Inferno

Image credit: Booktopia

I guess for no other reason than it’s considered a canonical classic and I had never read it before, this week I took a little tour of Hell with the first part of Dante’s epic Divine Comedy, Inferno.

The poem, a splendid trek composed of 34 cantos/stanzas, tells the story of Dante’s being lost in a dark wood (what can best be described as a midlife crisis) and attempting to climb a mountain only to find his way barred by three fearsome beasts. Terrified, his evening becomes stranger when the shade/ghost of the poet Virgil comes to his aid and takes him on a journey through the nine circles of Hell as a means of teaching him to recognise and reject various forms of sin if he’s to end up in the good place.

Despite being an avid reader and a total lover of literature, I really struggle when it comes to poetry. Sadly, it’s a form of writing that my brain cannot fathom and therefore, I can’t really appreciate its majesty as devoted (cleverer) audiences can. However, this week I gave it a shot and came out of Dante’s Inferno feeling a little more cultured and surprisingly moved.

While the references and metaphors may have gone over my head somewhat, what I really enjoyed about Inferno was it’s simple narrative of the journey and the incredible imagery that Dante creates. The nine circles of Hell, each a new and even more horrifying realm of torture and torment than the last, really are the stuff of nightmares. For anyone in deep with those belief structures, it’s the equivalent of having a super horrible hangover in that it’s so painful and sick/fear-inducing enough to make you steer clear from the stuff that got you there.

Image credit: Encyclopedia Britannica

While a fair portion of the poem is written with a dreamlike, majestic, even ethereal tone, a great contrast to the vile, dank, and sordid environments, there are moments during the poem in which Dante falls into a crassly comedic way of describing the places and people, which very nicely gives this sense of mortal man’s malleability and how he can be swayed from good to evil.

The poem itself is metaphoric, dreamlike/nightmarish, and provocative, it might not be the best thing to read right before bedtime, but it’s pretty damned cool.

Inferno is the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, written in 1320 and followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso.

Dream Visions and Other Poems (Norton Critical Edition)

Edited by Kathryn L. Lynch, the Norton critical edition of Dream Visions is made up of a collection of Geoffrey Chaucer’s most celebrated prose poems and dream visions as well as an array of his shorter works. Each poem is preceded by a little historical context that more or less gives you the gist of what the poem is going to be about. As the poems are written in Middle English, they can be a bit tough to fathom, but you’ll soon find that you get used to the reading and then the literary complexities and sophistication begins to shine out. I’m not usually one for poetry, but Chaucer’s works prove to be more than just endless flows of romanticism and love. There is intertextuality and metafiction that underlies his works here, which brings this nice level of tongue-in-cheek humour and cheekiness to the reading experience. 

The four major poems that make up the bulk of this book are The Book of the Duchess in which the narrator dreams he’s in a garden being told a great love tale of woe by a black night, The House of Fame where the narrator dreams that an eagle takes him into Fame’s House where men seek fortune and renown, The Parliament of Fowls where the narrator dreams of a great debate between the many species of birds about love, and The Legend of Good Women where the narrator dreams he is charged with the task of writing the tales of famous women who were betrayed in love. 

What’s nice about Chaucer’s work is that it is made up of recognisable patterns in structure and form and he uses a fair amount of intertextual references that bring a further level of meaning to the poems. Many of the dream-poems centre on the theme of love and courtly love with Book of the Duchess spinning a tale of woe whilst The Parliament of Fowls uses metaphor and anthropomorphism to highlight the ridiculousness of trying to even fathom the matter. 

Often written within the first person register, his poems are rich in images and enchanting literary sophistication and even with it being in Middle English, none of this gets missed. Besides, there are translations in the margins and footnotes, but it has to be said that flicking your eyes from the poems to the margins and then back again does break up the flow of the reading experience. 

Filled with drama, romance, action, violence, love, history, and comedy, Dream Visions and Other Poems proves to be an engaging read, once the pace and flow is established. I had to read two of the poems for uni and read the rest recreationally and it really makes a difference; the context in which one reads I mean. Reading the book recreationally allowed me to really appreciate all the elements that were at play, I could see all the beauty and richness of the verse, and I allowed myself to be transported into the worlds of the dream visions. That’s what you want it a book, to be transported somewhere else. It’s surprising, because I really don’t go in for poetry, but I found this book quite engaging. Oh dear, I might be turning. 

Piers Plowman

An titanic long poem written by William Langland, Piers Plowman is ‘life by the book’ for dummies, a tangible work that could be understood by everyone back in its heyday, preaching through crassness and vibrant dream visions how to live a relatively comfortable and spiritually fulfilling life whilst being surrounded by sin. The Norton Critical Edition features the poem written in Middle English on one page and then a modern translation on the page opposite, which makes it much easier to read and appreciate, let me tell you. 

A dreamer falls asleep many times and has vibrant visions of scenes that teach him the ways of life, God, Christ, and how to live a religious life whilst being so surrounded by sin. Many a vision he sees including a heated debated between Meed and Conscience, a false marriage concocted by Fiend, Antichrist’s rampage, the Christ figure of Piers the Plowman, and a quest to find and learn from Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best. 

Of all the texts I had to read this semester for Medieval Literature, Piers Plowman was one that I actually rather enjoyed, hence my continuing to read it recreationally. With the translation available, the vibrancy of the poem and the language is really apparent and the imagery that Langland manages to create is quite striking, albeit at its most vibrant parts it’s actually quite crass and even vulgar. I think what I really liked about this was that it was sort of a poetic equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick of Peter Greenway film. Ok let me explain my thinking here: if you think about The Cook the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and A Clockwork Orange, things that are considered high art or classiness e.g. decadent cuisine and classical music, are used in conjunction with really, really, awful and vulgar characters, thus dishevelling the classiness of it and making it really crass. That’s what this poem did for me. It took the art for of poetry, which I’m not really a fan of anyway, and used it to describe the grossest things like vomiting. I just get a kick out of the flip that some artists do with that. 

As I mentioned before, this thing is epically long; sitting at a length of twenty passuses or chapters. As you can imagine, there are many different scenes and poetic devices crammed into it. Written in the first person register from the point of view of the dreamer, there’re a number of clever little techniques that work to paint the narrative pictures that enthral. We’ve got the characters of all these virtues and human characteristics personified into physical people, we’ve got allegorical metaphors, we’ve got highly descriptive language, and all manner of things in between. I have to admit, it’s a poem that really stands up after the lengthy passing of time that it’s seen and it’s always nice to see when works, particularly works of literature, do that. 

Filled with love, quests, drama, comedy, action, and spiritual enlightenment, Piers Plowman is a captivating work that I really rather enjoyed. 

A Dream of John Ball

Written by William Morris, A Dream of John Ball delves into the fantasy of simpler days, days gone by, when the world was beautiful (more or less). In this book, we’re transported back in time to green English meadows and pastures, swordsmen and bowmen, and deep spiritual questions about time, life, and death. 

After falling into deep slumber, a dreamer awakes within his dream in the Medieval English countryside. As he wanders towards a town, he marvels at the beauty of the environment, the architecture, the simplicity of life. He’s soon within the company of burly and strong townsfolk, listening to the sermons of one John Ball, preaching and preparing the men for battle against the villains overland. When that battle has been and the fallen are laid to rest, the dreamer and John Ball spend the night together in conversation asking and answering question about times that have past and times that are to come. 

This is a very easy to book to read. Large print and a mere hundred pages in length, you can pretty much power through it, as I did (that and I had to read it for uni). A dream narrative in the first person, what I found interesting about the book was the story’s pace and flow. Everything happens naturally and seemingly with minimal effort, and there is not a lot of exposition or big build up to climactic events (such as the battle). I’m sort of in two minds as to how I feel about this because on the one hand, it means that there aren’t really any dreadfully dull chunks of narrative to plough through and on the other hand, the really exciting bits of the story lose their power and excitement. I mean, the battle sort of just happens, is described well (there’s even some humour in it), but doesn’t really get the adrenaline pumping or the blood rushing. Morris’ writing works well in creating this image of the world he’s in as well as the feelings of the protagonist towards the reality in the dream and his reality when awake. 

There’s also a sneaky and intriguing change in direction when the idea is put forward that the dreamer is a figment of John Ball’s dreaming state whilst simultaneously being a figment of the dreamer’s dreaming state. Ok, I seriously need to stop saying ‘dream’ related words now right? 

Filled with action, spiritual discussion, drama, and comedy, A Dream of John Ball is an easy little read and a cute little dream narrative, but nothing really special in the ways of literature. Being so short and cramming a lot of stuff into it, removes the potential for attachment to the characters and envelopment within the folds of the story, but at the same time it’s not a bad piece of work in that its written nicely and has a fair stab at passing for Medieval text. 

Dream of the Rood

Dream of the Rood is one of the earliest Christian poems in Old English Literature, possibly even predating the 10^th century. Needless to say that the chances of my being able to give you guys an author is slim to naught. It’s not the sort of literature I usually go in for, for the reason that a) I’m not big on poetry, it quite frankly angers me and b) I’m not into the whole religious thing. I’ll be the first admit that some of the images from all those stories can be beautiful, tragic, and horrifying, but I’m a contemporary reader: a cynic and nowhere near as smart as I think I am, so shoot me! The only reason I read this was because I had to for uni and I actually had to resort to looking it up on Wikipedia to get the gist of what the hell was going on! 

The poem is written in Old English, complete with all the funny markings and Germanic pronunciation. So literally we’re trying to read something in another language, fun times! As I result, obviously, I really can’t comment on any of the techniques, motifs, imagery, or indeed anything that fits within the realms of construction here; all I can do is relay to you guys what the poem is about because when you think about it, it’s actually kind of cool and fascinating. 

An example of dream poetry, Dream of the Rood is divided into three parts. The first begins it all with the narrator having a dream. In the dream he’s speaking to the Cross that Christ was crucified on. He notes that it’s covered with gems and how wretched he is in comparison to it and the tree from which it was made. On closer inspection he sees that there’s blood on it. 

The second part is an account of the Crucifixion as told from the point of view of the Cross. It begins with the enemy coming to cut down the tree and carry it away to not bear a criminal, but Christ instead. Christ and the Cross become one and both take the pains for the sake of mankind. Just as Jesus was, the Cross is resurrected and adorned with gold and silver. 

The Cross then charges the dreamer to share with people all that he’s seen. In the last part, the dreamer is left with his thoughts and is filled with hope for eternal life and a desire to be near the glorious Cross again. 

The poem is actually kind of cool in how it anthropomorphises the Cross and has it tell such an epic story from its own perspective. I thought that was pretty cool and quirky considering the times. I guess there are just some literary techniques that don’t manifest themselves as frequently as others. It’s a fascinating thought to end a review on no? 

The Book of Margery Kempe

‘Written’ by Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe is an autobiographical work that proves to be a challenging read for the modern audience. A medieval text (one that I only read because my uni course requited it), this Norton Critical edition takes a little of the challenge out of the read by modernising the language as much as possible, making it much easier to understand than other Medieval texts like, say, Chaucer’s poems (other texts that my course requires me to read). Nevertheless, I found this book really challenging because it’s one big preach fest, written in a disturbingly disjointed kind of way. Having said that, it’s a good book to read for those who aren’t afraid of a literary challenge! 

Margery Kempe, a married woman from Lynn in England, was not one to shy away from sin. That was, until, the Good Lord Jesus Christ came to her in a vision and converted her. Having seen the light, Margery then devotes her life to God and Jesus Christ, preaching their word, going on holy pilgrimages, and saving many people on the way. But with all good there is evil and Margery is not always seen in the best light, receiving much scorn and despite from many people she encounters, including some of holy status. 

It sounds boring right? And, yeah it truly is. For the modern reader, The Book of Margery Kempe is one big preachy/schizophrenic narcissistic indulgence, ripe for all the attack of scepticism and the like that contemporary readers have in spades! My minute fascination that took a long time to germinate, let me tell you, stems from the fact that there is so much controversy about this book even as a literary work. It’s credited as being one of the first autobiographies, but when we consider the 1400s when it was written, can it really fall under that label when we consider that women were more or less illiterate, forbidden to write, and the whole thing was dictated and taken down by male scribes? Is it really autobiography when the woman herself did not physically write it? The ins and outs of that alone are what intrigues me about this book. 

The book itself is preachy, dry, and written in a discordant manner. Divided into two books, each religious escapade, event, or ‘ghostly’ vision is told as a separate chapter and written in the third person register with Margery herself being referred to as ‘this creature’. A few metafictive jibes make their way into the mix, providing a new voice (that of the scribes, for there were two) that delineates away from the monotonous third person omniscient. There’s no real narrative flow either, the whole thing is very jagged and unnerving, a bit like Steven Tyler’s autobiography but nowhere near as interesting! It jumps back and forth between time frames and is quite indicative of its status as dictation: “one time this happened, and then this, and then another time this happened”, that sort of thing. Not very cool really. 

Filled with drama, religious ‘miracles’, love, devotion, and betrayal, The Book of Margery Kempe is a pretty boring and dense read that poses more than one challenge for the contemporary reader. Whilst I didn’t really enjoy it at all, one thing I will say in its defence is that the feeling of achievement that you get when you actually finish reading the entire thing is pretty grand!