British Literature before the 16th Century

Outline of the lecture

1. Making of England2. Roman conquest and its significance to

English society3. Anglo-Saxon period and its significance• Beowulf 4. Norman conquest and its significance• Tudor Dynasty• Geoffrey Chaucer5. Assignment for next lecture

I The making of England

• Who were the early inhabitants in the island of Britain?

• Britons, a tribe of Celts• Where did the Celts come fr

om? • Powerful Celts in central an

d north Europe from 750 BC to 12 BC

• mainland Celts (Gauls) and island Celts (Britons and Gaels)

• Gaels in Scotland and Ireland speaking Gaelic

II Roman Conquest

• In 55 BC, Julius Caesar, the Roman Conqueror, occupied Britain.

• In 410, Roman Empire fell into decline.

Significance of Roman conquest

• left no deep impression on its national life

1)Roman mode of life: theatres and baths in the towns (the city of Bath)

2)Appearance of Roman streets and city

ancient London city

Bath, England’s world heritage city

• Founded in Roman Conquest

• Famous for its hot springs

• Jane Austins’ second home: Bath museum

• Wife of Bath

• Royal Crescent and the Circus built in the 18th century

III Anglo-Saxon Period (5th century-11th century)

• Tribes from Northern Europe: Anglos, Saxons and Jutes

• Small kingdoms were united in the 7th century. People used old English.

• In the 7th century, Anglo-Saxons were Christianized. Many monasteries were built all over the country.

• A transitional period from tribal society to feudalism

• Why English today called themselves as the descendents of Anglo-Saxons?

• In the 8th century, the Continent began to use the word Anglo-Saxon to distinguish Saxons in Britain from Saxons in the Mainland.

• In the 11th century, Normans invaded and began to adopt Anglo-Saxon to refer to the local English

Beowulf

• Representative work in Anglo-Saxon Period: • containing more than 3000 lines, is a national epic of

the Anglo-Saxon and English people • What’s the main story of Beowulf? • Social significance:

1) characterization: simple by deeds, faithful to his people, bravery in actions---call for grand heroes to fight against Nature.

2) Reflect the features of the tribal society of ancient times.

• Aesthetic value• alliteration: the accented words in a line begin with the

same consonant sound, generally 4 accents in a line, three of which show alliteration.

Examples: Thus made their mourning the men of Geatland For their hero’s passing, his hearth-companions … Of men he was the mildest and most beloved, To his kin the kindest, keenest to praise. (from Beowulf)

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing

(from Thomas Nash’s poem in the 16th century)

• Metaphors: ring-giver for king; swan’s path for sea

• Beowulf was cannonized since the 15th century. During the 500 years, there are more than 60 versions of translation.

• In 2000, Seamus Heaney’s translation version Beowulf won Whitbread Prize and became the best seller in America.

• In 2007, film Beowulf was produced.

Beowulf on the screen

IV Norman Conquest

• Since 1066, French-speaking Normans under Duke William of Normandy came to England.

• English society entered into feudalism.• English society entered into Middle Ages or

Medieval Age.• A high-hand conquest: Blake Death and the

peasant’s rising of 1381• Henry VII, the first Tudor King of England in

1485, English history entered into Modern time

Henry VII and Tudor Dynasty

House of Tudor

• Established by Henry VII, descendant of Owen Tudor, a Welsh adventurer

• Owen fooled around with the widow of Henry V. Henry VII is crowned at the end of a civil war (the War of the Roses)

• Henry VII’s first son Arthur dies young• Henry VIII (ruled 1509-47) second son of

Henry VII

• Significance of Norman Conquest

1) the English language was greatly enriched by the Norman Conquest

2) The union of state and church: hierarchy and God-centered worship

• English French Latin

• time--------age--- -------epoch

• Rise--------mount-------ascend

• Ask--------question-----interrogate

• Goodness---virtue------probity

• Fast-------firm------------secure

• Fire--------flame-------conflagration

• Fear-------terror--------trepidation

• Holy-------sacred-------consecrated

Oral literature in Norman Time:

Romance: King Arthur and his Knight of Round Table---to emphasize the loyalty to king and lords

Ballads: Robin Hoods to show the fighting spirit, indomitable courage and revolutionary energy of the English peasantry.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer’s life (1344-1400)

1) Born in 1343 in London

2) As a son of a wine merchant and deputy to the kings’ butler

3) Little known about his education, he could read French, Latin and Italian.

4) Was appointed to the household of the Countess of Ulster in 1357 and started his royal service since then.

5) In 1359-1360, went to France with Edward III's army during the Hundred Years' War.

6) Got married in 13667) Went abroad several times for

diplomatic and commercial missions.

8) especially in Italy, he met Boccaccio and Petrarch in 1372-73, much influence by the Italian humanists, such as Dante.

9) Died in 1400 and buried in the poet’s corner of Westminster Abby

10) Chaucer’s monument was erected in 1555.

Chaucer’s main works

• Three periods1) French period translation work: Romance of the Rose narrative poem: The Book of Duchess(the name Chaucer was from French origin and meant

shoemaker)2) Italian period• The House of Fame • Parliament of the Birds• Troilus and Criseyde 3) English period• Canterbury Tale (unfinished)

The Canterbury Tales

• A pilgrimage of 30 people on a route to and from Canterbury (England)

• To tell stories to amuse themselves on the way

• Harry Bailly, the innkeeper, promised a free meal for the best-storyteller

• In structure: prologue and 24 stories (intended to have more than 100 stories and kept unfinished and handed down in manuscripts)

• Prologue serves as a brief introduction, to enable readers to have a general view of the whole content.

• Among the 24 individual stories, 2 in prose and 22 in verse form.

Wife of Bath’s Tele

• The Wife of Bath is depicted as the new bourgeois wife asserting her independence.

The famous lines in Canterbury Tales

• Whan that Aprill, with his shoures sooteThe droghte of March hath perced to the rooteAnd bathed every veyne in swich licour,Of which vertu engendred is the flour;Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breethInspired hath in every holt and heethThe tendre croppes, and the yonge sonneHath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,And smale foweles maken melodye,That slepen al the nyght with open eye-(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

---------in Middle English

Modern English version

• When in April the sweet showers fall That pierce March's drought to the root and all And bathed every vein in liquor that has power To generate therein and sire the flower; When Zephyr also has with his sweet breath, Filled again, in every holt and heath, The tender shoots and leaves, and the young sun His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run, And many little birds make melody That sleep through all the night with open eye (So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage) Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,

当四月轻柔的甘霖彻底解除了三月的旱情浸透了每一根枝条由此激发出来的生命力孕育了花儿朵朵当带着阵阵香味的和风为树丛和田野中的嫩条带来新芽当春分的太阳 ,在白羊星座中走完了一半的路程当大自然激起了小鸟的本能在睁着一只眼度过黑夜之后开始唱歌人们渴望踏上朝圣之路云游四方的圣徒期待着踏上各国奇妙的土地和远方的圣殿涌向坎特伯雷 ,去朝谢备受尊敬的殉教圣人他们的救病恩主托马斯 ·阿 ·贝克特

T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land

• April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

• 四月是最残忍的一个月，荒地上长着丁香，把回忆和欲望参合在一起，又让春雨催促那些迟钝的根芽。

Chaucer’s literary achievements

• Literary position: father of English poetry, founder of English literature

• His Canterbury Tales demonstrates a panoramic realistic view of the social reality near the end of the Middle Age by depicting vivid lives of people from all layers of society.

“He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because…he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and humor of the whole English nation in his age."

-----John Dryden in Preface to the Fables, 1700)

• As a transitional figure, he entered a new era and brought back the new ideas of Italian Renaissance writers.

• Chaucer made a crucial contribution to English literature in writing in English at a time when much court poetry was still composed in Anglo-Norman or Latin.

• Chaucer introduced from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace alliteration, such as heroic couplet, and first used iambic pentameter form.

Summary

• Chaucer’s greatness lies in his creation and innovation in learning and borrowing others.

Reflection

• Why it was Chaucer, as the first English writer to use English in literary creation?

• What were the cultural features in the second half of the 14th century?

Questions for next lecture

• Read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 181) Why does the persona “I” compare his lover to a summer’s

day? 2) Why the lover is more lovely and more temperate than a

summer’s day? 3) What is the persona’s opinion on beauty, immortal or

temporary? 4) What’s the theme of the poem? 5) Why the poem is called sonnet in terms of poetic form? 6) What is Shakespearian sonnet? 7) How many sonnets did Shakespeare write in his lifetime?

• Read Hamlet (excerpt)

1) How many plays did Shakespeare write in his lifetime? How to classify his plays?

2) What is the main plot of Hamlet?

3) What dose Hamlet decide to choose, to live or not to live?

4) What is Hamlet’s attitude towards death? How do you comment his attitude on death?

1) What is Humanism? How do the sonnet 18 and Hamlet show the author’s humanistic ideas?

2) Why did English Renaissance appear in the second half of the 16th century, much later than Italian Renaissance in the 14th century?