Meta Notes 3: "Project of the Text" for March posts

Capgrave's Life of St. Katherine: this text is largely interested in agency and identity in the story of the virigin martyr, in her attempts first to prevent being subsumed in a husband's identity and later to promote her new identity as a Christian. 

Regiment of Princes: this text deals with the rival forces of economic and spiritual need coupled with the loyalty to one's employer, specifically flavored by the changing state of Hoccleve's employment. The Boethian dialogue promotes the ameliorative aspects of poverty, but Hoccleve also lays out the economic realities of late medieval urban English life. 

"My Compleinte": this text is largely interested with the interior versus exterior psychology, summed up in the well known image of Hoccleve leaping in front of a mirror to try and catch his outer state.

"La Male Regle de T. Hoccleue": as with much of Hoccleve's texts, this poem deals with the psychology of regret for a sinful youth that is coupled with, and may have partially caused, a current economically and spiritually destitute state. 

The Legend of Good Women: generally, this text is more about the legend of bad men, focusing largely on the inability of several classical male figures to adhere to agreements, contracts, or just be outright loyal.

Ywain and Gawain: this text is mostly concerned with warring responsibilities, the contradictary obligations of domestic and feudal sources. This also ties into a common thread in Arthurian texts of the knight spending too much time at home becoming weakened, but too much time abroad leading to instability at home. 

Sir Perceval: this text emphasizes the necessity for young nobility to remain active in the world, specifically that his young knight not be denied his role in the Arthurian world. 

Troilus and Criseyde: this text is about the tension between public and private, both in relationships and information. If Troilus and Criseyde had been more public with their relationship things would likely have gone differently.

Alliterative Morte Arthure: this text is about the prominence of England over foreign powers, establishing the right of England as a nation separate from connections to Rome. It also deals with matters of primogeniture and, as with many Arthurian texts, the issues of a king waging foreign wars for domestic stability. 

Marie de France's "Equitan": this text is another anti-feminist text that constructs the seneschal's wife as a socially disruptive figure who ruins an otherwise virtuous king. 

Marie de France's "Le Fresne": also somewhat anti-feminist, this text provides dual examples of the bad woman, Le Fresne's mother, and the good one, Le Fresne herself, based on the criteria of proper submissiveness.

Marie de France's "Bisclavret": this text is about proper faithfulness, a fairy tale version of Samson and Delilah that ends with a wolf biting off the unfaithful wife's nose, a condition which then becomes genetic. 

Marie de France's "Lanval": this text is about the necessity to maintain feudal agreements. Much of the initial trouble is that Lanval feels slighted for Arthur failing to do so, and his mistake is breaking his own contract with his fairy sponsor.