Select Search
World Factbook
Roget's Int'l Thesaurus
Bartlett's Quotations
Respectfully Quoted
Fowler's King's English
Strunk's Style
Mencken's Language
Cambridge History
The King James Bible
Oxford Shakespeare
Gray's Anatomy
Farmer's Cookbook
Post's Etiquette
Brewer's Phrase & Fable
Bulfinch's Mythology
Frazer's Golden Bough
All Verse
Anthologies
Dickinson, E.
Eliot, T.S.
Frost, R.
Hopkins, G.M.
Keats, J.
Lawrence, D.H.
Masters, E.L.
Sandburg, C.
Sassoon, S.
Whitman, W.
Wordsworth, W.
Yeats, W.B.
All Nonfiction
Harvard Classics
American Essays
Einstein's Relativity
Grant, U.S.
Roosevelt, T.
Wells's History
Presidential Inaugurals
All Fiction
Shelf of Fiction
Ghost Stories
Short Stories
Shaw, G.B.
Stein, G.
Stevenson, R.L.
Wells, H.G.
Reference
>
Cambridge History
>
From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance
>
Early Transition English
> Hortatory Verse and Prose
Genesis and Exodus
The Bestiary; An Bispel; Sawles Warde
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(190721).
Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance.
XI.
Early Transition English
.
§ 6. Hortatory Verse and Prose.
The corresponding section of hortatory writings is of mixed character. It comprises both verse and prose, and its effects are produced in divers manners. Sometimes it is by satire in which prevailing vices are specifically arraigned, elsewhere by stock devices for terrifying evil-doers; or again, the method may be the less aggressive one of allegorical teaching. All these writings have but one aim, that of inculcating holier living. Beginning with the satires, we have in
Hwon holy chireche is under note
a short poem in septenars, in which the evils of simony within the church, and the general hatred of the church without are lamented.
Sinners Beware,
a more ambitious effort in six-line stanzas
(aabaab),
is directed against the age generally, though worldly priests, a rapacious soldiery, cheating chapmen and haughty ladies are the types directly aimed at. And, again, in a
Lutel Soth Sermun
a poem in septenarsbad brewers and bakers, priests wives and illicit lovers like Malkin and Jankin are railed against. While thus assailing the vice of certain types and classes the writers frequently follow up their indictment with the argument of terror, after the fashion of the
Poema Morale..
Material for thundering of this sort lay ready to hand in medieval compositions connected with the subjects of doomsday, death and hell, such as the Old English
Be Domes Daege, The Address of the Soul to the Body
and
The Vision of St. Paul..
In the poem called
Doomsday
and in the work
On Serving Christ
the first of these themes is logically pursued. The clearest use of
The Address
motive appears in the poem
Death,
the sequence of ideas observed in
The Address
being here preserved,
12
while, in addition, the theme is slightly developed. Other reminiscences of the same motive also appear in the fragmentary
Signs of Death
and in
Sinners Beware
(11. 331 ff.). Of
The Vision of St. Paul
traces are clearly seen in
The XI Pains of Hell..
The depicting of hell was a favourite medieval exercise, and
The Vision
is found in several languages. The archangel Michael is represented as conducting St. Paul into the gloomy abode, and Dantes journey under Vergils guidance is merely a variation of this theme.
The Vision
can be traced in the twelfth century homily
In Diebus Dominicis,
where sabbath-breakers are warned. In
The XI Pains of Hell
a poem in riming coupletsthe treatment is modified by the addition of the popular
Address
element. A lost soul describes the place of torment for St. Pauls benefit, whereas in
The Vision
the description proceeds from the apostle himself.
13
Note 12
.
Mod. Lang. Notes
(1890), p. 193.
[
back
]
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Genesis and Exodus
The Bestiary; An Bispel; Sawles Warde
Shakespeare
·
Bible
·
Strunk
·
Anatomy
·
Nonfiction
·
Quotations
·
Reference
·
Fiction
·
Poetry
©
19932020
Bartleby.com
· [
Top 150
] ·
Subjects
·
Titles
·
Authors
·
World Lit
·
Free Essays