British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
Contents
Background to Topics (1) to (3): The Middle Ages
(1) Anglo-Saxon England
- Anglo-Saxon Culture, Old English Poetry: St Augustine of Canterbury, the Venerable Bede, "Caedmon's Hymn", "The Wanderer", "The Battle of Maldon", Beowulf, King Alfred the Great, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(2) Anglo-Norman England
- Celtic Legends: Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes
- Romance, Arthurian Legend, Legendary Histories: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Layamon, the Gawain Poet, Thomas Malory, William Langland
(3) Geoffrey Chaucer
Background to Topics (4) and (5): The Sixteenth Century
- Historical Chronology, Renaissance and Humanism, the Reformation, the English Bible, Court Culture, Literacy and Writing, Tudor Style, the Elizabethan Theatre
(4) Edmund Spenser
(5) Tudor Literature
- John Skelton, Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Walter Ralegh, Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd
Background to Topics (6) to (10): The First Half of the Seventeenth Century
- Historical Chronology, Politics and Religion, Philosophy and Science, Literature Promoters, Literature Writers
(6) William Shakespeare
(7) Jacobean Literature
- Ben Jonson, John Webster, John Fletcher, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Middleton, George Chapman
(8) Metaphysical Poets
- John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, Andrew Marvell, John Suckling, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan
(9) John Milton
(10) Seventeenth-Century Philosophy and Science
- New Genres: Autobiography and Biography, Essay and Treatise
- Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Browne, John Locke, Isaac Newton
Background to Topics (11) to (20): General Background to Literature between 1660 and 1790
- Historical Chronology, Society and Philosophy, Literature
(11) Restoration Drama
- Comedy: George Etherege, William Wycherley, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh, William Congreve, George Farquhar
- Tragedy: Nahum Tate, John Dryden, Thomas Otway, William Congreve
(12) Restoration Poetry and Prose
- Poetry: John Dryden, John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester)
- Autobiography: Margaret Cavendish, Samuel Pepys, John Bunyan
- Satire: Samuel Butler
Background to Topics (13) to (15): The First Half of the Eighteenth Century
- Satire, Prose, Drama, Poetry
(13) Daniel Defoe
(14) Jonathan Swift
(15) Alexander Pope
Background to Topics (16) to (20): The Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
- Poetry, Prose, the Novel
(16) Eighteenth-Century Prose
- the Periodical Essay: Richard Steele, Joseph Addison
- the Novel: Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Tobias Smollett, Oliver Goldsmith
(17) Eighteenth-Century Drama
- Sentimental Comedy: Richard Steele, Joseph Addison
- Satirical Comedy: John Gay, Henry Fielding
- Comedy of Manners: Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(18) Eighteenth-Century Poetry
- Satirical Poetry: John Gay
- the Graveyard School: Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith
- the Medieval Revival: Thomas Percy, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton
- Personal Poetry: James Thomson, William Cowper, George Crabbe
(19) Samuel Johnson
(20) Late Eighteenth-Century Novel
- Sense and Sentiment: Charlotte Smith, Frances Burney
- Gothicism: Edmund Burke, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Mary Shelley
(1 - 3) Background to the Middle Ages
Chronology
Prehistory: The Iberians, the Picts; the creation of the Stonehenge
5th century B.C.: The Celts, the Gauls; evidence in the language: e.g. bog, glen, and many proper nouns; the origin of the Arthurian legend
43 - c. 420 A.D.: Roman invasion and occupation of Britain
c. 450: Anglo-Saxon Conquest, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians; evidence in the language: Essex, Sussex and Wessex, occupied by the East, South, and West Saxons
597: St Augustine arrives to Kent; beginning of Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity
871 - 899: Reign of King Alfred the Great
1066: Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror, the Battle of Hastings
1360 - 1400: Geoffrey Chaucer; Piers Plowman; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1485: William Caxton's printing of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur, one of the first books printed in England
Period Characteristics
- the Middle Ages = the time span from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance
- the date 1485 = the year of the accession of Henry VII and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, used to mark the end of the Middle Ages for convenience
(1) Anglo-Saxon England (c. 450 - 1066)
- language: Old English, in this period clearly displays the kinship to other Germanic languages
- literature: shares a body of heroic as well as Christian legends with other Germanic literatures
- texts: Beowulf, "The Wanderer"
(2) Anglo-Norman England (1066 - c. end of the 13th century)
- language: the French of the ruling class, remains in loan words in the English vocabulary
- literature: fascination with the legendary hero Arthur, originating in Celtic literature
(3) Middle English Literature in the 14th and 15th Centuries
- language: Middle English, gradual displacement of French by English
- literature: emergence of the awareness and pride in a uniquely English literature, a new sense of English as literary medium able to compete with French and Latin
- texts: Geoffrey Chaucer; Piers Plowman; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(1) Anglo-Saxon England
- Britannia = the name derived from the Celtic-speaking inhabitants, the Britons; used when England was a province of the Roman Empire from the 1st to the 5th century
- England = derived from the invading Germanic tribe of the Angles
Anglo-Saxon Culture
- based on the aristocratic heroic and kinship values, emphasizes especially the uncle-nephew relationship
- the tribe is ruled by a chieftain called king, the lord surrounds himself with a band of retainers, often his kins
- the faithfulness of the warriors is rewarded by royal generosity, the good king is called a ring-giver
- the king sets an example which his men are to follow
- life is harsh, men are said to be cheerful in the mead hall, but even there they think of struggle in war
- blood vengeance is a sacred duty
- Romantic love does not exist yet, women are paid no attention
Old English Poetry
- the Anglo-Saxon invaders brought a tradition of oral poetry performed in alliterative verse by a scop, i.e. bard
- poetry is moulded by the inherent conflict between the heroic code and the Christian religion
- much of the Christian poetry is also cast in the heroic mode: "The Dream of the Rood" or "Caedmon's Hymn"
- the poetic diction consists of formulaic phrases and repetitions of parallel syntactic structures
- uses synecdoche (keel for ship), metonymy (iron for sword) and kenning, i.e. a compound of two words in place of another which creates a condensed metaphor (life-house for body)
- uses parallel and appositive expressions known as variation (God as holy Creator, Master Almighty etc.)
- also uses irony and litotes, i.e. ironic understatement (battle-play for fighting)
St Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604)
- a Benedictine monk sent by the Pope as a missionary to the King of Kent
- spread Christianity, which also had a positive impact on the rise of literacy, first only in monasteries
The Venerable Bede (c. 673 - 735)
- a Christian churchman writing in Latin
Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731):
- records the Anglo-Saxon conquest and the vicissitudes of the petty kingdoms that comprised England at the time
- focuses on the conversion, the spread of Christianity and the growth of the English church
- contains many stories of saints and miracles to testify to the glory of God
- includes "Caedmon's Hymn", the earliest extant Old English poem, and the only biographical information about any Old English poet
"Caedmon's Hymn" (composed between 658 - 680)
- written by Caedmon, supposedly an illiterate herder, who miraculously received the gift of song in a dream
- Caedmon entered the monastery and founded a school of Christian poetry
- the poem is the oldest oral tradition poem or song in Old English composed in England
"The Wanderer" (preserved in a manuscript from c. 975)
- an Old English elegiac lament, written by an unknown poet
- follows the wandering on a sea of a lonely warrior who had lost his lord, his companions in arms and a mead hall
- expands the theme from one man's search for a new lord to all human beings in a world wasted by war and time
- employs pathetic fallacy: nature seems to conspire to match the man's mood (the season is winter)
- concludes with a characteristic Old English injunction to practice restraint on earth and place hope only in heaven
"The Battle of Maldon" (c. 1000)
- the last Old English heroic poem, written by an unknown poet
- inspired by the battle between the English and the Danish invaders near Maldon, Essex, in 991
- ended with the victory of the Vikings
- elaborates on the code of honour obliging the warrior to avenge his slain lord or to die in the attempt
Beowulf (composed in c. 8th century, preserved in a 10th century manuscript)
- a long elegiac Old English epic reviving the heroic language, style and pagan world of ancient Germanic tribes
- written in the tradition of oral poetry in alliterative verse: uses words and formulaic expressions typically found also in other Old English poems, but also uses unique words that are recorded only once in a language
- presumably written by a single Christian poet: alludes to God (the monster Grendel is said to be a descendant of Cain), does not refer to pagan deities with the single exception of Wyrd, or Weird, the goddess of fate
- elaborates on the then most important relationships: that of the warrior, or thane, and his lord, and that of kinsmen
- concerned with two Scandinavian tribes, the Danes with king Hrothgar and the Geats with king Hygelac, set in the middle of the 5th century
- Beowulf, the warrior of the Geats, kills the supernatural monster Grendel and Grendel's mother to save the Danes and to exact revenge on behalf of Hrothgar, but also to demonstrate his strength and to enhance his personal glory
- later, as an old king, Beowulf fights against the dragon to save his own people, but is killed
- might be viewed as the poet's lament for heroes like Beowulf who went into the darkness without the light of his own Christian faith
King Alfred the Great (life 849 - 899, reign 871 - 899)
- initiated the beginning of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (started in 891)
- a historical record written in Old English
- takes the form of annals, i.e. an annual summary of important events in England
- copies of the original were later distributed to centres of learning and then carried on independently
- written by monks, that is devotes much space to church politics
(2) Anglo-Norman England
- Normans = the name is a contraction from Norsemen, the people were descendants of Germanic adventurers who occupied much of northern France in the 10th century
- Normans adopted the French language of the land they had settled in as well as its Christian religion
- parallelly existing languages: Latin as the language of learning, French of the Norman aristocracy, Middle English of the natives, and different branches of the Celtic language group
Celtic Legends
- Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes both claimed to have obtained their narratives from Breton storytellers
- the former speaks respectfully of the storytellers, the latter accuses them of marring their material which he had to weave in a more elegant fusion of form and meaning
- both were 12th century authors writing in French and using romances as a means of exploring psychological and ethical dilemmas and the individual's relation to society
Marie de France (12th century)
- an unidentified author, her signature means only that her given name was Marie and that she was born in France
- author of a series of short romances, e.g. "Lanval"
- a representative of the Breton lay, i.e. the genre of native tales originally performed orally by Breton bards, the word lay refers to a short verse narrative
Lais:
- a collection of twelve short verse romances, each of them dealing with a single event in the affairs of noble lovers
- portrays various kinds of relationships, both favourably and unfavourably, with both happy and tragic resolutions
- "Lanval": a romance of a mortal lover and a fairy bride, exceptional in the way it criticizes feudal society
Fables:
- traditional fables making animals stand for types of human characters
St Patrick's Purgatory:
- a translation from Latin of a contemporary monastic poem about a knight's descent to the underworld
- the title refers to the entrance to the underworld supposedly first found by St Patrick
Chrétien de Troyes (12th century)
- the principal creator of the romance of chivalry and courtly love
Ywain and Gawain (c. 1400):
- a Middle English romance, a cruder version of Chrétien's original French romance called The Knight and the Lion
Romance
- roman = the word was originally applied in French to a work written in the French vernacular
- romance = eventually acquired the meaning of a story dealing with chivalric adventures and courtly love
- the knight, obliged to obey the gentlemanly code of behaviour, sets off for a quest, often involving the saving of a damsel in distress threatened by monsters, dragons or vicious knights
- the romance contrasts with the previous period (love to a lady was not a subject of Anglo-Saxon literature), started a revolution in thinking about love and today influences our ways of thinking and perceiving
< initiated by the Troubadour poets in Italy and Southern France in 13th and 14th centuries
< Dante's idealisation of love to Beatrice in La Vita Nuova (The New Life, 1283 - 1293)
< also influenced by the worship of Virgin Mary
< might have been influenced by the misunderstanding of the wit and irony in The Remedy of Love, originally by Ovid, then a tale by Chaucer
C. S. Lewis's The Allegory of Love (1936):
- defines the attributes of courtly love
- humility: in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon period and works in Old English
- courtesy: the chivalric code of behaviour, formulas in the way of speaking and behaving
- adultery: illegitimate love affairs were results of pre-arranged marries in upper-classes, also the Crusades left young men free to woo the ladies in the castles (e.g. the love stories of Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde)