A study of consolation poetry of the fourteenth century, with particular reference to The book of the Duchess, Pearl, The parlement of the thre ages and sundry minor poems on death
Master Thesis
1987
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University of Cape Town
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Fourteenth-century man saw around him constantly the immediate prospect of death. Not only the high mortality rate and the universally public death-bed scene which had always been present, but pestilence and war emphasized the proximity of the dread messenger. Around him he saw sculpture and painting, in churches chiefly but not confined to them, depicting the horrors of death and judgement and he was accustomed to hearing sermons and verse which dwelt on the subject in lurid detail. Death to fourteenth-century man was not so much fear of the unknown since the whole process was, up to a point, readily observable and thereafter authoritatively mapped out by the church. Although the departed soul may be destined for the joys of the Beatific Vision, nevertheless those left behind experience loss, uncertainty of the loved one's fate, the often traumatic physical sight of the death-bed and the unwelcome reminder that this is the fate that overtakes everyone. However joyous may be the wished-for reunion with God, one cannot help viewing reality. The cherished body becomes loathsome. In the face of this terror, some form of consolation is required, leading to resignation to the inevitable. The way fourteenth-century man looked at death is well illustrated in the enormous body of literature on the subject. From this plenty has been selected Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, a gentle work which keeps Death at a distance; Pearl, an anonymous work depicting the handling of grief at the loss of a child; The Parlement of the Thre Ages which deals harshly with its audience in order to teach its lesson and contains most of the themes which recur in the final chapter, where a small selection of didactic and homiletic poems is considered. All the writers are English but attitudes in Western Christendom show, at a cursory glance, the similarities one might expect from cultural and religious homogeneity. The selection was made to demonstrate both this unity of outlook and the various treatments of the theme of death. The conclusion is a summary of the evidence from Chapters I to IV for the fourteenth-century attitude to death and a brief comparison with a modern work on the subject.
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Bibliography: pages 171-178.
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Peddie, M. 1987. A study of consolation poetry of the fourteenth century, with particular reference to The book of the Duchess, Pearl, The parlement of the thre ages and sundry minor poems on death. University of Cape Town.