ISBN: 978-0-7636-5094-0
 |
| Cover image from Candlewick Press |
By and large, the poems are meant for a single voice, but there are two poems that were written for two characters. They do not engage in dialogue, but reveal their inner thoughts to the audience in a pas de deux where the words join and separate as the characters' ideas mesh and then diverge. It's used with a particularly poignant effect in "Jacob ben Salomon the Moneylender's Son and Petronella the Merchant's Daughter." Jacob, a young Jewish man, and Petronella have much more in common than they both realize. They've been brought up with similar values and allegiances to their families and respective faiths, and to view one another with the same suspicions, and yet... If all the social and religious roadblocks weren't there, Schlitz demonstrates that Jacob and Petronella might have been good friends in another time and place. The other, "Mariot and Maude the Glassblower's Daughters," find two young girls faced with the prospect of marrying their father's apprentice. To one of the daughters, it's a fate worse than death, but the other doesn't find it such a terrible idea. The other poems are essentially meditations on their situation in life, their dreams for the future, and the hard, cold reality that defines every aspect of their existence. This is excellently drawn in "Barbary the Mudslinger." After she seethes with jealousy over the visible wealth and ease displayed by the lord's daughter, Barbary succinctly sums up how their futures aren't so far apart in the end:
It made me think
how all women are the same --
silk or sackcloth, all the same.
There's always babies to the born
and suckled and wiped,
and worried over.
Isobel, the lord's daughter,
will have to be married,
and squat in the straw,
and scream with the pain
and pray for her life
same as me. (Schlitz 2007, 49)
Barbary's language is quite exaggerated, but it effectively places the direness of her family's situation into context. She describes her reaction upon learning her stepmother is going to have another baby after a difficult previous pregnancy and delivery as, "I stood there / with my jar almost touching my knees" (Schlitz 2007, 46). Barbary, covered in mud, muck, and baby poo, sees Isobel walking down the street with "her hair... combed, sleek as an otter. / Her veil was snow white... Her lips were curved, / like the smile of a cat" (Schlitz 2007, 47). The figurative language serves to set Isobel apart from Barbary -- the smooth hair and spotless veil are enough to set Barbary's teeth on edge, but the cat-like smirk is the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Barbary's plain, yet descriptive, language to describe her own situation is quite eloquent with its many words and phrases to depict various forms of filth, so when Barbary has to tell the audience about Isobel, she needs a different way to shape the words so the audience knows that Isobel seems a little larger than life in Barbary's mind. Most of the poems don't have a distinct rhyme scheme, but "Thomas the Doctor's Son" is composed in rhyming couplets. With lines like, "I know the stars and movements planetary. / With one whiff, I can sniff out dysentery" combined with the audible rhymes, Schlitz (2007) makes Thomas sound like a character in a Gilbert and Sullivan musical (18). This isn't a bad thing, and the rhymes give the monologue a bit of a self-important air. The poem "Otho the Miller's Son" contains a repetitive portion of a stanza that reads, "Oh, God makes the water, and the water makes the river, / And the river turns the mill wheel / and the wheel goes on forever" (Schlitz 2007, 27). It neatly illustrates the medieval view that one's lot in life is determined by God.
Three of the monologues are written as prose: "Nelly the Sniggler," "Pask the Runaway," and "Will the Plowboy." That being said, the prose pieces do have a poetic rhythm that belie their structure. If you heard them read aloud, you could be excused for thinking they're poems. So it's puzzling to me why Schlitz chose to write them this way. The characters aren't from the same social sphere, and Schlitz doesn't match a specific poetic form to the character's social class in the other poems. Nelly, Pask, and Will don't have interactions with one another. The solid blocks of text feel and look out of place among the nineteen other poems.
Structurally, the poems give the person performing them ample opportunity to insert pauses for dramatic or comic effect, as shown in "Jack the Half-Wit."
Lack-a wit
Numskull
Mooncalf
Fool.
That's what they call me.
That's what they yell in the village
when I walk through. (Schlitz 2007, 30)
The indentations on the lines can signal to the reader that they should take a pause before speaking the next line. In "Jack the Half-Wit," the pauses let the insults sink into the audience, allowing each one to float in its own line. Many of the poems exhibit a similar structure. The poems written for two voices, lines where the readers are supposed to say a line in unison are printed in italics.
Schlitz includes a bibliographic list, as well as a table of contents. She also includes endnotes to explain some of the more archaic terms or concepts. It's a great feature, but its placement makes it difficult to use. Had Schlitz included them at the end of the poem or as footnotes, it would have allowed the reader to take a quick peek, then move on. By placing them at the end, the reader has to flip to the back, find the endnotes for the particular poem, then flip back to the poem itself. It gets a little tedious, even for an adult. Schlitz doesn't just use poetry to illustrate the Middle Ages. She also includes blurbs about things like the Crusades, the treatment of Jews, medieval farming practices, and pilgrimages. They give the poems they follow a little more depth of knowledge. Candlewick Press also has a teacher's guide that allows you to do a reader's theatre or explore the characters and society in more depth.
Robert Byrd's woodcut like illustrations provide a couple of things. One, each poem has a small illustration of each character. He does a more expanded illustration for each of Schlitz's background blurbs. My particular copy had illustrations rendered in black-and-white, but there is a full-color version. After seeing images of the full-color version, I would recommend the full-color version. The details tend to fade a bit in the black-and-white. The illustrations are appropriate, and the best one is a map of the village that has tiny figures of each of the characters in the poems where they live and/or work in the village. It provides great context.
I'm not entirely certain that the poems will appeal to a wide variety of children. As Sylvia Vardell (2008) stated in Children's Literature in Action, "Historical fiction may be one of the most difficult genres to promote... For many children [history is] as strange and hard to understand as fantasy, only boring. To them, the distant past feels has remote as a make-believe future" (175). And this is historical fiction through and through. Had this been published when I was in middle school, I would have devoured it in a heartbeat, but then again, I was a huge fan of historical fiction, and I still am. However, many students might be turned off by the combination of poetry and historical fiction, and if a teacher or librarian wants to encourage students to try Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, it will require careful marketing. Don't get me wrong, the poems are interesting, and what they reveal about how people lived in the Middle Ages is fascinating. If someone teaches social studies, and approaches it from a humanities standpoint, then it's an excellent resources, especially for middle grades. In British Columbia, the Grade 8 social studies curriculum contains the Middle Ages, and this would be a perfect addition to the library and to the teacher's classroom libraries, as well. It works well as a supplement to a textbook, if the teacher routinely uses a textbook.
*********************************************************************************
Spotlight on...
"Edgar the Falconer's Son"
'Twas I who stole thee, two years hence,
Climbed to the heights with many a qualm,
Scooped thee from they mother's nest.
I felt thy heart beat 'gainst my palm.
I was the one who filled thy crop --
I fed thee, stroked thee, day and night.
Thou wast my captive and my child --
All savageness and appetite.
And it was I who gentled thee.*********************************************************************************
I was the one who drew the thread
That seeled thy eyelids. And for thee
I hungered and forsook my bed.
Long in the night I walked the floor,
Carrying thee upon my glove.
I fed thee dainties -- mice and eels,
Adder skin and heart of dove. (Schlitz 2007, 38-39)
One of the more fun things about history is to find out the kinds of jobs people did. Some of them truly belonged on Mike Rowe's television show Dirty Jobs. After sharing "Edgar the Falconer's Son" with the class, students can choose one off a list of medieval-era jobs and research them. They will then collaborate in small groups (no more than five) with their classmates to make their own version of Dirty Jobs. They can use moviemaking software, like iMovie, to edit and polish their program. They students will have to create costumes (or costume pieces) and props that will appear in their video. The jobs list will come from Archers, Alchemists, and 98 Other Medieval Jobs You Might Have Loved Or Loathed by Priscilla Galloway.
*********************************************************************************
Works Cited
Schlitz, Laura Amy. 2007. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices From a Medieval Village. Illustrated by Robert Byrd. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
Vardell, Sylvia M. 2008. Children's Literature in Action. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are welcome. Please be polite and courteous to others. Abusive comments will be deleted.