Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

We were just talking about pamphlets—click here for a picture from a 1617 pamphlet of Guy Fawkes’ head on a pike.:
https://www.alamy.com/gunpowder-plot-the-head-of-guy-fawkes-from-a-1617-pamphlet-image221751638.html

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Satire

Jonathan Swift. One of the perks of being a pamphleteer was you got to wear big wigs.

Satire : a way of using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, bad, etc. : humor that shows the weaknesses or bad qualities of a person, government, society, etc.

Many pamphleteers commented on social conditions or criticized the government. Jonathan Swift used satire to make his points—‘Swiftian’ is still an adjective for a particularly dark sense of humor. In 1729 Swift published  A Modest Proposal to transform poor Irish children from a burden to society instead to being a benefit. His pamphlet caused a howling, righteous uproar (click on the link to read it)—just as it would today on Instagram or Twitter. Daniel Defoe’s satirical The Shortest Way with the Dissenters got him arrested for sedition.

Then, as now, the ruling class had no sense of humor and wouldn’t tolerate criticism. The British government censored and arrested pamphleteers for expressing politically incorrect opinions. The idea that writers should have the liberty to write about whatever they choose and have their work printed and distributed is called freedom of the press. This was a new concept. John Milton defended freedom of the press in a pamphlet that he had to publish anonymously. He was revealed as its true author only a couple of years ago.

https://www.britannica.com/art/pamphlet
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pamphleteer
https://collections.libraries.indiana.edu/lilly/exhibitions_legacy/defoe/pamphlets.html
https://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Swift-As-Tory-Pamphleteer/dp/0295978708
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/milton-9781608193783/
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/satire

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The pamphleteers

Daniel Defoe

If you were a young writer just starting out during Brit lit’s Augustan Age (late 1600s – early 1700s), pamphlets were the way to build an audience. Pamphlets can be as short as 4 pages. Lots of them don’t even have covers. They’re cheap and easy to produce—and plenty of people could read by then—so you could sell bunches of ‘em. They were the social media of those days. If you had something on your mind, a topic to rant about, you wrote an essay and printed it up as a pamphlet. You became a pamphleteer.

You may recognize the names of some pamphleteers—Daniel Defoe (he wrote Robinson Crusoe), Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), Tom Paine (his pamphlets were made into a collection titled Common Sense), John Milton (Paradise Lost).

https://www.britannica.com/art/pamphlet
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pamphleteer
https://poemanalysis.com/movement/augustan-age/

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More Reformation—sorry

The printing press encouraged literacy, which almost all by itself brought on the Renaissance and shaped modern Western Civilization. Those pamphlets of Luther’s presented the argument that the Catholic Church needed to be reformed.

You guys are rolling your eyes now—”C’mon, Manders! Give the Reformation a rest already!” Okay, okay. There IS a reason I bring it up again: for thousands of years, the power-structure of every kingdom and empire was top-down, central-government, one-guy-runs-the-show—that is, all decisions are made by one king or emperor. In the Holy Roman Empire, the pope ran everything to do with the Church. All the Church’s power was in the Vatican, in Rome. The pope appointed priests to every last little church.

This model is ‘top-down.’ The power comes from above and works its way down.

The Reformation brought a big change: the new Protestant churches elected their own pastors. The power to choose a pastor resides in each individual member of a Protestant church. If you belong to a Protestant church, you have a say in who gets to be preacher. This was a big, new idea. It happened because a great number of people knew how to read and did read Luther’s pamphlets.

A path was being cleared for—eventually—a nation whose ordinary-shmo-citizens would elect its political leaders.

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1064/protestant-reformation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljdWWjdesMM
https://opencurriculum.org/5475/the-medieval-church/
https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/29/world/reformation-world-change/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design

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It was a big deal

The printing press was the first mass medium. I’m expanding the definition of ‘medium’—how you stick pigment to a surface—to include the idea of spreading information by putting ink on paper. ‘Mass’ as I use it here means lots of people. Printing was a new super-effective way to broadcast ideas to a big audience. Martin Luther understood that right away. His pamphlets were carried by ships to different countries, translated, reprinted and seen by people all over the western world. You could argue that there’d have been no Protestant Reformation without the printing press. We’ll be coming up soon to when pamphleteers used the printing press to explain to lots of people how a new system of government might work: a nation run by its citizens instead of a king.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mass%20medium
THIS: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory/chapter/the-printing-revolution/

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The printing press comes to England

Poor old Tom Malory died in prison in March 1471, but his book was on its way to fame and fortune. William Caxton was a textile merchant who became interested in printing presses and decided to get one of his own. In 1471 Caxton was the first to print a book in the English language: Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (A Collection of the Histories of Troy—kind of a spinoff of Homer’s Iliad where one of the supporting characters gets his own series). Caxton had a good sense of what would sell as well as what is great literature. He’d set up his first printing operation in Brussels, but—

“In 1476 Caxton returned to London and established a press at Westminster, the first printing press in England. Amongst the books he printed were Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, Gower’s ‘Confession Amantis’ and Malory’s ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’. He printed more than 100 books in his lifetime, books which were known for their craftsmanship and careful editing. He was also the translator of many of the books he published, using his knowledge of French, Latin and Dutch. He died in 1492.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/caxton_william.shtml

Le Morte d’Arthur was printed in 1485. I link below to a site that shows all the pages of the first edition. You can see the typeface was trying to mimic hand-written calligraphy. It wouldn’t take long for printers to realize they could design typefaces that were meant to be printed.

https://www.bl.uk/people/william-caxton
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/caxton_william.shtml
This is just fantastic. You can see the original pages here: http://www.maloryproject.com/caxton_viewer.php

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Le Morte d’Arthur

sketch of King Arthur based on a painting by Howard Pyle

Thomas Malory was a gifted writer (and convict*) who in 1470 brought the Arthurian stories together and organized them into a grand epic novel. His book has a French title, Le Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur), though the text is Middle English with some French and Latin thrown in. The title is kind of a spoiler. For a while Britain was ruled justly and happily, but Camelot was ultimately doomed because nothing lasts forever. The high ideals that shaped Arthur’s reign were abandoned with the passage of time. Even knights of the Round Table are born weak and live in a broken world. Arthur’s closest allies betrayed him. His court fell apart. It was fun while it lasted. And yet, Malory gives us hope that Arthur and Camelot may return someday: on Arthur’s tomb is written, ‘Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus’ (Here lies Arthur, the once and future king).

I was a King Arthur geek when I was a tween. I did read Malory’s book and it was a glorious long slog. The version I read wasn’t in Middle English but somehow had the flavor of it (it was a library book and I can’t remember who translated it). Malory built the ‘once and future’ Camelot** word by word—the fellowship of the Table Round; the knights with their odd mannerisms and creaky old way of speaking; the exalted idealism; the shameful weaknesses. He showed me a sword magically embedded in an anvil and stone; a lady, naked as a needle, cursed to stand in boiling water until she was rescued by a very pure knight; a weird animal whose belly made the noise of a pack of hounds; ogres; giants; awkward love triangles; the Holy Grail (the cup Christ drank from at the Last Supper). Malory conjured a dear old island that stood in that very misty spot where paganism hadn’t quite taken its leave and Christianity was just getting started.

* Malory wrote Le Morte d’Arthur while he was serving time—probably as a political prisoner—at Newgate Prison. The prisons of the Middle Ages seem to have been full to bursting with authors cranking out the classics of Western Lit.

**The French poet Chretien de Troyes invented the name Camelot and created Sir Launcelot. That’s a lot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Morte_d%27Arthur
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/le-morte-darthur/book-summary
I can’t top this article about Malory and his book—
https://www.worldhistory.org/Thomas_Malory/

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Geoffrey of Monmouth

A wooden statue of Geoffrey of Monmouth at Tintern Station https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6023609

King Arthur Pendragon may not have even existed. He was a figure from the mists of Welsh legend and made it into Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of The Kings of Britain which he wrote in the 1100s. Geoffrey was not good at verifying historical facts—or he liked his history fanciful—but he gave us Arthur and Camelot. I’m a hopeless romantic so I like to think there really was a King Arthur.

During the 3 or four centuries after Geoffrey’s book came out, legends and folk tales emerged under the general heading of Arthurian. Figures of Arthur’s court came into being and had their own stories or they were given stories from older lore. Knights went on quests to prove themselves spiritually worthy. They fought wickedness when they found it and offered protection to the powerless. There was a mystical quality that surrounded Camelot and all of Arthur’s Britain—dragons, beasts, enchantments, sorceresses and Merlin the wizard. There was a beautiful young queen.

https://www.bl.uk/people/geoffrey-of-monmouth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_of_Monmouth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophetiae_Merlini

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The once and future blog post

“Who so pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of England.”

During the thousand years before the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066, life for the British was one stinkin’ thing after another. If it wasn’t the Romans, it was the Angles. If it wasn’t the Angles, it was the Saxons. Or the Jutes. Or the Frisians. Everybody invaded Britain back then, it was the thing to do. Sometime during the ad 500s the British were in a life-and-death struggle to keep the Saxons from taking over their island. The Roman Empire had imploded and the Brits were on their own. The Saxons were unrelenting, ruthless and seemingly invincible. The British desperately needed a leader: someone just and moral; someone who could out-general the invaders; someone with a trusted band of mighty warrior-heroes; someone who would rally his countrymen to save their sceptre’d isle. They got one. The catch was that this chieftain and his friends were doomed—their time was to be only one brief shining moment. This chieftain? His name is Arthur.

Wow! That was some pretty good writing, huh? I should get a Brit actor like Kenneth Branagh or that Cumberbatch fella to read it out loud, backed up by an orchestra quietly playing the overture to Camelot.

https://www.history.com/news/was-king-arthur-a-real-person
https://www.history.org.uk/primary/resource/3860/teaching-romans-anglo-saxons-and-vikings-in-brit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AR9mk83VQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h7E5rtnFH4

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La Chanson de Roland

Roland a Roncevaux. It would be a stain on my escutcheon to poke fun at the war dead—even from 1300 years back—but I reckon it within bounds to lampoon a guy who didn’t call for help until all was clearly lost anyway.

The Song of Roland takes place during Charlemagne’s reign. Roland is Charles’ most trusted officer and the perfect embodiment of chivalry—pure in heart, doer of mighty deeds. In the story there’s a lot of diplomacy, intrigue, and military battles between Charles’ Franks and the wily Saracens in Spain (remember Spain and other big chunks of Europe were under Muslim control throughout the Middle Ages). Charles relies too heavily on his negotiator, the treacherous Ganelon. After a decisive battle a truce is reached and Charles agrees to withdraw his army with Roland commanding the rearguard. However, Ganelon has betrayed them and set a trap. Roland and his army must squeeze through a pass in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France. It’s there that the Saracens cut off the Frankish rearguard with their army that’s 20 times bigger. The Franks gallantly fight against hopeless odds. Roland has an elephant-tusk trumpet to summon help but he’s too proud to sound the alarm until the battle’s already lost. When he finally does, Roland bursts a blood vessel blowing that horn and dies. Charlemagne hears the call, rides to the rescue with more troops but when he arrives everybody is dead. Roland’s ghost is whisked up to Heaven by a bevy of angels.

The battle in the narrow mountain pass where Roland met his doom is ‘…loosely based on the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778. However, the combatants in that skirmish were the Franks and the Christian Basques of Spain…’ If history teaches us anything, it’s this: never put all your Basques in one exit.

https://www.supersummary.com/the-song-of-roland/summary/
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Roncevaux+Pass/@43.0242222,-2.0862763,9.31z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0xd50d1d246e7fedd:0x1f798a142f6d3012!8m2!3d43.0205556!4d-1.3247222
In Sicily, Roland’s story morphed into Orlando Furioso (Mad Roland) and is performed with rod puppets. They used to do this show in New York City’s Little Italy, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwtwFK9dHfs
Santé vache! There’s a Roland movie with young Klaus Kinski in the lead—https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077317/

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