @ the University of Virginia
• MOO edition
  

Quotations:

• "I woo'd thee with my sword, / And won thy love, doing thee injuries: / But I will wed thee in another key..." (Theseus, I.1)
  
• "Fair Hermia, question your desires..." (Theseus, I.1)
• "O teach me how you look..." (Helena, I.1)
  
• "The course of true love never did run smooth..." (Lysander, I.1)
• "Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
  Love can transpose to form and dignity." (Helena, I.1)
• "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
  And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." (Helena, I.1)
• "Who will not change a raven for a dove?" (Lysander, II.2)
• "What fools these mortals be!" (Puck, III.2)
• "Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, / The ear more quick of apprehension makes, / Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, / It pays the hearing double recompense." (Hermia, III.2)
  
• "The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. " (Bottom's synaesthesia, IV.1)
• Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
  Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
  More than cool reason ever comprehends.
  The lunatic, the lover and the poet
  Are of imagination all compact:
  One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
  That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
  Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
  The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
  Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
  And as imagination bodies forth
  The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
  Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
  A local habitation and a name. (Theseus, V.1)
  
  
• If we shadows have offended,
  Think but this, and all is mended,
  That you have but slumber'd here
  While these visions did appear. (Puck, epilogue)

Contexts:

• SparkNotes study guide
• Shakespeare @ eNotes
• Cummings' study guide to MND
• VoS links to Shakespeare resources
• Shakespeare resources

• Jack Lynch's links (scroll down to Shakespeare)

• Shakespeare Study Guides at Bibliomania
  

• Shakespeare Study Guides by Cummings
  

• Everyday expressions taken from Shakespeare (collected by Cummings)
• Shakespeare quotations (by Cummings)
  
• Four phases of Shakespeare's life (by Cummings)
  
• Facts from Shakespeare's life (by Cummings)
• Folios and quartos (by Cummings)
• Shakespeare's manuscripts (by Cummings)
  
• The Globe theatre (by Cummings)
• Special effects in Elizabethan theatre (by Cummings)
• Medicine in Shakespeare (by Cummings)
  

Terms:
masque, masque (2), a play within a play, breaking the frame, mechanicals' (or: craftsmen's) play, apron stage (or T-stage)

The Faerie Queene

Text:

Book I, Canto I from the RPO

Contexts:

• Spenser's biography @ the University of Cambridge

• Explanation of various literary terms and some useful notes on the Faerie Queene

• SparkNotes on the FQ

• Bartleby on the FQ

• An essay on Spenser's didacticism in the FQ

• An essay about the spiritual warfare in the FQ

• VoS links to Spenser resources

• Fun stuff: English Handwriting 1500-1700 course

• An intertextual connection – compare the first book of FQ with the 17^th century allegorical novel Pilgrim's Progress

Terms:

romance, knight errant, quest, allegorical epic, in medias res, epic similes, emblem books , Spenserian stanza, patronage, propaganda.

The English Sonnet

Texts:

Sir Thomas Wyatt

• “The Long Love That In My Thought Doth Harbour”
• “My Galley Charged With Forgetfulness”
• “I Find No Peace”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

• “Love That Liveth and Reigneth In My Thought”

Sir Philip Sidney

• fragments from The Defence of Poesie (An Apology for Poetry)

from Astrophel and Stella

• sonnet I
• sonnet II
• sonnet XXXI

William Shakespeare

• Sonnet XVIII
• Sonnet CVI
• Sonnet CXVI
• Sonnet CXXX

listen to some Shakespeare's sonnets

Edmund Spenser

• from Amoretti (Sonnet I, XXXIIII, LXXV)

Contexts:

• Renaissance @ Luminarium

• Renascence and Reformation @ bartleby

• Fifteenth century changes in vocabulary @ bartleby

• Read about Sidney's Defense of Poesie
  

• Prosody from Chaucer to Spenser @ bartleby

• The Elizabethan sonnet @ bartleby

• The sonnet in England (by Noble)

• Wikipedia about the sonnet form

• Wyatt and Surrey prosody @ bartleby

• Wyatt's treatment of love @ bartleby

• Wyatt and Surrey comparison

• About Spenser @ bartleby

• Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" study guide by Cummings
  

• Internet Shakespeare Editions

• Shakespeare resources

• Listen to some Shakespeare sonnets @ loudlit

• Shake-Speare Sonnets @ Wikipedia
  

• Shakespeare study guides @ SparkNotes

• Shakespeare's sonnets @ SparkNotes
• Historical background: Elizabethan England @ Bibliomania
  

Terms:

Petrarchan sonnet, Shakespearean sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, terza rima, ottava rima, octave, sestet, quatrain, tercet, couplet, volta, heroic verse, blank verse, iambic pentameter, decasyllabic line, scansion, meter, stanza, Neoplatonism.

The Canterbury Tales

Texts:

• Professor Duncan's edition of the “General Prologue”, together with hypertext notes and voice readings.
• A side-by-side edition of the General Prologue together with glossary (Middle English adapted version and contemporary translation).
• A traditional edition of the Middle English version.
• A modern edition of The Canterbury Tales.

• Sound recordings from various parts of the text.
• Sound clips from a selection of English texts hosted by the Norton Anthology on-line edition.

• A basic Chaucer glossary.
• Have a look at Caxton's first two editions of The Canterbury Tales.
  

Contexts:

• Chaucer at the Luminarium site.
• An annotated guide to an on-line Chaucer study.
• The Voice of the Shuttle collection of Chaucer links.
• Chaucer materials.
• A Wikipedia article on the Canterbury Tales.
• Canterbury Tales at SparkNotes.
• CT at NovelGuide
  

Terms:

vernacular language, St Thomas Becket, frame story, heroic couplet, iambic pentameter, irony, fabliau, romance, Breton lai, exemplum, beast fable, physiognomy, theory of four humours.

Cuckoo Song

As a way of introduction to the beginning of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, here's a post about a poem somewhat similar in tone to it.

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu-
Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu;
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu!

Cuccu, cuccu, well singes thu, cuccu:
Ne swike thu naver nu;
Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu,
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!

Read a translation of the text here.

You can sing it, too...

Read a bit about it.

You might also want to compare it with some newer variations on the theme:

• Rudyard Kipling's
• T.S. Eliot's beginning of the Waste Land
• or his buddy's parody of the Cuckoo poem, as more applicable in this season of dark November:

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,

So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

(Ezra Pound)

The Pearl

Texts:

• original version

• a modern translation along with comments

Contexts:

• a Wikipedia article on the poem
• a Wikipedia article on the medieval usage of allegory
• the symbolical potential of fleur-de-lis
  

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Texts:

• To get to know the whole story read the prose translation which can be found in the Krzysztof Fordoński anthology (available in library): pages from 114 to 143. This is the Jessie Weston translation. You may like to compare it with the Representative Poetry On-line version
  

• For our meeting bring the translation from the Mazur & Bela anthology (available in library): pp. 32-41

• Also, read Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur (excerpts from the Mazur & Bela anthology, pp. 60-68)

• Excerpts from the Roman de la Rose

Contexts:

• Gawain study questions

• A Wikipedia article on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

• About Sir Gawain

• A Gawain project

• A Gawain study guide at Bibliomania
  

• A commercial reading of the Gawain story

• Luminarium

• About Roman de la Rose
  

• Medieval literature resources
• Read about the medieval context, such as food, architecture, music and science in those times
• The Age of Feudalism -- a study guide by Cummings
  

Terms:

romance, quest,courtly love (1), courtly love (2), chivalry, five cardinal virtues (purity, courtesy, piety, generosity, love of his fellows / fellowship), pentacle / pentangle, allegory, Alliterative Revival, stock, bob and wheel

Beowulf

Texts:

• F.B. Gummere's translation with additional info

• Another F.B. Gummere's translation

• David Breeden's adaptation
  

• Listen to Seamus Heaney's readings from his own translation of Beowulf (to be found in the Norton Anthology – available in Biblioteka)

• Listen to some Old English lines taken from Beowulf

Contexts:

• Norton background info on Beowulf
• Beowulf study guide by Cummings
• Beowulf at NovelGuide
  
• Norton study questions
• UCI study questions
• Some problems with translating Old English texts
• Seamus Heaney on his translation
• A host of links to further Beowulf pages

The Dream of the Rood

Texts:

• original
• listen to the original (you'll need RealPlayer)
• a modern translation by Jonathan A. Glenn
  
• a prose translation by Charles W. Kennedy (.pdf)
• side-by-side versions (original + translation) by Mark Leech and Carmen A. Butcher
  

Contexts:

• Jonathan A. Glenn's outline of the poem
• the historical context of the poem by Karl Young
  
• Anglo-Saxon literature
• A glossary of literary terms and definitions

Terms:
Cynewulf, the Ruthwell Cross, passion poetry, dream vision allegory, framework narrative, prosopopoeia, hwaet!, Celtic Christianity, Wyrd, elegiac tone, Ecce Homo.

Old English context

A series of Wikipedia articles concerning the context of the beginnings of English literature:

Ancient Britain
Roman Britain
History of Anglo-Saxon England


Old and Middle English places of interest and importance for literature.
source: Pat Rogers (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature.

Caedmon's Hymn and Riddles

Texts:

• Caedmon's Hymn
• listen to a West Saxon version of Caedmon's Hymn (.mp3)
• Riddles

Contexts:

• About Caedmon
• The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
• BBC Anglo-Saxons feature

Terms:
oral tradition, Celts, druid, bard, fili (pl. filid), ollamh, Iona, Lindisfarne, Kells, Bangor, Celtic Christianity, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, runes, runic alphabet, Futhorc, charms, riddles, St. Augustine of Canterbury, Whitby, gleeman, scop [pron. shope], Deor, Widsith, elegiac, epic, kenning, caesura, alliteration, the Venerable Bede, Wyrd, Drihten