Category: Lesson Plans

Teaching John Smith: Supplementing the Norton

9/6/2014

I teach my survey of Early American Lit from the Norton Anthology. I find their selection of texts from Smith to be a bit perplexing, so in order to flesh out class discussion and engage my students, I draw from a wealth of online sources too, which I would like to share with you. These sources help to supplement what we read in the Norton.

First of all, the entire class reads the short selection from A Description of New England, and we open with a discussion of Smith's rhetorical deftness.

Israel Smith Clare, Illustrated Universal History (Philadelphia: J. C. McCurdy & Co., 1878) 256.

If he have any grain of faith or zeal in Religion, what can he do less hurtful to any; or more agreeable to God, than to seek to convert those poor savages to know Christ, and humanity, whose labors with discretion will triple requite thy charge and pains? ...

What so truly suits with honor and honesty, as the discovering things unknown? erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue; and gain to our native mother-country a kingdom to attend her; find employment for those that are idle, because they know not what to do: so far from wronging any, as to cause posterity to remember thee; and remembering thee, ever honor that remembrance with praise?

We begin class with a discussion of the idea of something being requited in triplicate. Here and elsewhere, Smith defends the colonialist project in America as something that benefits 1) God, 2) England, and 3) the individual colonist. He uses this three-pronged approached to convince people to move to Jamestown.

Ask your students to identify when he is addressing each one of these goals, and how he does so. For example, when he discusses how colonization will benefit England, he uses multiple angles to make it seem absolutely necessary for his contemporary society to send people off to Jamestown.

Then, who would live at home idly (or think in himself any worth to live) only to eat, drink, and sleep, and so die? Or by consuming that carelessly, his friends got worthily? Or by using that miserably, that maintained virtue honestly? Or, for being descended nobly, pine with the vain vaunt of great kindred, in penury? ... [Then] cozen thy kindred, yea even thine own brother, and wish thy parents’ death (I will not say damnation) to have their estates?

Here, Smith is discussing the social problem of primogeniture in England--the custom whereby younger sons of the landed gentry were essentially disinherited so that the family could preserve the large estate for future generations through the sole line of the eldest son. If you are interested in the topic of primogeniture, especially in the context of literary studies, I recommend the now-classic essay by Louis Adrian Montrose, "'The Place of a Brother' in As You Like It: Social Process and Comic Form," Shakespeare Quarterly 32.1 (1981): 28-54.

In this passage, Smith is arguing that the younger, disinherited sons of noble families can be sent to America where they will not only bring themselves honor and praise but also stop being such a troublesome burden to their families. But the efficacy of shipping off England's problem citizens doesn't end with the noble (but impoverished) classes; he also suggests that sending of the vagrant lower classes will solve problems for England.

In addition, he considers England's standing in terms of international politics:

For those of you unused to reading the typeface of early English books, the passage above, taken from Early English Books Online (EEBO) since it is not in the Norton, says the following:

It would be an history of a large volume to recite the adventures of the Spaniards and the Portugals [i.e., the Portuguese] : their affronts and defeats, their dangers and miseries, which with such incomparable honor and constant resolution, so far beyond belief, they have attempted and endured in their discoveries and plantations, as may well condemn us, of too much imbecility, sloth, and negligence. Yet, the authors of those new inventions were held as ridiculous for a long time as now are others, that do but seek to imitate their unparalleled virtues.

Here, Smith appeals to national pride: Jamestown will not only remove all sorts of unwanted people from England, giving them important jobs in the process, but also serve as means to augment England in the world's eyes, making her into a stronger rival against Spain and Portugal. He is telling his readers that they can have their cake and eat it too.

This rhetoric of gain upon gain is written everywhere in the Description of New England, especially where Smith declares that the work in New England is as easy as it is profitable:

[Man], woman and child, with a small hook and line, by angling, may take diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasures[.] And is it not pretty sport, to pull up two pence, six pence, and twelve pence, as fast as you can hale and vear a line? He is a very bad fisher, [who] cannot kill in one day with his hook and line, one, two, or three hundred cods.

He seems to disregard the law of supply and demand, claiming that it is both easy and extremely profitable to fish in New England. Ask your students to think about how that normally works. If it is THAT easy to catch 300 codfish in a day, why would any of your neighbors pay you to fish for them?

Asking students to think about the purpose of this writing is a very productive exercise. The discussion topics above help students to see A Description of New England not as a "description" but as an advertisement or a piece of propaganda. His truth-claims are about as credible as an advertiser's would be: we should think of him as "selling" the idea of "New England" (the first time this description was used to name this geographical region) rather than accurately reporting what things were like there. As such, his report tells us more about the social psyche of England in 1616 than it tells us about real life in the Virginia Colony.

Smith rescued by Pocahontas Lithograph. Published by Hr. Schile, No. 36 Division St., [between 1870 and 1875] Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-03285.

This discussion makes a very good transition into supplementary material about John Smith's description of his rescue by Pocahontas. The Norton has the very brief mention of Pocahontas in Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). The passage of note is towards the end of their excerpt:

At last they brought him to Meronocomo, where was Powhatan their Emperor... having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death...

1616 engraving by Simon van de Passe

Oil portrait by an unidentified artist (c. 1760), after van de Passe's engraving.

A longer description of Pocahontas herself appears in Smith's 1616 letter to Queen Anne, which you can read at Digital History, a site maintained by the University of Houston.

Pocahontas saving the life of Capt. John Smith. Chromolithograph, color. Boston: New Eng. Chromo. Lith. Co., c1870. Library of Congess, LC-USZC4-3368.

I ask one student out of the group to read the Norton excerpt of the Generall Historie and the 1616 Letter to Queen Anne. This student is responsible for presenting his or her outside research to the class. I give the presenting student the following guiding questions:

Compare John Smith's accounts to Disney's 1995 movie, Pocahontas. If you haven’t seen the Disney movie, the most basic differences between the historical accounts and the Disney movie are 1) that Disney makes Pocahontas 18-20 years old instead of 12-13 years old and 2) that the movie explains Pocahontas' actions as motivated by romantic (and mutual) love. There is also a helpful chart comparing Smith’s story to the Disney movie at this link. Chief Roy Crazy Horse (of the Powhatan Nation) also discusses the Disney movie, a discussion that you can find at this link. Why does Disney turn the historical events into a love story? What does that narrative do for America—how does it romanticize the story of the early interactions between English settlers and Native Americans? Why it has been so important to elevate Smith's story to the status of a national myth, especially a love story? Are their elements of Smith's accounts that suggest or lead to this rendering of the story into the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet?

Disney's 1995 Pocahontas

There are many, many benefits to this exercise.

First and foremost, it corrects student misconceptions about this moment in history since many students are more familiar with the Disney version than they are with the historical accounts.

Secondly, it asks them to think about whether Disney's version of the events serves an ideological purpose of some sort. Some students are quick to dismiss the idea that Disney's version is a form of propaganda--especially those who have not read the excerpt by Chief Roy Crazy Horse. They tend to think that Disney is telling a fairy tale, like Cinderella and Snow White, but harmlessly setting it into the context of a real, historical event. These students argue that this is simply an American version of Romeo and Juliet.

The student presenters, however, are quick to point out that Disney breaks the colonialists group up into groups of "bad" colonists who want to exploit the land and who resort to violence in order to do so and "good" colonists who want to love the Native Americans. Disney presents the problem of America's genocidal war against the Indians as a result of the "bad" colonists, and not the colonial project itself. As one of my students said in class, "Disney lets white Americans feel less guilty about what happened." This discussion lead to an interesting debate in class: if history is converted into a myth, then who is responsible for how the myth is disseminated into a culture? Is it our fault for not reading the history books and learning as best we can about what "really" happened? Or is it Disney's fault for telling an easy, seductive story that makes us feel better about what happened? Who is responsible when myths and stories cause interference with history?

"Poccahontas [sic]: A Story of the First English Emigrants to North America, Founded on Fact." Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation. 1.37 (September 9, 1852): 577-82; 1.38 (September 16, 1852): 594-97; 1.39 (September 23, 1852): 610-12; 1.40 (September 30, 1852): 625-27. A serialized novel loosely based on the "real" story.

Another faction of students put forth the argument that a competing or additional problem with Disney's rendering of the events into a love story has to do with gender. These students argued that Disney--at least in 1995--didn't know how to market stories to girls without including romantic love. John Smith's biography and the circumstances of his rescue by Pocahontas are interesting enough that Disney didn't have to resort to the love story plot. The real-life events could have been formatted into a story about a man's personal growth through a physical journey (like Finding Nemo) or about the duties that children have to families (like The Lion King) or about children resisting familial pressure (like Brave); however, Disney didn't opt to tell the story of Pocahontas through any of those genres. Students speculated that Disney thought the movie would sell better if it continued its success in the princess genre, which served to reinforce the narrative that women find their happy ending through fulfillment in romantic love.

It is important to tell students that Disney did not event the love story--this is a narrative tradition that goes back hundreds of years. They people at Disney weren't writing in a vacuum, but they did make a conscious choice to perpetuate the love myth. Click on the photos above and below to view pages in the Pocahontas Archive, maintained by Edward Gallagher of Lehigh University, where you will see examples of mid-nineteenth century versions of Pocahontas as a love story.

Parker, H. F. "John Smith." Morning Stars of the New World. New York, 1854. 249-75.

The third benefit of this project relates to John Smith instead of Disney and/or earlier adaptations of the Pocahontas story. One of the questions we raised is what our responsibility is in determining what "really" happened in history. But of course John Smith is not a neutral reporter as we determined in our reading of A Description of Virginia. He is really good at "selling" ideas to his readers. This allows us to think about how his letter to Queen Anne might also be selling something; even if the basic facts are true (something that historians contest in and of itself), Smith might have alternate or hidden intentions in how he tells the facts of the story. How might Smith be "selling" the idea of Pocahontas, first to Queen Anne and then, ultimately, to us? What does he gain through telling this story?

As you can see, John Smith's writings--particularly about Pocahontas--raise complex questions about colonialism, gender, and historiography. Despite the complexity of these questions, even young students can begin to formulate arguments and opinions about the cultural work that John Smith attempts to do in his writing. Supplementing the readings in the Norton with these additional resources will help students to see the stakes of how we tell history.

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Performing Justice: A Mini-Course

9/1/2014

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Stanford's Hoover Tower, from the main quad.

Every summer the OHS puts on a special summer program, so that our students can spend time together. Because our students are scattered all over the world, they LOVE taking advantage of this opportunity to spend time with their classmates in person. Instructors are asked to design "mini courses" so that students can take 4-10 day classes during the week. The longer classes are all lab classes in the sciences, and the shorter classes cover everything else: humanities, arts, non-lab sciences, math, etc. This summer, I partnered with one of my friends and colleagues, Dr. Katie Balsley to teach a course about law and drama: "Performing Justice."

Katie's background is in Classics and mine is in Early Modern English literature, so we divided our class time between Sophocles' Antigone and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. The pairing of these two plays was really useful and productive--and I will be forever wanting to pair the two again after this fruitful summer class!

Day 1: Antigone

In this Athenian vase painting, Antigone (second from the right) is brought before Kreon (left) by two guards. Dolon Painter c. 380-370 B.C.E.

Katie took the lead on the first day. Since we were not supposed to assign homework during the short class (a requirement we failed miserably at!), Katie gave a brief lecture on the "back story" of the Oedipus myth and an over view of the play. She then narrowed in on key passages, which we read in class. The passages which she focused on are as follows:

Creon and the Watchman, (ll. 233-330)
Creon and Antigone, (ll. 450-580)
Haemon and Creon, (ll. 631-780)
Creon and Chorus, (ll. 1261-1353)

At each step, she asked students questions about the two characters who were duking it out rhetorically: What are the key traits of Creon in this passage? What is the central conflict of the play so far? What are some key terms/concepts used by Creon and Antigone, respectively? What are Creon’s motivations for punishing Antigone? How does Haemon talk about Creon as a king? Does Haemon think Creon is doing the right thing? Is Creon a figure to be pitied? What is Creon’s biggest fault? What about Antigone?

These close-reading question lead to a larger group discussion about human and divine law. The capstone discussion was centered on teasing out what "human" and "divine" law might mean. What are the traits of a good judge? Does Creon qualify as a good king or a good judge? Are these roles mutually exclusive? Which is more fair, divine justice or human justice? What is the different between justice and revenge? Who has greater authority behind their claims: Creon or Antigone? The play is called Antigone. Why not Creon?

Cover art for the DVD recording of PBS's 1974 televised adaptation of Jean Anouilh's play.

That evening we had an optional screening of the PBS made-for-tv movie of Jean Anouilh's stage adaptation of Sophocles' play. Anouilh adapts Sophocles by setting the conflict between Antigone and Creon in Nazi-occupied France. PBS removed the World War II setting, but retained the greatly augmented scene between Creon and Antigone. This performance vacillates between the sublime and the unintentionally hilarious: the actors playing Creon and Antigone are absolutely remarkable; however, the Chorus figure is a velvet-smoking-jacket wearing caricature of the 1970s, who lounges seductively on a marble staircase while he delivers a closing speech that serves at the play's denouement. On the one hand, the costume and staging of Stacy Keach (Chorus) take away from the stunning performances of Geneviève Bujold (Antigone) and Fritz Weaver (Creon). On the other hand, the campiness of the Chorus provides some needed comic relief after the tragedy has ended.

Day 2: Merchant of Venice

Shylock and Portia (1835) by Thomas Sully.

Whereas Katie took the lead on the first day, I took the lead on the second day. The background information I gave in my lecture was related to the history of antisemitism in Europe as well as a summary of the play. For my lecture on historical attitudes about Jewish people in early modern England and Venice, I drew heavily from M. Lindsay Kaplan's excellent Texts and Contexts edition of The Merchant of Venice. In particular, I drew from her sections on Usury and Finance, and Religion.

This image shows Jews in Medieval England wearing identifying clothing (the yellow patches are meant to resemble the stone tablets of God's law). They are being beaten. London, British Library, Cotton Nero D ii Fol 183 v.

The selections from the "Usury and Finance" sections helped students to conceptualize the double bind that Jews faced in Europe in the centuries leading up to Shakespeare's play: they were both excluded from most jobs and thus forced into money lending (a practice that Jews themselves debated in the Talmud), and they were alternatively seen as a "necessary evil" for Christian merchants and kings who needed to have lines of credit extended to them or as greedy, evil, and dangerous for charging interest on the loans they made. We might say that, in the long scope of history, Jews were in effect forced into a job that they didn't necessary want, an unpopular but necessary job that made them vulnerable to outbursts of violence and general, longstanding suspicion.

Detail showing the red hat that Venice would later require its Jewish citizens to wear from "The Sacrifice of the Jews" (c. 1483), by the unknown painter called the Master of the Manna Miracle.

The section on "Religion" in Kaplan's edition highlights how Jews could be seen in Shakespeare's England as a projection of the religious Other for both Catholics and Protestants while concomitantly serving as a mirror of the Self, particularly in any hardship that a Christian sect faced. This section was invaluable for students to think about as we investigated the performance of social justice on the stage.

After summarizing the play's plot, using the character chart above, I turned to the passages that I wanted my students to close-read. We focused on the following two scenes:

3.1: “Hath not a Jew eyes?” (whole scene)
4.1.145-415: the trial scene (from the reading of Bellario’s letter to Shylock’s exit)

Exactly what is Shylock’s argument in his famous speech, “Hath not a Jew eyes”? Does it develop? What effect do you think it might have had on an audience—especially considering the contextual passages we read today? What prompts Shylock to jump from grief over his personal tragedy to a defense of his entire race?

In preparation for our discussion of 4.1, I asked my student to consider this Early Modern emblem of mercy: “Mercy Overcoming Revenge,” from Richard Day’s A Book of Christian Prayers (London: Printed by Iohn Daye, dwellyng ouer Aldersgate, 1581).

The text accompanying the image reads, “Mercy beareth with infirmities. Cruelty seeketh revenge.”

Compare this image to Portia’s speech at 4.1.179: “The quality of mercy is not strained.” What is Portia saying in her monologue?

In what way is Portia associated with mercy? Does Portia “bear with infirmity,” as the image suggests is necessary? How does Portia win the trial? In what way could Portia be associated with revenge?

Although Shylock does “bear with infirmity,” can he be at all associated with mercy? Why or why not? When Shylock says that he “crave[s] the law,” does that mean that he represents justice?

FYI: elsewhere Shylock says that he stands for “judgment” and “the law” (4.1.103, 142). Is he lying when he says he wants justice—does he really want vengeance? How do you know and why does it matter? What is the difference between justice and vengeance? Is Shylock meant to be pitied? Can this trial be understood as an allegory for the triumph of mercy over justice/revenge, or is this a sham trial? Is justice achieved in any way?

Once again we had an optional screening for our students. This time we screened the 2004 film adaptation directed by Michael Radford and starring Al Pacino as Shylock. Radford, who was also the screenwriter for the adaptation, does an admirable job of editing the play for film. He does a great job of preserving the moral ambiguity of Shakespeare's play, and he's able to maintain the pathos of the Antonio-Shylock story, while amplifying the comedy of the marriage plot. Because the film was open to students across the entirety of Summer Session (i.e., not just the students who were enrolled in our mini-course), the screening drew a large number of student unfamiliar with the play. Their audible reactions either in pity (to Shylock's utter heartbreak at his sentence) or laughter (to Bassanio's dumbfounded realization that the lawyer who saved his friend was really Portia in disguise) helped the students in our class to think about the role that genre was playing in this difficult play.

Day 3: Synthesis and Screenwriting

On our third day of class, we went backward in time instead of forwards. We started with Early Modern England and a discussion of Lorna Hutson's The Invention of Suspicion (2007).

In 1360–1, English Justices of the Peace were given power by statute to ‘arrest all they may find by indictment or suspicion’. Statutes passed in 1554 and 1555 forced a transformative refinement in the older legal concept by requiring Justices to take written examinations of those arrested to record the grounds on which they decided to detain a suspect in prison or, alternatively, to grant bail. In order to comply with these statutes, Justices of the Peace had to find ways of weighing likelihoods applicable to all kinds of cases. They had, effectively, to become experts in the ‘invention’, or finding, of arguments of suspicion: to do so, they turned, just as poets, dramatists, and other writers were doing, to Latin treatises in rhetoric, especially Cicero...

I asked my students to imagine that they were justices in England in 1555, facing the task of articulating suspicion for the very first time. I asked them to think about how they would draft such a document: what would they look to for "evidence"? We related these to elements in a play. We considered 1) motive as something that could affect both characters and suspects, 2) circumstance as something that could relate to both staging and means or opportunity, and 3) plot as both a sequence of events in any kind of narrative and the conspiracy or plan of a bunch of criminals. From this we segued into what Hutson calls a "legal fiction." I asked my students to consider what that might mean, which proved to be really useful for them. Twenty million seasons of television's Law and Order has trained them to think that there is an answer out there for who is "really" guilty. Thinking about the performative language that happens when a judge pronounces a person innocent or guilty helped students to think about justice as something that is performed instead of served.

[The] sixteenth‐century English [system] of judgment could… be said to be based on the participation of lay persons (justices, victims, neighbours, jurors) in deciding what was to count as knowledge. The English criminal justice system, as Barbara Shapiro writes, put ‘great faith both in witness observers and in jurors as “judges of fact” ’, that is, as evaluators of contradictory witness testimony. Sixteenth‐century developments in the participatory justice system involving the taking of written examinations by Justices, and the need for jurors to evaluate evidence at the bar, were directly engaging the very same questions of probability and likelihood with which dramatists were beginning to be concerned.

In breaking down this quote, I asked students to think about the new term that we are considering now in Hutson's argument: the jury. I asked my students to think deeply about how a jury is like an audience.

One outcome of this discussion helps to link Antigone and Merchant of Venice together. Hutson is basically arguing that changes in the legal culture in England contributed to a flourishing of drama during early modern period. That is, because suspicion was "socially pervasive" in legal culture, dramatists re-conceptualized the way they wrote characters. This was necessary in part because they had new ways to talk about character and in part because they had to meet the demand for new tastes in their audiences/juries. We can now imagine that characters can lie, either to other characters or to themselves; part of the thrill of being an audience member, or indeed a jury member, is trying to find out the hidden, secret truth behind the words and actions of a character or suspect. This is in distinction from Ancient Greek tragedy, where we see two philosophies brought into conflict with each other. Whereas Shylock might be lying to Antonio when he offers the bond as a sign of "kindness," Creon is never lying to Antigone when he explains his conception of justice to her. He is a complicated character and represent a complex philosophy, but with Creon (as with all characters in Ancient Greek tragedy) there is no secret agenda.

We then go back in time for a bit to consider the implications of Hutson's claim for Greek drama and modern pop culture in America:

How might democracy have trained people to be enthusiastic consumers of drama?
Might drama have trained people to be more active participants in a democracy? How so?

In your opinion, does our modern legal system in America train us to be critical consumers of culture?
Conversely, does our culture train us to be active participants in the legal system?
Are those ideas totally separate?

From here, Katie and I gave our students the task of adapting the two plays into their own language, using their own scenarios. The screenings of the two films were really valuable contributions to this discussion. Antigone was particularly useful because the movie had been filtered first through Jean Anouilh and then again through PBS. We had four total performances this year: two of Antigone and two of Merchant of Venice. Students wrote their adaptations collaboratively in small groups outside of class time--alas, it was impossible for us to avoid homework all together.

Day 4: Inside the Actor's Studio and Performance

On the fourth and last day of class, we had our students block their performances and then give dress rehearsals in class. This was in preparation for a school-wide performance that they gave later in the evening. After their in-class dress rehearsals, each group offered constructive criticism to the other group. Then we asked them to explain and defend the choices that they made in their adaptations, both in their writing and in their performances. Below are the questions that we asked.

Why did you choose to adapt your play in this way? If you make allusions to a particular moment in history or pop-culture phenomena, explain what it is about this particular reference that seems enlightening to you.
What was difficult to adapt in your original play? What was easy to adapt? Why do you think that somethings were easy to adapt and some things were hard?
What did you learn about the original play through the process of adapting it?
What did you learn about OUR culture through the process of modernizing the play?
How have you performed justice? How is it different from revenge?

These questions were essential for raising the bar for students. In each class, there was one group that paid closer attention to the language of the original play. One Merchant group changed the Jewish Shylock into a rich Muslim named Amir and set the play in post-9/11 New York City. They wanted to highlight how racial stereotyping would bring out the worst in any group. One Antigone group set the play in a gang-infested urban center; Creon has risen to power after the gang divided against itself. This group highlighted the misogyny in Sophicles' play by focusing on the violence that Creon threatens upon Antigone for calling his authority into question. Both of these groups closely followed key scenes in the play such as the "hath not a Jew eyes?" scene and the agon between Creon and Antigone.

Rachel McAdams as Regina George in Mean Girls (2004), directed by Mark Waters.

With that said, the two groups who strayed further from the text still had reasons for their interpretive choices. One Antigone group told the story through a dark comedy using the characters of Mean Girls, so that Regina George took on the characteristics of Creon. Their purpose was to highlight the arbitrariness of power--they wanted to highlight that there is nothing "divine" about Creon's appeal to human law. Another group told a fairytale version of Merchant as the conflict between Antonio (an omnivore) and "Shymeat" (a vegetarian). They reasoned that there was no realistic way such a contract would ever be legally binding (even in the Venice that Shakespeare describes), and they didn't see any way to tell the story without offending anyone. Whereas the post-9/11 group interpreted Shakespeare's play as depicting antisemitism in order to critique it, this group saw Shakespeare's play as contributing to an antisemitic culture. The act of adapting the play, forced our students to develop an interpretation. The questions that we asked the groups helped them to explain their rationale to each other and to articulate the interpretations that they had been forming through their adaptations.

We wrapped up our course with a performance for all of the Summer Program. Because the movie screenings had drawn a number of students, people were interested to see how their classmates would adapt the plays. It was a really, really great way to end the course. The audience was engaged and lively. They audibly gasped at times--particularly during moments of racism or misogyny as depicted by the post-9/11 group and the gang group, respectively. They cheered when Amir (the revised version of Shylock) gave his defiant speech "don't Muslims have eyes too?" or when Antigone didn't flinch at all, even after Creon turned a knife on her. And they laughed along with the dark comedy of the adaptations--the ridiculous idea that a teenage "mean girl" could somehow cow her friends and family into covering up a murder and a festering body.

I would highly recommend this course--or an adaptation of it--to teachers working on a unit about law and literature. We crammed more into four days than most teachers could probably do (especially by holding screenings after "school" was out for the day), but the course could be expanded to allow for classes to read the full texts and screen the film in class. Katie and I had so much fun that we're already planning on what we'll do next summer!

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Teaching Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

6/16/2014

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Detail of the Green Knight from MS. Cotton Nero A. x, fol.90v. (pencil foliation 94v) © British Library Board.

Yeah: you're seeing that correctly. That's a man holding his own severed head while he rides a green horse. Medieval romances are just the best. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is so weird and so much fun to teach!

I like to assign the Norton Critical Edition of the poem, which uses Marie Borroff's translation and includes some canonical but accessible critical essays. I reference this edition in the following blog post, including some of the essays in the back.

For more advanced students, it's fine to split the poem up into three days: Fitts I-II, Fitt III, and Fitt IV. For younger or less advanced students, I would spend one day per Fitt.

There are at least three definitions that you will want to go over before diving into the poem. Either these terms refer to concepts that will be foreign to students, or they are middle English words that have "false friends" in modern English:

Trouth (many alternate spellings): a word to describe the interrelated concepts of loyalty, fidelity, honesty, integrity, the keeping of promises and oaths, and justness and innocence. Related to our modern English words truth and troth, it goes far beyond simply "telling the whole story without any lies."
Gentilesse: a word to describe both the kindness and goodness that everyday people can practice and also the state of being part of the landed nobility or the "gentils". Its meaning was contested during the time of the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (see the Wife of Bath's Tale in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales), but we cannot quite divorce gentleness from gentility in this time period. I have learned from my medievalist friend, Kristen Aldebol, that asking students to think about what it means to call someone a "gentleman" is a good way to get them thinking about how class is still attached to the concept in our modern use of the word "gentle."
Translatio imperii: (Latin for "transfer of rule") originating in the Middle Ages, translatio imperii is a concept for describing history as a linear succession of transfers of an empire. In England, this is manifested in Galfridian historiography (i.e., English history that takes its cues from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae), which argues that Brutus of Troy (son of Aeneas) is the "founder" of Britain. The empire thus transfers from Troy to Britain.

Even great detail of the Green Knight from MS. Cotton Nero A. x, fol.90v. (pencil foliation 94v) © British Library Board.

I have found that the key into this poem is to focus intensely on imagery. Various symbols are weaved together through this poem, almost like an intricate tapestry, and getting students to read for imagery instead of for plot is a hugely important gain in terms of making the poem engaging and building towards strong student writing in response to the poem.

I ask students to sign up for a motif to trace. Obviously some of these motifs are more exciting and engaging than others, but students really like taking ownership of their own special motif:

Motifs:

Agreements, covenants, and bargains:
Bible stories:
Birds:
Blood and the color red:
Cold, winter, and the dark:
Colors, especially green, white, and gold:
Cutting tools and cutting:
Embroidery, weaving, and silk:
Fairyland, things of fairies and “fay”:
Fear and/or guilt:
Feasts, music, food and meals:
Gems and jewelry:

Heads (of animals and of people):
Knots:
Places of prayer:
Religious holy days and yearly seasons:
Saints, masses, and matins:
Sexual behavior or temptation counts:
Shields and armor:
Spousal and family relationships:
The Trojans:
Wild places and animals (not birds):
Women and discussions about women:
Youth and old age:

I do something similar when I teach Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, but in that text the interwoven motifs work to obscure meaning (suggesting that there is no transcendent truth we can access beyond the text) and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, they arguably create meaning (perhaps suggesting that there is a truth hidden underneath the veil of the text). Whereas the overall effect in Gawain is to make a verbal tapestry, Lot 49 seems more like the textual equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting. I would love to one day teach these two together, but it would be a tall order to organize that syllabus!

In the blog post below, I will share my reading questions for each Fitt or part of the poem.

Detail of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere from MS. Cotton Nero A. x, fol.90v. (pencil foliation 94v) © British Library Board. Click on the image above to see the Bodleian Library's digital exhibition of the Cotton Nero manuscript, the sole surviving manuscript of the poem.

Fitt I

What is the significance of the translatio in the opening lines of the poem? Why might the poet choose to remind the audience of the connection between Arthur, Brutus, and the Trojan refugee Aeneas at the beginning of the narrative?

Arthur is said to be the "most courteous of all" British Kings (ll. 26). What are the characteristics of his court? His knights? His Queen?

As you read, pay attention to descriptive and narrative details. Why are they included? What do they signify? For example, the narrator describes the knights and ladies at Arthur’s feast as “fair folk in their first age” (54). What does that mean? Why does he characterize them in this way? How does the Green Knight reinterpret the “first age” of the courtiers?

Notice the descriptive details the narrator mentions regarding the Green Knight. What kind of character is he?

Pay attention to the introduction of the knight Gawain. How does he distinguish himself in the opening scenes? How is he different from the other knights? Does he fulfill a chivalric duty that the other knights neglect? What is his relationship to the ideal of "courtesy"?

Does the Green Knight play by the rules of courtesy? Does he seem like a negative or a positive figure in this section of the poem?

Fitt II

Why do you think the poet spends so much time describing the changing seasons at the beginning of part II? In a poem about steadfastness, why would the poet be interested in describing change? How might the changing seasons give insight into Gawain’s mental life?

What is the significance of the Pentangle? Why is it described in such detail (ll. 619-665)? What does it symbolize when taken as a whole? What is the significance of the series of five fives associated with the pentangle? Taken collectively, what might they represent? Can the pentangle be seen as a symbol of the chivalric virtues? The pentangle as a whole is called a "token of truth" (see ll. 619-626), the very virtue that is put to the test by the Green Knight. Recall that the Middle English term "trouthe" means more than the modern English word "truth." What promises are made by Gawain in this section of the poem?

The following passage is from Gawain’s vision of the castle in the wilderness: “No sooner had Gawain signed himself thrice: “Than he was ware, in the wood, of a wondrous dwelling, / With a moat, on a mound, bright amid boughs / Of many a tree great of girth that grew by the water– / A castle as comely as a knight could own, / On grounds fair and green, in a goodly park” (763-768). What is important about this vision of the Lord’s Castle, popping up out of thin air after Gawain prays to God and Mary that he won’t freeze to death? What about the manifestation of the castle should make Gawain suspicious? Why doesn’t he seem to notice anything symbolic about it? What do you think the poet intends the reader / audience to know about the Lord’s castle? Remember that one of the symbolic elements of the pentangle is the 5 senses. Are Gawain’s senses failing him? Is this castle like a mirage or a dream? What evidence do you have?

Gawain is stalwart and strong out in the wilderness, but once he gets inside the castle he has all his armor taken off of him, the wine goes to his head, and he spends an awful amount of time lying in bed. Is he merely recovering from fatigue or does the poet suggest that he is losing strength because of the castle? On the pentangle, one of the five points represents Gawain’s five fingers. What do hands symbolize? Is Gawain’s possible loss of physical strength related to the five fingers symbolized by the pentangle? How so?

Notice when Gawain prays to Jesus and Mary, calling on them for help, guidance, or aid. In what part in the narrative does he seem connected to Jesus and Mary? At what point in the narrative does he seem preoccupied with other things? How does this develop the symbolism of the pentangle?

Characterize the Lord of the castle in lines ll. 842-849 and in ll. 1079-11-25. What other character in the poem does he resemble in his physical stature and/or age and in his proclivity for seemingly harmless games? Why might that be important?

Fitt III

This part of the poem is set up as a complex intertwining of sports/games. The escalating seduction scenes mirror the hunts of each day and both work together to offer insight into the state of Gawain’s soul. Each of the three days begins and ends with the violent, fast-paced action of the chase, and embedded at the center of each day is the courtly, bawdy bedroom scene.

Day 1: What does the Host hunt? How does he hunt it? What does the Lady do to Gawain? Is she the hunter or the hunted? How is Gawain similar to the animal hunted in the larger context of the poem?

'Deer Hunt' (detail), woven wool tapestry, Netherlands, possibly Arras, 1440-50. Museum no. T.205-1957 (click on the image for more info on this tapestry)

British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 14v (click the above image for a discussion of the stag's symbolic meaning in medieval bestiaries)

Day 2: What does the Host hunt? How does he hunt it? What does the Lady do to Gawain? How does she escalate the seduction just as the hunt scene escalates the danger of the hunt? How is the animal killed and what happens to its body after the Host kills it? How is Gawain like the animal hunted in the larger context of the poem?

Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, KA 16, Folio 45v (click the above image for a discussion of the boar's symbolic meaning in medieval bestiaries)

Gaston Phoebus, Book of the Hunt. Bibliotheque nationale de France (BNF, FR 616, fol. 116). France: Paris, 15th century. (Click on the link above for a wonderful blog post about hunting in medieval literature)

Day 3: What does the Host hunt? How does he hunt it? What are symbolic characteristics of the animal that the Host hunts? What does the Lady do to Gawain? How is she behaving like the animal that the Host hunts? How does Gawain behave like the animal that the Host hunts?

A fox plays dead in order to lure birds within its reach; meanwhile, other foxes look on from their burrow. Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 1511, Folio 23r (click the above image for a discussion of the fox's symbolic meaning in medieval bestiaries)

One of the things I have done that's been really interesting and helpful in class is to survey the class to ask which hunt they thought was the most difficult and why. I admitted to them that the boar hunt, to my mind, seems more exciting than the fox hunt and that I found the final hunt to be rather anticlimactic (although what's happening with Sir Gawain is obviously more climactic).

Our class' "super scientific" chart. The numbers on the Y axis are pretty subjective, based on student input and discussion. For example, there is some physical danger in the deer hunt (hunters could be trampled), but it is minor in comparison to the danger of the boar hunt.

We developed the above chart--tracing the intensity of various qualities of the hunts over time--to highlight what is being tested of Lord Bertilak in each hunt. On some level, Gawain is being tested in his own way on all of these levels: his social commitment, his physical strength, and his intelligence. The fact that he "falls" on the day that Lord Bertilak faces the fox seems to indicate that Gawain has failed because of an error of judgment, a corruption of his reason: it is the chink in his armor. It was also kind of fun to do this because the hunts work as a Rorschach test: each reader can find something intimidating in the three hunts because the poem elicits a fear of failing across multiple modes. I think that this activity ended up helping students to identify with Gawain!

Read ll. 1851-1858, wherein Gawain accepts the Lady’s offer of the magical Green Girdle. This is the crucial moment of the poem that is sometimes compared to the temptation of Adam by Eve. On what levels does Gawain fail and/or “fall” here? If we think about the poem as a Christian allegory, what does his action (accepting the green girdle) represent? What does it say about him as a human being and as a knight? How harshly do you think we should or are meant to judge him?

Detail of Lady Bertilak sneaking into Sir Gawain's bed from MS. Cotton Nero A. x, fol. 125r (pencil foliation 129r) © British Library Board.

Compare and contrast the knot of the pentangle with the knot of the girdle.

What is the poet’s attitude toward "courtly love”? Which characters represent that tradition? In traditional "courtly love," a knight performs feats of valor for a lady he loves who is generally not his wife. He aspires to win her love by proving his worthiness, chivalric merit, etc. through "love service"--doing her will and trying to help her and be worthy of her regardless of her treatment of him. Does Gawain serve a lady in the poem? If so, whom does he serve? Is there a more "traditional" depiction of the courtly lady? What is the poet's (and Gawain's) attitude toward Lady Bertilak? What does that imply about "courtly love"?

Fitt IV

What is the significance of that the Green Chapel is a mound instead of a man-made building? What are things that we associate with mounds?

Gawain is accused for a second time in the poem of being an imposter (ll. 2269-2273). Compare the Green Knight’s accusation that Gawain is an imposter to Lady Bertilak’s similar claim (ll. 1293-95). What does it matter than Gawain (the real man) is continuously being compared to his reputation (a social idea of himself)? Does this comparison have an impact on the poem… (the poet presents the ideal of a chivalrous knight, but then maybe undercuts it by making Gawain seem less like a romance hero—greater in degree to his fellow men—and more like a comic hero—equal in degree to both his fellow men and his environment.) What is the effect? See the Davenport essay, pp. 141-142.

How is Gawain’s reaction to the Green Knight at the Green Chapel like a confession? Is it a better confession than the one he gives to the priest in Part III? Why or why not? Make sure you go over the sacrament of confession with the class.

Close read ll. 2374-2384. What sins does Gawain confess? On pp. 149-150 of our text, scholar Ralph Hanna III argues that the sins Gawain identifies don’t make sense in the context of the poem. (See the past paragraph on p. 149 and the first paragraph on p. 150). In other words, the narrator takes pains to undermine Gawain’s analysis of his own sins. Do you agree with Gawain that these are his chief sins?

Close read ll. 2374-2384. What sins does Gawain confess? Some of these sins are really the same (i.e., greed and coveting are basically the same thing). Group the sins into categories. With these categories in mind, go back to three temptation scenes with Lady Bertilak. Does she only tempt Gawain with lust, or does she tempt to sin along the lines he mentions. How much should we seriously consider his argument than women are behind all of men’s sins?

In an essay in the back of our critical edition—“Unlocking What’s Locked: Gawain’s Green Girdle”—literary scholar Ralph Hanna III argues that there are at least 4 contradictory ways that the characters within the text define the symbolic significance of the green girdle. How does Lady Bertilak construct the meaning of the girdle (1851-1854)? How does Gawain construct the meaning of the girdle (2439-2438)? How does the Green Knight construct the meaning of the girdle (2395-2399)? How does the Arthurian court construct the meaning of the girdle (2513-2518)?

Who are the women in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Most critics agree that there are four: Guenevere, Mary, Lady Bertilak, and Morgan le Fay. To what extent do they play similar roles? How do they differ? What is the function of each? What can you conclude (if anything) about the depiction of women in the poem? Is it essentially positive, negative, neutral, mixed? Are they idealized, realistically portrayed, caricatures, ciphers? Are they marginal or central to the main conflict of the poem?

At the end of the poem, the Green Knight declares that Gawain is the best of all Arthurian knights; this opinion is shared by the Arthurian court but not by Gawain. Why does he think so? Why does Gawain disagree? Does the court’s failure to understand the significance of Gawain’s experience change our opinion of the people at the court? Is Gawain a savior figure for the Arthurian court?

Why might the poet choose to remind the audience of the connection between Arthur, Brutus, and the Trojan refugee Aeneas at the end of the narrative? In the light of these translatio reference here and at the beginning of the poem, what do you make of the French motto “Honi Soit Qui Mal Pense” found at the end of the poem? The some translates this line, “Shame be to the man who has evil in his heart”; an equally plausible rendering is “shame on whoever thinks ill [of him/it].” How can this motto be connected to the themes of the poem as a whole or to the translatio references which frame the narrative itself?

I like to close our discussion of the book by reading students the following passage, a quote from Jack Slezer in his essay in the MLA’s volume Approaches to Teaching Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:

Gawain confronts and learns to accept his own mortality; he learned that he too is a part of the natural world—mutable, subject to time, imperfect, green. Sure this is a Christian poem; but it’s also supremely human. His “sins” (“cowardice and covetousness”) are not just against God but against his own humanity. By taking the girdle (the magic delusion that we don’t have to face limits) Gawain shows that he covets life over death, he refuses to acknowledge his own humanity.

This is a really great passage to consider for the closing discussion. Students often have a lot of sympathy for Gawain, and they see his decision to take the magical girdle as smart instead of sinful. Although they may disagree with the idea that magical self-preservation is selfish, this idea helps them to conceptualize why it is possible to understand Gawain's decision as a failure that requires forgiveness.