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The Alliterative Morte Arthure: The Owl & the Nightingale & Five Other Middle English Poems
Poets of every age deal with roughly the same human emotions, and for the experienced reader poetry is interesting or not depending upon the moment-by-moment intensity of its appeal. This skillful rendering by John Gardner of seven Middle English poems into sparklingly modern verse translation—most of them for the first time—represents a selection of poems that, generally, have real artistic value but are so difficult to read in the original that they are not as well known as they deserve to be. The seven poems The Alliterative Morte Arthure , Winner and Waster , The Parliament of the Three Ages , Summer Sunday , The Debate of Body and Soul , The Thrush and the Nightingale , and The Owl and the Nightingale. The first four poems represent high points in the alliterative renaissance of the fourteenth century. Morte Arthure , here translated for the first time in its entirety into modern verse, is the only heroic romance in Middle English—a work roughly in the same genre as the French Song of Roland. The other three poems have been included in the anthology as further poetic examples. With his employment of extensive comments and notes on the poems, Gardner provides a wealth of aids to appreciation and understanding of his outstanding translations. The anthology will be of interest to general readers as well as to students.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
60 people want to read
About the author
John Gardner
401 books462 followersJohn Champlin Gardner was a well-known and controversial American novelist and university professor, best known for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth.
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 9, 2015
A pleasant and readable translation of seven Middle English poems that give some insight on how the folk of England thought and lived in those days; and there are helpful notes at the end. Gardner kept as much of the alliteration as possible in the alliterative poems, making them great fun to read aloud.
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February 13, 2021Going through the furry canon - #8 - The Owl and the Nightingale
This piece, what W. P. Ker called "the most miraculous piece of writing . . . among the medieval English books," is a masterpiece of layers upon layers. Essentially being a long debate between an Owl and a Nightingale about who's the better bird, ultimately deciding they'll seek out Master Nicholas of Guildford to act as an unbiased judge, it's both an excellent debate and a hilarious satire (although it probably won't be comic on your first read). On the one hand, it combines masterful rhetoric, using sources and analogues identified by Melissa Ridley Elmes as Cato's Distichs, Neckam's De Naturis Rerum, Alfred's Proverbs and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, among others. To various authors, the debate has been an allegory on different things, such as a dispute between pleasure and asceticism, or, alternatively, gaiety and gravity, Art and Philosophy, an ascetic and a more serious view of life, strict monasticism and the latitudinarian clergy, astrology and witchcraft, the contemporary interest in the new gentle preaching as opposed to the old thundering sermon, didactic religious poetry and the new love poetry... but the poem raises above mediocrity by having the characters have an actual personality, function as characters rather than as emblems.
The Owl and the Nightingale does begin as though it were to be an allegory. The Nightingale is at first associated with paradise; she sits on a conventional earthy paradise image, "on a fair bough where there were blossoms enough" (translated literally) and her music is like the music of heaven. The Owl, too, seems to have allegorical possibilities at first. In her ivy-covered residence she "song hire tide". However, the splendid grass temple of allegory is shattered the instant the two birds begin to speak: they are mortal creatures, emphatically, and not polite ones.
The arguments are exaggeratedly self-righteous and self-important while telling us, at the same time, that they're lies; it's a burlesque of the debate genre (for a standard example, see "The Thrush and the Nightingale") where the opponents will cheat and say whatever is needed to win, repeatedly using their opponent's argument against them. As John Gardner explains, "looking closely, one discovers that throughout the poem both birds make use of two general strategies, the first being that of specious attack or retaliation (name-calling, scornful caricature, and analogies and saws designed to place the enemy in the worst possible company), and the second being that of self-praise or attack on the enemy's self-praise by self-praise on almost identical grounds. Only if one notices the many exact parallels does he see the full humor in each one-sided position. To mention a few, the Owl scornfully describes the Nightingale is a priest, and the Nightingale gives the same abuse; the Owl claims that men are disgusted by the Nightingale, and the Nightingale claims that men are disgusted by the Owl; on the other hand, the Owl claims she helps mankind to be properly religious, precisely the claim the Nightingale has made for herself."
The debate only exists as a plea for preferment for Master Nicholas, whose excellent qualities are praised to the point of exaggeration; it's the only thing both birds agree on, and they claim his superior bishops "give rents to little children"; it's when you find out it's most likely Nicholas himself wrote the poem that everything reveals itself as comedic.
Like all great burlesques, The Owl and the Nightingale is more than a joke on poetic conventions. It presents, centrally, a comic view of man, whose concern is too often--and all too understandably--not with truth but with winning. In one good medieval word, the Owl and the Nightingale are both, like us, proud. The Owl goes so far as to hint that she is a kind of Christ figure: not only does she return good for evil, she "sheds her blood" for mankind. In a sober moment, the poet might perhaps have made a sermon of all this, but he has chosen a happier course: he cheerfully joins his grandiloquent birds and, moreover, extends the comic melodrama to the larger world, in which the astute, noble, and righteous Nicholas of Guildford contends for preferment against clerks unspeakably less astute, noble, and righteous than himself. It is this larger comedy of human self-importance that gives the poet's burlesque of convention its lasting interest.
This piece, what W. P. Ker called "the most miraculous piece of writing . . . among the medieval English books," is a masterpiece of layers upon layers. Essentially being a long debate between an Owl and a Nightingale about who's the better bird, ultimately deciding they'll seek out Master Nicholas of Guildford to act as an unbiased judge, it's both an excellent debate and a hilarious satire (although it probably won't be comic on your first read). On the one hand, it combines masterful rhetoric, using sources and analogues identified by Melissa Ridley Elmes as Cato's Distichs, Neckam's De Naturis Rerum, Alfred's Proverbs and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, among others. To various authors, the debate has been an allegory on different things, such as a dispute between pleasure and asceticism, or, alternatively, gaiety and gravity, Art and Philosophy, an ascetic and a more serious view of life, strict monasticism and the latitudinarian clergy, astrology and witchcraft, the contemporary interest in the new gentle preaching as opposed to the old thundering sermon, didactic religious poetry and the new love poetry... but the poem raises above mediocrity by having the characters have an actual personality, function as characters rather than as emblems.
The Owl and the Nightingale does begin as though it were to be an allegory. The Nightingale is at first associated with paradise; she sits on a conventional earthy paradise image, "on a fair bough where there were blossoms enough" (translated literally) and her music is like the music of heaven. The Owl, too, seems to have allegorical possibilities at first. In her ivy-covered residence she "song hire tide". However, the splendid grass temple of allegory is shattered the instant the two birds begin to speak: they are mortal creatures, emphatically, and not polite ones.
The arguments are exaggeratedly self-righteous and self-important while telling us, at the same time, that they're lies; it's a burlesque of the debate genre (for a standard example, see "The Thrush and the Nightingale") where the opponents will cheat and say whatever is needed to win, repeatedly using their opponent's argument against them. As John Gardner explains, "looking closely, one discovers that throughout the poem both birds make use of two general strategies, the first being that of specious attack or retaliation (name-calling, scornful caricature, and analogies and saws designed to place the enemy in the worst possible company), and the second being that of self-praise or attack on the enemy's self-praise by self-praise on almost identical grounds. Only if one notices the many exact parallels does he see the full humor in each one-sided position. To mention a few, the Owl scornfully describes the Nightingale is a priest, and the Nightingale gives the same abuse; the Owl claims that men are disgusted by the Nightingale, and the Nightingale claims that men are disgusted by the Owl; on the other hand, the Owl claims she helps mankind to be properly religious, precisely the claim the Nightingale has made for herself."
The debate only exists as a plea for preferment for Master Nicholas, whose excellent qualities are praised to the point of exaggeration; it's the only thing both birds agree on, and they claim his superior bishops "give rents to little children"; it's when you find out it's most likely Nicholas himself wrote the poem that everything reveals itself as comedic.
Like all great burlesques, The Owl and the Nightingale is more than a joke on poetic conventions. It presents, centrally, a comic view of man, whose concern is too often--and all too understandably--not with truth but with winning. In one good medieval word, the Owl and the Nightingale are both, like us, proud. The Owl goes so far as to hint that she is a kind of Christ figure: not only does she return good for evil, she "sheds her blood" for mankind. In a sober moment, the poet might perhaps have made a sermon of all this, but he has chosen a happier course: he cheerfully joins his grandiloquent birds and, moreover, extends the comic melodrama to the larger world, in which the astute, noble, and righteous Nicholas of Guildford contends for preferment against clerks unspeakably less astute, noble, and righteous than himself. It is this larger comedy of human self-importance that gives the poet's burlesque of convention its lasting interest.
March 6, 2016
Morte Arthure – *** Gardner argues that the theme holding this work together is the pride of Arthur leading to his fall. I’d read The Death of King Arthur translated by Simon Armitage, and you can read my review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In that review, I noted that the work seemed episodic and I couldn’t see Gardner’s interpretation. I didn’t find any change in Arthur’s behavior (or in descriptions about him) that warranted his fall. (Or his rise.) The theme seemed moreso that the wheel of fate just turns capriciously and what was up will be down. There’s no moral or ethical reason. It’s simply fate. Arthur at the end does not seem to have more pride or arrogance that Arthur at the beginning. So, to me, the work remains episodic.
Gardner’s translation is good, but there is nothing remarkable. As I noted before, the poem has some excellent battle passage that remind me of the Iliad.
Summer Sunday – *** This is a beautiful little poem about the wheel of fate.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In that review, I noted that the work seemed episodic and I couldn’t see Gardner’s interpretation. I didn’t find any change in Arthur’s behavior (or in descriptions about him) that warranted his fall. (Or his rise.) The theme seemed moreso that the wheel of fate just turns capriciously and what was up will be down. There’s no moral or ethical reason. It’s simply fate. Arthur at the end does not seem to have more pride or arrogance that Arthur at the beginning. So, to me, the work remains episodic.
Gardner’s translation is good, but there is nothing remarkable. As I noted before, the poem has some excellent battle passage that remind me of the Iliad.
Summer Sunday – *** This is a beautiful little poem about the wheel of fate.
April 10, 2008
Gardner at his best. This isn't necessarily a book for scholars, but it's a great book for people who want to read some of the best medieval english poems. Gardner was a master of the subject matter, and his verse translations are enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews