The Manor, the Plowman, and the Shepherd: Agrarian Themes and Imagery in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance English LiteratureThe Manor, the Plowman, and the Shepherd is a study of agrarian history and economics that illuminates the literature of England for the late medieval and early Renaissance period (ca. 1300-1600). During the fourteenth century, basic changes in the country resulted from natural and man-made crises: famine, plague, war, and rebellion. As population declined, the manorial institution changed, and the arable farming considered essential for the manor gradually yielded to a more profit-oriented pastoral way of life, a subtle change identified in late thirteenth-century poems such as "The Man in the Moon," "Song of the Husbandman," A Satire of Edward II's England, and Wynnere and Wastoure. One of the most recognizable images of the old way of life, but also representing a troubled force in the new way of life, is the plowman, whose strong spiritual and social associations are central to Piers Plowman and present in the works of writers such as Chaucer, Gower, and the anonymous authors of the Piers Plowman tradition. The agrarian economic conditions of the fifteenth century, which permitted extensive leasing of demesne land to enterprising peasant farmers, give rise to the literary creation of the "new" farmer, a beggar on horseback, a less severe and more humorous type in such works as "John the Reeve," "How the Plowman Learned his Paternoster," "The Turnament of Tottenham," and various short poems. Closely related to the comic farmer is the shepherd, who began to appear particularly in the mystery plays. This is the beginning of a native pastoral tradition that will contribute to the prevailing pastoral literature of the sixteenth century. By the early sixteenth century, the agrarian landscape changed to more pastoral land, more enclosures, and a decrease in (or a rearrangement of) manorial lands. Increased population and an abundance of labor created economic tensions that caused moralizers to cry out for reform, but there is no evidence pastoral lands decreased even by the end of the century. In literature, the plowman tradition continued to exist in such forms as the remarkable sermon by Bishop Latimer, but more often than not it was viewed nostalgically as part of the past, and used to address the problems brought about by the pastoral economy of the sixteenth century. The plowman can be identified even as late as Spenser's Faerie Queene where he assumes the moral associations of the fourteenth-century type, and in Sidney where the plowman becomes the unsympathetic buffoon. But it is the shepherd who becomes the familiar voice of morality (Skelton and Spenser), of love (Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare), and of basic human values (Spenser and Shakespeare). |
Contents
11 | |
21 | |
The Manor the Plowman and the Shepherd | 43 |
New Values in a Changing World | 70 |
The New World | 107 |
The Pastoral Prevails | 128 |
Elizabeths Pastoral Poets | 155 |
Appendix | 198 |
Notes | 202 |
Bibliography | 232 |
Index | 249 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Agrarian History agrarian imagery arable imagery Arcadia barn Black Death Cambridge University Press character Chaucer Church Cistercian Clarendon Press Colin Clout comic corn critical Deserted Medieval Villages Early English Books eclogue economy edited Edmund Spenser Edward enclosure English Books Series especially Faerie Queene famine farmer farming fifteenth figure Forto fourteenth century friars Georgics humorous husbandman Ibid Jack Upland John Gower John Skelton king Knight labor land Langland later Latimer literary literature London lord Luttrell Psalter Mankind manor manorial Middle English moral mystery plays narrator notes Old Arcadia Oxford University Press passage pastoral imagery peasant Piers Plowman plays plow poem poet Poetry poor reference Renaissance rural Satire scene Second Shepherds sermon Shakespeare sheep Sidney Sidney's sixteenth century Skelton social Song Sothsegger Spenser spiritual stanza Studies Tale thirteenth century tradition Virgil W. H. Auden Wakefield Winner wool writers Wynnere and Wastoure York þat
Popular passages
Page 11 - In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Page 191 - I would, there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty ; or that youth would sleep out the rest: for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.
Page 43 - On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, truth stands, and he that will Reach her, about must, and about must go; And what the hills suddenness resists, win so; Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight.
Page 187 - Carmina possunt :" thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrix, or Virgil's Anchises. But if (fie of such a but!) you be born so near the dullmaking cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planetlike music of poetry ; if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a Mome, as to be a Momus of poetry...
Page 82 - ... turn pater omnipotens fecundis imbribus Aether coniugis in gremium laetae descendit, et omnes magnus alit magno commixtus corpore fetus, avia. turn resonant avibus virgulta canoris, et Venerem certis repetunt armenta diebus ; parturit almus ager, Zephyrique tepentibus auris...
Page 11 - About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone...
Page 82 - Spring it is that aids the woods and the forest leafage ; in spring the soil swells and calls for life-giving seed. Then Heaven,-"? the Father almighty, comes down in fruitful showers into the lap of his joyous spouse, and his might, with her mighty frame commingling, nurtures all growths.
Page 83 - ... sive inde occultas vires et pabula terrae pinguia concipiunt, sive illis omne per ignem excoquitur vitium atque exsudat inutilis umor, seu pluris calor ille vias...
Page 11 - For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken...
Page 91 - Now! goode men," quod oure Hoste," herkeneth me; Abydeth, for Goddes digne passioun, For we schal han a predicacioun ; This Lollere heer wil prechen us somwhat." "Nay, by my fader soule, that schal he nat!" Seyde the Shipman; "heer schal he nat preche; He schal no gospel glosen here ne teche. We leven alle in the grete God," quod he; "He wolde sowen som difficulte, Or springen cokkel in our clene corn.