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Module 14 - Part 2: Explorations and Exercises

Other parts of this module include:
Index  |  Part 1: Overview  |  Part 3: Texts and Contexts  |  Part 4: Web Resources

The Sharing of Narrative Materials in the Middle Ages

To respond to these exercises, it helps to have some appreciation of the cultural assumptions explored in them. Click on Web Resources for further insights into the way ideas about the human and divine in each culture colors the literary texts that we are studying.

These questions are arranged into three color-coded categories.

Level A invites you to look closely at some specific aspects of individual texts. Answering these questions shows that you have read carefully and understand the significance of important words and ideas as they appear in context.

Level B asks you to think more deeply about the implications of some of the details that you have isolated.

Level C allows you to build on the findings of the first two categories to theorize broadly about the relationship of the text to social and historical forces beyond the work itself.

Topics in this module's Exploration and Exercises section include:

Focus on Pancatantra

Level A

  1. Discuss the names of the animals in the Pancatantra. How are they appropriate to the characters of the different actors in the tales? How would you differentiate between the qualities that are recognized in names like “Rusty,” “Creep,” or “Fierce-Howl,” just to cite a few?
  2. Even in translation, the tone of the Pancantatra comes through. Explain the function of the adjectives in the first sentence of “Leap and Creep,” or the interjection of the narrator after the jackal falls into the vat of indigo that dyes his coat blue: “further life being predestined” (p. 1262).
  3.   The suitors offered to the transformed little mouse in “Mouse-Maid Made Mouse” each obligingly tells the holy man of a superior being who would make the girl a better husband, and in the first two cases the reasons for that superiority are clear. Explain the virtue of the mountain that elevates him above the wind, and of the mouse, whom the mountain recommends as his better.

Level B

  1. What is the view of hospitality in “Leap and Creep”? How do the flea and the louse use verse to argue their positions? 
  2. How do the stories of Fierce-Howl the blue jackal and Mouse-Maid resemble each other? What is the difference between the circumstances that lead each of them to self-recognition?
  3. What do you think of the moral of “The Loyal Mongoose”? Is greed the central problem in this tale? How might the mother’s actions be viewed?

Level C

  1. Compare and contrast the settings of the stories and the function of animals in the Jataka and the Pancatantra.
  2. The popularity of animal fables extends well beyond the limits of Volume B.  Although there is probably no direct connection between Birago Diop’s Mother Crocodile (Vol. F) and “Forethought, Readywit, and Fatalist,” in what ways may the two stories be compared? How would you contrast the main interest in each of the two stories?
  3. Compare the decision of Yajnavalkya to take the little mouse into his care in the forest hermitage with that of Father Kanva to care for the heroine of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala.  What do their shared characteristics tell us about paternal responsibilities in the Gupta age? Although Sakuntala is not an animal fable, how does its treatment of the forest world exhibit a moral view that resembles a fable’s?

Focus on The Red Lotus of Chastity

Level A

  1. The way stories begin tells us a great deal about the value system they reflect. Judging from its opening paragraphs, what seems to be important in the world of The Red Lotusof Chastity?
  2. How would you describe character development in this story? Choose one or two of the characters and examine the information the story gives us about them. Do we learn anything about the personal psychology of these characters?
  3. What does the nun mean by “the senses and the elements” (p. 1348)? How does Devasmita react when she hears the nun’s argument about her “highest duty”?

Level B

  1. What point of view does the story take toward religious rituals and activities? Give some examples to support your response.
  2. Why does Devasmita decide to punish the merchant’s sons by branding their foreheads? How does the conclusion of the story clarify the significance of this action?
  3. How does Devasmita punish the nun and her pupil? How would you account for the difference in the nature and the severity of their punishment and that of the merchant’s sons?

Level C

  1. Compare the opening of the Pancantantra stories with that of The Red Lotus ofChastity: how would you describe the kind of formula on which they rely? What other kinds of stories are you familiar with that use similar techniques? How do they help the audience understand the context for the unfolding events?
  2. Discuss the variety of disguises adopted here. How does the ease with which persons present themselves in multiple guises, both literally and figuratively, comment on the nature of character development in this story? 
  3. Contemporary cultural critics in the United States deplore the emphasis on sex and violence in the popular media. Write an essay in which you explain how the Sanskrit story literature takes a different approach to these preoccupations. Given the Hindu belief system, why is it valuable to hear about bad behavior, which is a shared motif in so many of these tales? Look, for example, at the way the corrupt nun explain her relationship with Devasmita’s weeping dog. 

Focus on The Thousand and One Nights

Level A

  1. After killing his wife and concubines, Shahrayar proceeds very systematically in commanding a wife for each night. He first orders the Vizier to select one of his princes’ daughters; then he takes an army officer’s daughter; next a merchant’s daughter, and finally a commoner’s. What view of society does this imply? How does it inform the rage that Shahrayar feels about what has been done to him?
  2. What point is the Vizier trying to make by telling The Tales of the Ox and the Donkey and of The Merchant and His Wife? Is his lack of success due to the narrative or to the audience? 
  3. What is the link between The Tale of the Fisherman and the Demon and the embedded story of King Yunan and the Sage Durban told by the Fisherman (pp. 1593-1605)? 
  4. Why does The Tale of King Yunan and the Sage Durban lead into the more deeply embedded Tale of the Husband and the Parrot (pp. 1599-1600)?

Level B

  1. The Thousand and One Nights posits a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between mind and body. Explain why Shahzaman pines away in the opening of the frame tale and why his health is quickly restored, and relate this explanation to the overarching development of the narrative.
  2. Look at the depiction of demons (jinns) in The Thousand and One Nights. Notice the way they are paired with human beings in Sura 55 of the Koran (p. 1456). How are these creatures of fire different from the popular cartoon image of genies? How do the abilities and experiences of demons in The Thousand and One Nights encourage reflection on human nature? Consider, for example, the reason why the demon starts in motion the Tale of the Merchant and the Demon, or the role played by the she-demon of the story of the seventh night (p. 1588). 
  3. Describe the narrative complexity of The Tale of the Fisherman and the Demon: how many embedded stories does it contain? What is their relationship with each other? How does the conclusion echo the resolution of the frame tale?

Level C

  1. The Prologue to The Thousand and One Nights begins in a familiar way, by giving the geographical location in which the events it will describe take place. Drawing on the materials available in Web Resources, explain the reasons why an Arabic work is set “in the peninsulas of India and Indochina (p. 1569).” 
  2. From the very beginning, time plays an important role in the frame story here. The brothers have been separated for ten years when Shahrayar arranges for Shahzaman to visit him. Shahzaman prepares for ten days before setting out; Shahrayar hunts for ten days, and so on. Write an essay in which you analyze the lengths of time that mark off different activities in the frame and in the tales, paying special attention to the importance of the work’s title.
  3. The pattern of each day’s storytelling keeps reminding us of Shahrazad’s narrative skills. How specific a portrait of her do we get? To what extent, if any, do you think her stories illuminate her personality and implicate the teller in the tales?

Focus on Texts and Contexts

Barlaam and Josaphat: Parts I-V

Level A

  1. How does the opening paragraph establish the narrator’s point of view? Why is it important to recognize the purpose of this story? 
  2. How is the King Abenner characterized? What emotions are associated with him?
  3. Why does one of the king’s most trusted colleagues decide to convert to Christianity? 
  4. How does the king celebrate the birth of a son? How does he try to insulate him from learning about Christian doctrines?
  5. What discovery does Ioasaph make in the outside world when his attendants neglect to accompany him? Why is he shocked by his encounter with the old man?

Level B

  1. How does the narrative treat the exotic world in which, from its narrator’s perspective, it is set? How well does he seem to know “the country of the Indians”?
  2. How is the atmosphere of the king’s court captured in the narrative? Comment on the way the narrator multiplies royal advisors who diverge from the king’s anti-Christian fervor. 

Level C

  1. Read the summary of the Buddha legend included in Web Resources and/or G. MacQueen’s article “Changing Master Narratives in Midstream: Barlaam and Josaphat and the Growth of Religious Intolerance in the Buddhalegend’s Westward and Journey” and demonstrate how Barlaam and Josaphat appropriates the details of the life of Buddha while changing its spirit.
  2. Read Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, paying special attention to the gamblers’ encounter with the old man. Scholars have shown that Chaucer probably was familiar with a sixth-century Latin poem spoken by an old man who wants to die (see Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, Sources and Analogues of The Canterbury Tales, Vol, I [Cambridge, Eng.:  D. S. Brewer, 2002, pp. 312-19). Write an essay discussing the encounter of Ioasaph with the old man and consider how it may have been an early influence on the view of suffering and age articulated by Chaucer’s character. In what ways is the old man’s expression of his grief non-Christian? (See the article by Jane Zatta in Web Resources.)

The Foolish Friend: 10 Versions

Level A

What is the basic action established in the Jataka tale of “The Mosquito and the Carpenter”? How does this story acquire a Buddhist perspective?

Level B

How do the actors in this set of stories change from version to version? Which of the stories have human protagonists? Can we draw any conclusions about the shift from one kind of character to another by looking at the place and the time period in which the stories were produced?

Level C

  1. Choose any three stories and write an essay that explains how the surroundings in the stories differ from each other and speculate on the ways in which these changes reflect the culture from which the stories emanate.
  2. Which stories make the moral explicit? Do you see any variations in the moral in the different versions? How important do you think the morals are to these fables in particular and to fables in general? Write an essay in which you discuss the degree to which we read stories for their moral content.

The Decameron: The Ninth Story of the Second Day

Level A

Filomena, the teller of this story, begins with its moral: “the deceived has the better of the deceiver.” Read the story and explain how it exemplifies this statement.

Level B

On page 1343 of the Anthology, the editorial headnote to The Red Lotus of Chastity compares it “to other tales about a test of conjugal fidelity in world literature (Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, for instance).” Shakespeare’s play is based on Filomena’s story in the Decameron, either directly, which seems likely, or indirectly, through an older play based on this story. In Web Resources, the tenth story of the eighth day is shown to be a close copy of another tale from the Kathasaritsagara. Read the Ninth Story of the Second Day and comment on the ways in which it resembles The Red Lotus ofChastity.

Level C

Shakespeare’s play is set in Britain and in Rome; Boccaccio’s story begins among merchants in Italy, but the disguised heroine’s travels take her to Alexandria, where she is taken into the service of the Sultan and sent on “to Acre [a great trading center] as governor and captain of the guard for the protection of the merchants and merchandise.” Write an essay in which you speculate on the importance of commerce as the backdrop against which stories about the fidelity of wives were frequently set. If possible, read Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and analyze the prevalence of commercial imagery in the language of the play. 

The Merchant and the Two Sharpers

Level A

What is the basic situation in this story? What moral does it teach?

Level B

Compare this story to “The Cheating Merchant” in the Jataka (Volume A, pp. 1004-05).

In what ways does “The Merchant and the Two Sharpers” seem more like a Jataka tale than like the stories in The Thousand and One Nights? What does that suggest about the different source materials that are absorbed into The Thousand and One Nights?

Level C

  1. “The Merchant and the Two Sharpers,” categorized by the folktale motif of “The Treasure Finders Who Murder Each Other,” is clearly an ancestor of The Pardoner’s Tale. How does Chaucer complicate the story by making the merchant into the third roisterer? How does the Christian significance of the number three contribute to the greater depth of meaning that this story acquires as it is revised for The Canterbury Tales?
  2. The Pardoner announces his moral: avarice is the root of evil. In what ways does his story go beyond exemplifying this theme to expose the Pardoner’s personal vulnerabilities? Note the faults he ascribes to the three roisterers: mutilating the body of Christ in their oaths; gambling; gluttony; and betraying each other. These suggest several thematic strands in the text, including fragmentation, risky behavior, self-mutilation, and the role of the body. Write an essay about how any of these themes inform the core story of the Tale while providing psychological insight into the teller of the Tale. You may find it useful to consult the essay on The Pardoner’s Tale in Web Resources.

The Death of Shahrazad, by Intizar Husain

Level A

What does the title of this story mean? How literally should we take it?

Level B

How does Husain’s story about a pre-existing character in itself typify the chain of tradition that we have been observing in this exploration of medieval narrative? What does the transmission of narrative suggest about the sources of artistic inspiration?

Level C

In this recent short story, a contemporary writer uses The Thousand and One Nights as a springboard for meditating on the need for narrative. Do you find his interpretation of Shahrazad’s experience consistent with the implications of the original work? Write an essay in which you analyze the evidence for granting Shahrazad an inner life in both the original and the appropriation. Does the new story see human beings in ways that were not available to the composers of the traditional stories built up over centuries?

 
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