I Was The Best Fellow

In modern society, Martha Stewart and Miss Manners are authorities in the social amenities of community gatherings, and they promote their ideas in television programs and books. But in the Middle Ages, elegant behavior is illustrated in the Middle English poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in a detailed account of a holiday celebration at King Arthur’s castle. In this text, the idea of courtesy is shown as the foremost attribute of a knight, and King Arthur is introduced as the “most courteous of all” (26) rulers. In a mealtime setting, the lives and customs of “[t]he most noble knights known under Christ” (51) are displayed, and courteous behavior is established as the hallmark

He knew the taverns well in every town / And every innkeeper and barmaid too / Better than lepers, beggars and that crew, / For so eminent a man as he / It was not fitting with dignity / Of his position, dreading with a scum / of wretched lepers; nothing good can come / Of commerce with slum-and-gutter dwellers, / But only with the rich and sellers. (9)

Throughout the Anglo-Saxon and Middle Age periods the main characters always had a similar established value; honor. This value is prominent in Beowulf, “The Seafarer”, and The Canterbury Tales. Each of the main characters portray honor either to himself, his followers, his king, and/or his God. These poems are the different aspects of honor intertwined together to form the most prevailing value during this time frame.

I had hired a small residence when I first arrived in London. It consisted of only two rooms, the larger which I used as my laboratory and the other my sleeping quarters. With luck— or quite possibly misfortune— Clerval informed me that he would be traveling to a town near the coast of Britain in order to discuss sea-trade with several well-versed merchants. Furthermore, he informed me that he would be absent from my presence for, at the minimum, three months. I was both relieved and distraught; the time I possessed while Clerval would be gone was more than enough to fulfill my promise to the wretched creature, but it was a task I dreaded dearly. Nevertheless, as soon as he commenced on his quest, I commenced on my own.

Both human honor and human frailty are prevalent throughout the vast works of medieval literature. There is an undeniable pattern amongst such works that presents a heroic code of honor, but also exposes the trickery or deceit some have selfishly fallen victim to. Whether it is a boastful display of courage and bravery, or a shameful episode of cowardice and temptation, the characters of Anglo-Saxon literature demonstrate both the best and the worst of each. In this essay, I will use the poems “The Wanderer”, Beowulf, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to exemplify this point.

The Knight’s Tale tells of two brave knights who lost the true meaning of chivalry. The true hero in this tale is Duke Theseus due to the way the Duke honored the wishes of two women. “For pity quickly stirs in a noble heart.” When Theseus first saw the two men, his demeanor expressed anger, but when Theseus listened to the entreaties of his wife and sister-in-law, the Duke yielded. A hero seeks not to just fulfill privatistic wishes, but the desires of others too, and when at fault confesses.

In this tale, it is told that a knight, which overcomes lust to rape women, is to be punished by death for his sexual impulses. After given another chance by fulfilling a request of what women really want in love in a span of a year and a day, the knight makes a deal with an old lady as his last resort. “What thyng it is, that wommen moost desire. / Koude ye me wisse, I wolde wel quite youre hire. [...] /

“Cruel”, “hideous”, “horrible”, and “beastly” are all used to describe the disturbingly horrific scene of the peasants sharpening their weapons (203). It is clear by Dickens’ diction that this crowd is filled with intense rage and a longing for retribution. The negative outcome of this is that the people of France start to have a greater thirst for blood than the nobles. Following this, the people of France find a new way to inflict harm on their oppressors with the infamous Guillotine. Though this machinery starts off executing members of the aristocracy, it is not long before Dickens states, “Every day through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned.

One’s social and economical status has, throughout all of history, been a very important aspect of one’s life. It influences the education one can receive, what work they are eligible to do, and their position in their world as a whole. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer explores a variety of positions in medieval society through his characters. The feudal hierarchy Chaucer explored over 600 years ago such as the clergy, the middle class, and the nobility are all comparable to the societal classes of today’s world.

“ One of the fellows was about seventy, or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses – no, he only had one. He had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm, and both of them had big fat ratty-looking carpet-bags.” – the Duke of Bridgewater

This shows that during this time it was frowned upon to do these things, but not as frowned upon as today. This example shows law and order. It portrays how people have changed their payback methods as

The old world, absorbed in the worship of material things, had no taste for culture or improving the mind, and in order to arouse it from the imagination by excessive austerity. Greedy of novelty and anything emotional, the people flocked to visit those wonderful religious recluses, who made a study of martyrdom, some shutting themselves up in a den where they could neither stand upright or lie down; others lying motionless day and night upon a narrow plank, or on top of a column, exposed to all weathers; all of them refusing meat, drink and sleep, and only taking enough to keep them alive. These men, who only thought of their bodies as a instrument for torture, in order to give themselves up exclusively to penitentiary practices and the contemplation of a future life, attracted general attention. As tender-hearted for others as they were pitiless for themselves, they took an interest in all suffering, they consoled the sorrowful,

The first chapter provides the reader with a brief walk through the history of violence throughout the centuries. Topics he touched on include of the biblical times’ bloody, wrathful written history as a principle even if many of these instances never occurred. Keeping in mind the stoning, beheading, burnings, and mutilation you could receive as punishment for a cardinal sin, torture in general was widely accepted and practiced during

Notably, the nobility were particularly disdainful of the merchants who, in the eyes of the nobility, were perceived as misers. The nobility’s behavior was in contrast to that of the merchants; the noblemen

“The brutal punishments inflicted on the revolutionary peasants included such things as gouging out eyes and ripping out tongues ...or would simply hack them to pieces”