Friday, November 9, 2012

Medieval Literary History

This lack of obvious literary evidence of Arabic influence at the popular take aim is in large part due, says Menocal, to the fact that the cultural, literary and phantasmal biases held by Christian europiumans once against Arabs prevented them from being honest about Arabic influences on their writing, even if they had desired to be honest. Recognition of Arab influences would eat been a "flagrant contradiction of cultural ideology" which was base on the belief in "cultural supremacy everywhere the Arab world" (Menocal 6).

An analysis of Menocal's book and related secondary sources makes lay down that non-Arabic Western European gallant literature was indeed influenced by Arabic sources in obvious as well as subtle ways.

Menocal notes that when a researcher wrote an article linking Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and "Arabic build Tradition," the "hostile attacks" on the article did not address the affectionateness of the researcher's argument, but rather "the accuracy of sources in pre-Arabic traditions" (Menocal 19), which missed the designate entirely, either deliberately or because they were blinded by their repugnance to the argument.

Menocal notes a certain(prenominal) measure of schizophrenia with respect to the military volume of Western/Christian cult


As we stomach seen, one fear of the Western mind was the sumptuousness of the Arab world, its neck of material pleasure (Menocal 40). Sir Gawain is made vulnerable to the come-ons of the married woman of his host as he is luxuriating in the castle. She tempts him with her sexuality again and again, and from the beginning he is bewildered by her--not "yet exposed of comprehending" her "promise":

Menocal identifies the "vernacular lyric" of Romantic literature as expressed in courtly love as especially influenced by Arabic culture and writing (71). Courtly love admits of woman's tremendous power over man, both to give him strength and to corrupt him.

Finally he yields to her temptation, but only, he tells himself, to feed the magical girdle.
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.
The courtly love evinced in a egress of tales from Arabian Nights is also reflected in the genteel manner with which Gawain treats the seductress who would cede him betray his host. If we consider the story of Gawain as an early Christian work, could we not accordingly consider that perhaps the enemies of Gawain---the chiliad Knight, his host's wife, etc.---symbolize certain aspects of the Arabic culture which the author was warning his readers against?

Consider then the case of Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a European medieval masterpiece with hints of Arabic influence suggested by the Arabian Nights. Sir Gawain's temptation by the wife of his host at the castle and his eventual(prenominal) yielding to the seduction so that he might have the magical girdle which will save his life from the Green Knight call to mind a number of aspects of the Arabian Nights. Certainly the magical girdle is comparable to the lamp of Aladdin and the falling puppet and diamonds of Sindbad.

Mean or amount to---a marvel he vista it (Borroff 25).

The foreign devil, with his material temptations and promises of a better life in this world . . . has had many faces. It is one of the ironies of history that in Europe in the Middle Ages the for
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.

No comments:

Post a Comment