Dr. Goldstein

ENGL 4610

Fall 2003

Study Guide for Midterm Examination

 

Please bring one bluebook and a pen to the exam.  Please do not write your name anywhere inside the bluebook.  The exam will begin promptly on the hour and take the full fifty minutes.  It will comprise three parts:

 

Part One (15 points) will test the knowledge you have acquired about historical and cultural backgrounds to medieval Arthurian literature.  This part of the exam will take the form of two columns for you to match correctly by items.  One column will include literary and historical terms, titles of works, authors, historical personages, etc.; the other column will provide identifying information.  To prepare for this section, you should review material from lectures, the assigned readings from Pearsall, the handouts I have distributed, the material from web pages I have authored.  Here is a list of terms, etc. (arranged in groups) that you should be able to understand and recognize when given specific prompts:

 

?                   Select places and languages of Roman and later Celtic world: Britannia, Britons, Brittany (Armorica), Wales, Cornwall; P-Celtic (Brythonic: Welsh, Cornish, Breton); C-Celtic (Goidelic: Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic)

 

?                   Heroic age literature: Germanic invasion (5th-6th centuries): Old English of Anglo-Saxons (e.g. Beowulf); early Welsh verse: The Gododdin, Welsh Triads; cyfarwyddyd (traditional lore) of the bards

?                   Early medieval historians: Gildas (d. 570), Bede (d. 735), “Nennius,” Historia Brittonum (c. 800), with battle of Badon; Annals of Cambria (10th century), with final battle of Camlann

?                   Medieval Welsh prose:  Mabinogion (more correctly, Mabinogi): The “Four Branches” (non-Arthurian), How Culhwch Won Olwen (by c. 1100), The Dream of Rhonabwy (c. 1200); Peredur is not on this exam.

?                   Norman Conquest (1066) and importation of French language: Norman kings of England, followed by Angevin kings of England (named for duke of Anjou: Henry II); Eleanor of Aquitaine; Capetian kings of France centralize monarchy: Louis VII (first husband of Eleanor), followed by his son, Philip II (Augustus)

?                   Geoffrey of Monmouth: Prophecies of Merlin, History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136), Life of Merlin; Robert of Gloucester (main patron & illegitimate son of Henry I), Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford (supplied alleged source in “British” language); major characters: Brutus, Utherpendragon, Vortigern, Hengist and Horsa, Octa, Merlin, Arthur, Mordred; “Breton hope” (restoration of Celtic power in Britain)

?                   Anglo-Norman French vernacularizations of Geoffrey of Monmouth in octosyllabic couplets: Geffrei Gaimar (lost Estorie des Bretons, c. 1150); Robert Wace, Roman de Brut (1155) for Eleanor of Aquitaine (introduces Round Table); early Middle English adaptation of Wace: La¥amon’s Brut (c. 1200)

?                   Biblical typologies (exodus from servitude, nation punished for sins, messianic return, Passion and Harrowing of Hell)

?                   Fin’amour (‘true love’), the literary convention of idealized love service (analogy with feudal lord-vassal relation), ennobling quality of sexual attraction: introduced in troubadour lyrics (Provençal language) of late 11th to 12th cent., amor de lonh (‘love from afar’); fin’ amour satirized in Andreas Capellanus, De amore (On Love) or De arte de amandi honeste (On the Art of Lovely Properly); further developed in 12th-cent. narrative poetry of chivalric romances; refinements of courtly society appear first in romances of antiquity (see outline lecture on web), further developed by Chrétien: quest for self-realization of individual knight in adventures; significance of inner consciousness and love

?                   Chrétien de Troyes (writing 1160s-c. 1190); patrons: Countess Marie de Champagne (Lancelot); Count Philip of Flanders (Perceval); Godefroi de Leigni (continuator of Lancelot)

?                   Aspects of twelfth-century religion: Cistercian monastic order (reformed Benedictine order), exemplified by mysticism of St. Bernard of Clairvaux; veneration of saints’ relics

?                   Historical methodology: understanding and interpreting primary historical sources.  Texts (surviving in manuscripts): narrative sources (chronicles, romances), documentary records (deeds of title to property and rights, marriage and prenuptial contracts, wills and testaments, etc.).  Non-textual sources: archeological artefacts, architecture, visual arts (paintings, manuscript illuminations, sculpture, stained glass, etc.); examples: Modena archivolt (c. 1120); excavation of tomb in Glastonbury Abbey in 1191

?                   Legal terms: fief, homage and fealty, primogeniture (inheritance preference for eldest legitimate male, without dividing estate); customary law (may or may not be written, but always tied to specific places); jurisdiction (who or what court is the competent authority: many different medieval courts, both secular and ecclesiastic); trial by combat vs. court trial

 

Part 2 (45 points) will give you a selection of brief passages from the primary texts on the syllabus that we have read up to and including Yvain.  (Peredur and the selections of Perceval will not be in this exam.)  For each passage you will be asked to identify the author, title, and context (where in the narrative it occurs) and to state in a sentence or two why the passage is significant.  To study for this section you should review the primary texts, especially focusing on episodes we concentrated on during class discussion.

 

Part 3 (40 points) will ask you to write a brief essay of about three paragraphs on one of a choice of two questions, which will prompt you to discuss a specific theme or critical problem in more than one text.  The best way to study for this section is to review all the primary texts and your class notes, and to be mentally prepared to apply your knowledge and demonstrate your understanding.