Week 9 Brit Lit Before 1800 Notes PDF

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Notes from Week 9 British Literature in Dr. Zeman British Literature before 1800 class during week 9 over Knight of the Burning Pestle. ...

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British Literature Before 1800 Notes 10/22/2019  Last Week o Don Quixote  A big joke on Romanticism  A Travel Narrative that is heavily satirical  A story with a recursive, repetitious format  Whether it is part 1 or 84, the story will remain the same  There is no happily ever after in this story, just the same man doing the same things…  Books in Don Quixote  Books played a big role in the story  The books represent that people who condemned romances were hypocritical because they too read these romances  Romances were the best sellers of the time period  Romantic texts were considered morally corrupting  Metatextual Concepts  The text makes fun of itself  Don Quixote is from a region of Spain that NO ONE knows  Clever book names that allude to the author  Don Quixote is a Knight from the Spaniard Boonies and his “Noble Steed” is not noble whatsoever  Held up to be the first novel o NOT ROBINSON CRUSOE, IAN WATT POPULARIZED THE BOOK IN 1950 WITH HIS LITERARY CRITICISM! ENGLAND WAS NOT CLOSE TO A WORLD POWER IN THIS TIME PERIOD LIKE ITALY AND SPAIN  A novel is written in prose, NOT verse o Knight of the Burning Pestle  The English Don Quixote  The wife wants a romantic story for the middle class  The Title’s Hidden Meaning  Burning Pestle: A burning penis with syphilis  Beaumont: A Man of Dick Jokes  BG Info: Francis Beaumont  Came 20 years before Shakespeare, died around the same time he did  Friends with John Fletcher o They shared everything together… were they homosexual?  Was Beaumont inspired by Don Quixote to write the Burning Pestle or did he create this work independently?  The play was a disaster when it hit the stage

o Prologue of the text states this: “this unfortunate child who in eight days (as lately I have learned) was begot and born, soon after by his parents (perhaps because he was so unlike his brethren) exposed to the wide world…has not been moved both to relieve and cherish it”. o The text was not understood fully in the time period o This text has also been modified to be easier to understand the meaning behind its words o This prologue claimed that Don Quixote is a year younger than this text, unsure of legitimacy o Knight of the Burning Pestle  George and Nell: Citizen and Wife  Want to be in the exclusive world of the private theater  Socially inept, do not know the rules of polite society  New money, they don’t know the rules of upper-class people  In the Play: o They climb on the stage rudely; the theater was not everything we have made it out to be in modern day o The reason someone would go onto a stage would be to make themselves known  Get a wife  Show off clothes  Show off sexy features (e.g. legs)  State your opinions  Show your wit to detract from the play  Women were seen to be o Nell doesn’t get that it’s acting  Gives candy, bandaids, support for fallen characters in despair  She thinks the actors are like kids, calling them adorable and wanting to take them home with her  Nell acts as a mouthpiece for the audience  She is dumb and credulous, so you must be smarter and more literate than her  Nell is an example of how not to be in the theater: “Look!”  A clever strategy to prevent this kind of interruption was to put actors on the stage before someone like Nell in the audience can interrupt the play o Nell gives George all kinds of nicknames  Nell is bringing the private sphere into the public

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Nell does not have the fundamental boundaries of what is okay and not okay to discuss in the public  Women were not allowed on the stage in any way, shape or form (changes in 1660s) and Nell breaks this rule  “…those females who have been so immodest as to resort to theaters and stageplayes, which finde or make them harlots” -William Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix (1633)  Even if you were upper class, you were still seen as immoral to it but still fancy a.f.  Rafe: Same name as Ralph, Knight of the Burning Pestle apprentice, training to be a grosser  What is an apprentice? o A contractual relationship where someone is taught by a master of their craft so that they too are a master as well o After an apprenticeship is completed, the person becomes a citizen o Citizens were part of the middle class, they are not aristocracy but increasingly in this period they have enough money to move up in the world  Romantic aspects of this play o Rafe is trying to become a knight o He also has a dwarf named George – all the good knights have one o He is currently a squire asked to kill a lion  Rafe is the Knight Don Quixote in the Burning Pestle o Rafe renames the things around him  “Damned Bitch” = “Beautiful Damsel”  “Horses” = “Palfreys” o Masterless Men: Left their parish/line of work they obtained/were forced to pursue in favor of adventure throughout London o Rafe becomes a man who broke the law and became a rogue to pursue this overly romanced idea of becoming a Knight, despite the apprenticeship he possesses o Cue Scripts: A portion of the script given to memorize. Key phrases indicate when the actor talks next even with potential interruptions from the audience.  Sometimes Shakespeare would have the same cue words 8 or 10 times in a row, this encouraged actors to improvise and rush to get out their lines in a more condensed manner

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If actors always wait on cues it can be like two individuals having two separate conversations  This method of using cues changes the tone  “Popcorn reading”: Everyone pay attention for your turn to read in class! o Scripts do not capture what happens in the play  This does not include stage directions which are given in the text  COMMONPLACE BOOKS o Start using OED to find definitions for different words used, really analyze the quotes you picked out (at least 1) and explain how your knowledge of the mutated meaning is changed and looks different to you with the combined knowledge you possess British Literature Before 1800 Notes 10/24/19  Participation Grades o We need to master talking about literature in real time, she isn’t going to give us A’s for participation just because o If talking in class is difficult for you, try writing weekly reading responses BUT ask her first!! o If you received a C or lower on the essay, you can revise it for a higher grade!  You can revise papers in real life, you can do it in this class  Meet with Dr. Z to discuss revisions  Meet during office hours or set up an appointment  Just because you revise it does not mean you get a better grade, you need to effectively address the issues  Revisions are due next Thursday, October 31st o Essay 2 – There is no prompt!  You need to answer a question of your own prompt  You need to make it argumentative  You need to find a literary critic who writes on your chosen text/genre and incorporate their claims  You also need one OED definition citation  Attend to individual word choices  Find words with mutated meanings you wouldn’t anticipate  Show that you do the research!  5-6-page length  Drafts are due November 7th, which is exclusively a peer review day!  Bring in 2 hard copies  Final Essays are due November 12th!!  You need to do a lot more with this essay  Feel free to email her for feedback about this  Anything you all write about this essay will not come up as a question on the exam – do no write about tactical agency for your prompt if you want it reserved for the final!

o Also…COMMONPLACE BOOKS ASSIGNMENT!!!  If you haven’t given her entries to look over you can still send some to her to look over, it is worth 20 percent of your grade  150 words per entry, total of 15 pages!  Earlier deadlines have been provided to incentivize the fact that we are doing this  Submissions will be in chunks  At the end of the reading on Antony and Cleopatra, turn in your chunks  A very cliched exercise  Normally how this works is they should be many short, closed readings  Close read the hell out of them  She doesn’t mind if we do broader commentary of the cultural states of the text being discussed and how they matter towards us today  DO NOT do plot summary for any of these entries, DELETE THEM  Organize them in an aesthetically pleasing manner, one that is easy to read and differentiate between separate entries  Last Time o Knight of the “Burning pestle” = joke on syphilis o Nell (and George)  Embodiment of HOW NOT TO ACT while on stage  Peanut Gallery  Old men in the balcony in the Muppet Show  Says what the audience was thinking o The text was written in 8 days  The audiences did not get the privy mark of irony about it  28 years later people did get it, though during the Caroline Monarchy  Irony and Satire had an easier time on the stage o A Middle-Class Romance o Apprentices in this period took on their positions to become citizens and began earning capital while moving up in the world  Not socially required but if you wanted to be a guild member or highranking individual you needed to be an apprentice o Masterless Men  Men who gave up their apprenticeship in pursuit of adventuring around London to make it big  Challenging the pigeon holes they were placed in  This freaked out the crown  Rafe o Rafe  Criminal, roguish for abandoning his apprenticeship  Converting the chivalric order  Romance is thought of as a conservative order

 There are no middle-class heroes because the knight in the story is traditionally an aristocrat  A grocer errant = an errant who is a grocer; they don’t go together!  Errant- Free roaming knight, anti-domesticity, from latin meaning ‘to wander’  Grocer – The perfect image of domesticity, a man who stays in his store These two ideas do NOT go together!   When Rafe first enters the stage  Explains who would want to sit around doing nothing when you can go out and be an adventurous knight  He goes to Moldovia  Today’s Reading, Cont. o Rafe meets the Lady of Moldovia  Act 4  Moldovia is on the Christian/Muslim frontier  Romances are texts that are very much invested in frontiers of lands that are contested  A trope that continually comes up is Christian knights wooing Muslim daughters  They like this trope because it is about converting them and taking the muslim lines of lineage and converting them as well  Culturally xenophobic  Cross cultural romances show up a lot  We do not get a cross cultural romance here because Rafe is loyal to Susan, a cobbler’s maid  Rafe said he will not dally with women who believe in the antichrist  Unclear if he means she is catholic or muslim  If they were not protestant, they were antichrist  Rafe gives her money instead  Money is not mentioned in a romance text  Paying money to show respect is a strange occurrence in a romance  Rafe gets all this money from George and Nell, who give them money during the play  It could be interpreted as Rafe is buying his way to put himself as a higher class  Buying trinkets at bumbo fair  An example of commerce  The grocer is partaking in commerce, not knight errantry  Rafe has come across borders to advertise English victuals  Rafe does not court the lady, he advertises beer and fine food goods from England to this muslim woman countries away  The Barber

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Barbarossa is accused of being called a giant by Rafe A barber in the period did more than cut hair, they also give medical treatment  They usually helped treat syphilis o E.G. Doctor Barber from The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack  Rafe made him into a villain, misinterpreting his character  Giants are often coded as Muslim o Greek Mythology: Giants/Titans are terms used interchangeably o Alludes to the opposition between the Gods and titans as analogous to Muslims and Christians in the time period  Muslims are known as upstarts in this period because it was assumed if you joined this group you did it to gain money and power in the time period Entr’acte  Interlude  What fascinates the scholars of this text is this interlude which is always included in plays during the time  Polyphonic- multiple voices o There are multiple types of entertainment going on at any given moment o London Merchant Story, Knight of Burning Pestle Story, etc. … o We do not know all the ways these plays entertained in so many ways at once but Knight of the Burning Pestle sheds light on these methods for us Stichomythia  A love triangle in the merchant story found throughout Knight of the Burning Pestle...