Rank, like labor, is an issue for all users
(that is, students and teachers) of SEAFARER, for we are all
ranked in many ways and "in the ranks" in the sense of
actively engaged in either maintaining or improving our social
position. There are many reasons to think about rank and social
relations as part of our study of medieval culture through
SEAFARER.
Education, our enterprise, is probably the chief engine of social
mobility. Was this also true in the Middle Ages? Or was that a
time in which education was available only to a few who already
occupied the world's most privileged positions? In this regard,
think about Bede's story of Cæmon and his "Hymn,"
which forms LINK08 in the Monastic Life module. Cædmon was not
educated; he was not a learned brother but rather a cowherd; yet
he became a teacher. Is this an example of social mobility, or it
is just a myth to show that the low-born, if they are pious, can
share in the safety of salvation. Is this just another version of
idea that the poor are always happy and are always closer to God?
The use of education to level class differences
and improve the lot of the lower classes is fundamental to the
evolution of the modern university. On this topic, you should
pursue two books in particular, Graff's Professing English
and Eagleton's Introduction to Literary Theory.
In Eagleton, see especially the discussion called "The Rise of English":
English, as a Victorian handbook for English teachers put it [in 1860], helps to "promote sympathy and fellow feeling among all classes"; another Victorian writer speaks of literature as opening a "serene and luminous region of truth where all may meet and expatiate in common, " above "the smoke and stir, the din and turmoil of man's lower life of care and business and debate." Literature would rehearse the masses in the habits of pluralistic thought and feeling, persuading them to acknowledge that more than one viewpoint than theirs existed--namely, that of their masters. . . . if scanty education and extensive hours of labour prevented them personally from producing a literary masterpiece, they could take pleasure in the thought that others of their own kind-- English people--had done so. (25)
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