On What Grounds Can Different Poets' Works Be Compared?

        Like novices in a chemistry class, who might begin by classifying substances as "chemicals" if they've never heard of them and "natural" if the substance is familiar, novice readers often assume that poems are either uniquely incomparable if they like them or "all the same" if they don't.  As scholars of medieval literature, we need the equivalent of the chemist's tools of analysis in order to make our subjects objectively available for analysis.  Like a well-made molecule, a well-made poem is bound together by many different forces that cause its parts to work together in ways poets have planned, consciously or unconsciously.  Explaining those plans, and using them to compare and evaluate poems, is our business as literary scholars.  Content analysis and stylistic analysis offer two complementary sets of tools with which poems can be compared and evaluated.  Each helps the other work better.

Content:   Content analysis asks what the poem is about and how the content of the poem makes that topic appear to its readers.  Is it more complete than another poem about the same topic?  Is it more subtle, surprising, amusing, or profound in its selection and arrangement of details?  Does it make better use of what it selects than the other poem?  The goal here is not to disparage the "losing" poem or to call the "winner" a work of genius.  Such comparisons help us to know better the poems, and their poets.  You probably can think of further ways to test the poems' quality of content, but in all cases, being aware of the poems' genres can prevent misunderstandings as dangerous to our business as a chemist mistaking an acid for a base or a poisonous substance for a food additive.  Selection of detail for a tragedy is likely to differ from selection of detail for a comedy.  Satire may blur the distinction between the two, but it will do so in a way that creates predictable ironic effects characteristic of the genre.  At this point, content analysis blends imperceptibly with style.

Style:      Stylistic analysis asks how the poem handles its content and manages its relationship to its readers.  This combines formal analysis of the poem's mechanics, what verbs it chooses in what order, for instance, with rhetorical analysis of its effects, whether it's a third-person narrative about far-away events ("distal" to linguists) or a first-person narrative about events the narrator shares with the readers ("proximal" to linguists).  Is it "overheard," as T.S. Eliot described the lyric voice which conjures from a few details a feeling or idea while forcing readers to reconstruct from implications the rhetorical situation in which the voice speaks?  As the examples suggest, knowing the "genre" or kind of poems we are comparing is just as essential to stylistic analysis as it is to content anaysis.  We do not expect rhyme from prose, nor should we necessarily expect subject-verb-object sentences when analyzing English poetry, and the presence or absence of a narrator similarly cannot be assumed as an essential piece of content until we know the genre of the work and what it is about.  With that move, stylistic analysis meets content analysis again.  Moving back and forth between content and style, the analysis builds our picture of how the poems work so that we can develop hypotheses to explain the poems' quality.

Testing Hypotheses:     As with any hypothesis about patterns of evidence in a work of literature, we must devise tests to rule out coincidence.  A good hypothesis about a significant pattern can predict what should be found elsewhere in the poem when that same kind of evidence reappears.  Such is the nature of literature's use of patterned repetition with variation.  The evidence may not, indeed probably will not be exactly the same as it was in the first instance.  The content may vary among similar kinds of things (horses, colors, escapes).  The style may vary among similar kinds of stylistic devices (e.g., systems of metaphor or simile).  Or, the poet may make it easy for us by repeating a nearly identical refrain.  In any event, always test your hypothesis by testing its ability to predict something elsewhere in the poem, and look for the evidence.  If the evidence is not quite what you expected, alter your hypothesis or rethink what the evidence means.

Historical and Cultural Background:      Notice that the examples below make use of historical and cultural knowledge to establish norms for behavior, to identify and clarify the function of persons or places or things, and to detect violations of ordinary contemporary readers' expectations.  When we read literature from our own era, we unconsciously use that kind of historical and cultural information and only rarely notice that we are doing so.  When using a scholarly edition, like the Riverside Chaucer or the TEAMS edition of "London Lickpenny," below, remember your first line of assistance comes from the introductory essays and explanatory notes scholarly editors provide.  They also often will point you to articles and books for further background.  Ask your instructors for resources they would recommend.  If you make a practice of picking up at least one new source of cultural background for every reading, you soon will acquire some measure of the authors' unconscious cultural familiarity with the world in which the literature was written.

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        We can see these two analytical methods compressed in the rule for poetic excellence given by the Roman poet, Horace: poems are best when they "delight and instruct."  The delight arises initially from the style, and the instruction from the content, though as we saw above, style can teach and content can shape form.  To see how this delightful instruction can be used to compare two poems of the same genre, let's look at some features of Chaucer's "General Prologue" to the Canterbury Tales and the anonymous poem, "London Lickpenny."  Both are examples of a medieval genre called the "estates satire," poems which amusingly criticize the typical attributes of characters representing social types.  The descendants of the "estates satire" are characters found in "situation comedy" television shows and jokes based on occupations (lawyers, doctors, software engineers).  The sample analysis and evidence below only examine one aspect of each poem's style and content.  Much more can be said about both!

1)  Chaucer's General Prologue:

        Chaucer-the-Pilgrim's content pays considerable attention to the dress, typical actions, physical appearance, and speech of the pilgrims.  Though elsewhere in CT he pays attention to the countryside and some tales describe places, nowhere in the General Prologue is the location, the Tabard Inn, described.  The introductory invocation of spring's return has spent such close attention on the landscape that it might be surprising that the place where all the pilgrims meet our narrator is never described.  So successful is the narrator's control over our attention that we barely notice the absence of that detail and focus instead on this parade of people.  In effect, the pilgrims he describes become the "landscape" and the places they have lived before coming to the inn sometimes emerge fleetingly from the portraits.  (For comparison with a narrative in which the London streetscape becomes a character, see the introduction of Charles Dickens' Bleak House.)

Content/Style Hypothesis: Chaucer's style of presenting the pilgrims creates repeated patterns of insinuation and irony to incite his readers to interrogate the pilgrims' portraits more closely.  Once we have been teased by a few hints and misdirections, he gradually encourages us to begin to take sides with him in his struggle to know the truth about the pilgrims despite their concealment and evasion, and despite Chaucer-the-Pilgrim's ironic suppression of literal truth.  We gradually learn that what he does not tell us may be as important as what he tells us.

Evidence:

• The Knight is an aristocratic warrior and politician whose fighting skills and judgment were the "Defense Department" and "Local Government" of England in Chaucer's day.  His portrait begins as you would expect, with a long series of positive attributes describing him as brave and experienced in battle, moral in his court behavior, and not hardened by his experience.  Then, at line I: 73, a series of "And" clauses piling up his virtues runs into a "But."

73: But, for to tellen yow of his array,
74: His hors were goode, but he was nat gay.
75: Of fustian he wered a gypon
76: Al bismotered with his habergeon,
77: For he was late ycome from his viage,
78: And wente for to doon his pilgrymage.

        Why does the narrator bother to tell us the horse lacked any "caparison" or other ornament which nobles usually used to decorate their mounts in order to advertise their wealth and aesthetic taste?  (Compare the Monk's horse, with bells on its bridle, itself a curious thing to see ridden by a man sworn to poverty, chastity, and obedience [I:  168-71].)  Why does the narrator tell us the Knight was wearing the most common sort of clothing (fustian cloth) covered with filth from hard riding?  (Compare his own son, the Squire: "Embrouded was he, as it were a meede / Al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede" [I:  89-90].)  The narrator reveals the superficial reason in lines 77-78, but does that really explain why this medieval noble would violate the "dress code" of his estate and (by implication) urge a hard-driven horse upon a long journey when the animal ordinarily would have been allowed to rest and recover?  The implication is that this pilgrimage is of overwhelming importance to the Knight.  Think of a legislator or general entering a church in dirty jeans and a sweatshirt.  What could explain this tired warrior's hasty journey to Saint Thomas à Becket's shrine?  If we are not asking this question already, the following description of the Squire seems designed to drive us back to it.  The boy is dressed in gorgeous embroidered clothing, with his curly locks flowing freely, and his penchant for singing and composing verse must have been demonstrated to Chaucer-the-Pilgrim by some behavior he witnessed, so different from his father's sober demeanor.  So the portraits "talk to each other" by encouraging readers to compare them with each other.
 

• The Prioress rules a nunnery, an economic institution as large as a village or a small town, with its own farms, craftspeople, and servants to serve the nuns who prayed and sang and meditated on the Gospel.  The first things we hear about her are not her administrative skills or biblical knowledge, but her smiling, her mild oaths, and her speech, specifically her badly accented French.  Then on to how she eats?

127: At mete wel ytaught was she with alle:
128: She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,
129: Ne wette hir fyngres in hir sauce depe;
130: Wel koude she carie a morsel and wel kepe
131: That no drope ne fille upon hire brest.
132: In curteisie was set ful muchel hir lest.
133: Hir over-lippe wyped she so clene
134: That in hir coppe ther was no ferthyng sene
135: Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte.
136: Ful semely after hir mete she raughte.
 

        Once again, what we do not hear about is as important as what the narrator directs our attention toward.  Something is out of balance in this woman's world.  She, like the Monk, is sworn to poverty, chastity, and obedience, but even her dogs eat better than the peasants and some guilds people, and wait, she owns pet dogs?  Just like the Monk with his fancy horse, the Prioress plays the role of aristocrat better than the Knight.  The reasons for this are not hard to detect.  Younger sons and daughters of the aristocracy often joined the clergy, at a clerical rank befitting their origins and their donations, to reduce the strain upon their families who needed to find suitable matches for their elder children without dividing their lands or depleting their reserves of capital.  If you are not called to the Church by faith, but by economic necessity, what kind of life do you live and what occupies your mind?  Good horses in your stable.  Good manners at table.  Nice jewelry on your nun's habit.  Good food and drink.  These things make an empty life pass with less pain. 

Testing the Hypothesis:      "How do we know these things?," you might ask.  The primary source evidence itself already can be seen to repeat in the two portrait excerpts above.  Look forward in the GP portraits and you will find what you expect, much implication and irony, details other than those you expect for characters of this social type.  The implied significance of Chaucer's ironies or implications are harder to pin down.  The safe answer is that we don't know for sure, but Chaucer-the-Pilgrim's unusual style of description seems intended to lead us to suspect such things about the characters, or things like them.  The next stage is to seek historical context in the explanatory notes or in scholarly books and articles on medieval culture to explain the unexpected patterns in the evidence.  A paper based on such a hypothesis would argue that it may explain the evidence, not that it surely does explain the evidence.  Never make the common mistake of trying to overstate the certainty of your hypothesis--look for places where you are tempted to assert the truth of your hypothesis using the adverbs "clearly" or "undoubtedly" or "obviously."  A "Stop" sign or a bomb going off mean things "clearly" and "obviously."  Chaucer's pattern of indistinct irony or implication may be a further sign of his personal style as a poet.  Rather than showing us a didactically correct or incorrect behavior and drawing its actor in bold primary colors, the General Prologue often shadows forth the figures with lots of implications and resonances with other pilgrims' portraits.  (Obvious exceptions: Summoner and Pardoner!  OK, a pattern within the pattern?  Why?)  We could generate possible or probable evidence for this by looking at his use of implication and irony elsewhere in CT or other works.  If we find it, we might say that Chaucer's style emphasizes the readers' roles in constructing the text's meaning (what Barthes called a "readerly text) rather than his own power to control meaning (Barthes' "writerly text").

2)  "London Lickpenny"

        "LL"'s narrator is a countryman from Kent, east of London on the Channel coast, who has come to town seeking justice.  The poem uses the occasion to take us on a tour, first of Westminster, where the central law courts were held and (surprise?) where his hood is stolen, and then to the rest of town where the countryman vainly pursues his stolen hood while observing the economic and social bustle of the nation's largest city.  If we do not know it at line one, but the time his hood is stolen we recognize the narrator as a "schlemiel," a "fall guy," the lovable but feckless victim-hero of a thousand jokes whose adventures we can laugh at because "we know better."  At least, we know better after we've read this poem.  An insider's guide to medieval London might have emphasized the successful pursuit of power, but this one concentrates on the city's dangers for the unwary, and dramatizes London's starkly secular nature, especially with respect to the Christian duty of charitable aid to the needy.  One after another of the city's inhabitants mocks the narrator's lack of ready coin, and the refrain almost encourages us to sing along: "For lacke of money, I may not spede." 

Content/Style Hypothesis:  The poem's style resembles Chaucer's General Prologue in its serial portraits of London city types, but notice the significant attention to setting.  The sounds and sights of individual districts, what people sell and how they sell it, all are part of the narrator's vision.  That is the richness of the poem's content, and some might say it rivals the General Prologue for its compressed but varied view of London society.  For all this variety, however, we know what's coming every time: "For lacke of money, I may not spede."  For all its variety, the city is everywhere the same, from high court to thieves' market.  The style tells us that in rigorously parallel eight-line stanzas.

        "LL"'s satire is more concentrated than the "GP"'s, and its moral teaching seems inescapable.  Be charitable.  Do not succumb to the London vice of nascent capitalism.  Notice how the hood stolen in Westminster resurfaces for sale in the Cornhill market.  The circulation of goods in a capitalist culture becomes indistinguishable from theft.  What happens when we look more closely at the Cornhill stanza's language for its style and content?  Note how the "gospel" of capitalism's pursuit of goods threatens to supplant the "Apostles' Creed" of Christianity: "Then I beheld [my hood] with lokes full longe; / I kenned it as well as I dyd my Crede" (101-102). 

Testing the Hypothesis:  Is the Cornhill stanza's simile a mere accident, or is it consistent with and predictive of the poem's overall style portraying the clash of Christian and capitalist cultures?  The next two lines, and the poem's concluding stanza, confirm that the simile was no accident but part of the poet's overall control of style and content..  The man who decides "To be [buy] myne owne hode agayne, me thought it wrong, / But for lacke of money I might not spede" will return to Kent and to his plow, laboring for his living as God commanded in Genesis instead of being seduced into following capitalism's deceptive law of currency-makes-the-man.  Moreover, he will pray for the lawyers of London, both those true to godly practice of the law and those who betray it, demonstrating the charity the ungodly lawyers lacked.  His richness in faith is offered in their defense to God, the Eternal Judge, in lieu of their poverty of faith.  Historical sources, beginning with those in the scholarly reference material provided by the editors, can help confirm and refine this analysis.

Then I conveyed me into Kent,
For of the law would I medle no more;
By-caus no man to me would take entent,
I dight me to the plowe, even as I ded before.
Jhesus save London, that in Bethelem was bore,
And every trew man of law, God graunt hym souls med;
And they that be othar, God theyr state restore: --
For he that lacke the money, with them he shall not spede!
 

        Analysis of "London Lickpenny" helps us appreciate Chaucer's subtle resistance to didactic certainty while pursing a multi-faceted social critique.  Analysis of Chaucer's "General Prologue" helps us appreciate "London Lickpenny"'s use of cumulative parallel-structured stanzas with a refrain to drive home its didactic point.  In both cases, because of the poems' similarities and differences in handling similar content, comparison of the two poems could help demonstrate the likelihood of the hypothesis we were advancing.  Were we to know of another didactic social satire in Middle English, we might also use it for comparison and contrast with "LL" to further refine our reading of "LL"'s content and style.  Were we to know of another ironically ambiguous social satire in Middle English, we might also use it for comparison and contrast with "GP" to further refine our reading of "GP"'s content and style. 

        When should we stop gathering evidence and write the paper?  That depends on how ambitious your hypothesis is and how much time you have to work it out.  If you have met the basic test of a predictive hypothesis supported by more than one set of evidence, you are probably done for undergraduate work.  Graduate students usually have to go further, but perhaps not much further unless they're sending it out for publication.  For undergraduates, "good enough" evidence and analysis may produce an excellent paper if you have done your work carefully and have not exaggerated the strength of your thesis.  When in doubt, ask your instructor, providing enough of your evidence and reasoning to show what supports the hypothesis you propose.

        As in the case of the General Prologue hypothesis and supporting evidence, the poem is such a complex object that, like our chemist's view of DNA, it can be analyzed in many ways and still yield further insights.  For instance, in what order does our traveler or Chaucer's narrator describe the places/persons he sees?  Juxtaposition adds meaning in the General Prologue as later portraits and earlier ones are compared and contrasted.  In "LL," too, the events in distant stanzas may speak to each other, generating additional layers of significance.  Find a point of comparison by content or by style.  Follow it through the work, and see if you can begin to infer the author's purpose in creating a pattern with this content or stylistic device.  Once you have your hypothesis generated from content or style, switch to the other mode of analysis.  Ask of a content-based thesis what its style will tell us about that content choice by looking at the form in which the content is presented.  Ask of a style-based thesis what examining the content within the form will tell us about the choice of style.