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A Brief History of English Literature

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Old English Literature (450 – 1066)

Medieval (Middle) English Literature(1066---1500) Renaissance (----16th Century) 17th Century (Revolution )

18th Century (The Age of Reason) Romantic Period (1798—1832) Victorian (1832—1901) Modern (20th Century)

一、Old English Literature

 Old English: tribal(449: Angles, Saxons and Jutes)-- heathens christianized in the 7th

century---feudal (1066: Norman Conquest)  Old English: Anglo-Saxon English  Old English Literature:

1.pagan poetry by scops (Old English poets or bards. 游唱诗人 2. religious poetry by literary monks

Beowulf（裴欧沃夫）：

1》 national epic叙事诗 of the Anglo-Saxon and the English people;

2》 Historical significance: It reflects the features of the tribal society of ancient times. 3》Subject matter: A Scandinavian hero

4》Striking features：alliteration, metaphors and understatements

二、Medieval English Literature

 一》General Background of the Medieval Literature

1. William the Conqueror became the King of England. 2. Feudalism was established in England

3. There were different literary forms: romance, popular literature

4. The literature was a combination of French and Anglo—Saxon elements

 二》Medieval Literature

 1.Poetry is the main genre体裁: epics; long narrative poems; lyric poems ballads etc  2.Types ：

1> church literature

Language used: Latin, Greek

contents：Bible stories, stories of the apostles, prayer books, hymns, religious narrative poems,religious plays etc. Most originated from the

Bible and describe God’s omnipotence, Virgin Mary’s miracle , the apostle’s preaching and practicing.

2>Epics: 史诗

Beowulf (England); Song of Roland (France); Song of Cid (Spain); 《尼伯龙根之歌》(Germany); 《伊戈尔远征记》(Russian). All of them shows patriotism and heroism

3> Ballad: 民谣（名词解释）

1. A short narrative poem with stanzas（段，节） of two or four lines and

usually a refrain. The story , folklore popular legends. Straightforward易懂的 verse, s with graphic simplicity and force. Suitable for singing generally written in ballad meter, with the last words of the second and fourth lines rhyming.

2. the subjects of Ballad:

(1) the struggle of young lovers who are fight against the feudalism (2) the conflict between love and wealth (3) the cruelty of jealousy (4) the criticism of the civil war (5) the matters of class struggles.

Character of Robin Hood

1.Robin Hood--- A legendary English hero of many ballads, who robbed the rich to give to the poor; a popular model of courage, generosity and justice.

2. strong, brave, clever, tender-hearted, affectionate. Hatred to the cruel oppressors, love for the poor and the downtrodden

Geoffrey Chaucer桥搜:

founder of English poetry; The Canterbury Tales (main contents; 124

stories planned, only 24 finished; written in Middle English; significance; form: heroic couplet)

• A> Life: Chaucer’s active career as courtier, soldier, diplomat, and civil servant provided him not only with knowledge but also experiences which accounted for the wide range of his writings.

• B>Literary career:

1. The French period. He translated many French works and also familiarized with writings in Latin esp. Virgil and Ovid

2. The Italian period. a. He immersed himself in the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. b. Here he wrote Troilus and Criseyde, the first modern novel, which also became the subject of Shakespeare and Dryden. 3. The Mature period. The Canterbury Tales

• Religious attitude: a devout and orthodox Christian

C>Chaucer’s position in English literature



a> Messenger of humanism: He affirmed man’s right to pursue earthly happiness

and opposed Asceticism, praised man’s energy, quick wit and love of life.

 b.>The first realistic writer: Compared with romance’s religious poetry and Langland’s dream vision, Chaucer, for the first time, presented a comprehensive realistic picture of the English society and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all works of life.

 C.>“Father ” of English poetry and novel:

Chaucer introduced from France the rhymed stanzas to replace the Old

English alliterative verse. Heroic couplet and octosyllabic couplet were employed in many of his poems.

His Troilus and Criseyde was called the first modern novel for he developed the art of literature that could not be found in medieval literature

d> Master of the English language

Between the Norman conquest and 1200, languages used by educated men were French and Latin, Chaucer was the first great poet who wrote in the current English. He greatly increased the prestige of English as a literary language and extended the range of its poetic vocabulary.

e>For the Renaissance, he was the English Homer. Spenser called him master; many of Shakespeare’s plays show assimilation of Chaucer’s comic spirit

4>Creeds of the knights:

being loyal to his lord; fighting for the church, protecting the weak;

respecting women of noble birth

5>The standardized plot:

adventures or(and) love stories of the knights

3 genres：Lyric poems & Romance  Romance（名词解释）

(1).The basic material of medieval romance is knightly activity and adventure; we might best define medieval romance as a story of adventure--fictitious, frequently marvelous or supernatural--in verse or prose.

(2).A long composition describing the life and adventures of a noble hero. The central character was the knight, a man of noble birth skilled in the use of weapons who was very devoted to the king or to the church.

(3).One who wanted to be a knight should serve patiently until he was admitted to the knighthood with solemn ceremony and the swearing of oaths.

The Nature of the Romance:

(4). The Nature of the Romance:

Themes: Loyalty to the king and the lord, which was the corner-stone of feudal morality.

The audience was of noble people from the court or the castle. The Romance had nothing to do with the common people.

The Romance were written for the noble, of the noble and in most cases by the poets patronized by the noble.

 Romance Cycles:

Matters of Britain, France, and Rome

King Arthur 君主& His Knights骑士 of the Round Table Sir Gawain & the Green Knight (culmination)

三、Renaissance Period文艺复兴时期（14th-17th） 一>Renaissance（名词解释）

 ―Renaissance‖ means ―revival‖, the revival of interest in Ancient Greek and Roman culture and getting rid of conservatism in feudalist Europe and introducing new ideas that express the interests of the rising bourgeoisie.

 It started in Italy and ended in England and Spain

 a revival of classical (Greek and Roman) arts and sciences (translation of classical works into English)

 a cultural movement of the rising bourgeoisie

 key note: humanism, which emphasizes the belief in man, his environment and doings and his brave fight for the emancipation of man from the tyranny of the church and religious dogmas.

 aim: to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval age and introduce new ideas that express the interests of the rising bourgeoisie.

二>background

1. the humanism in Europe:

1>The introduction of printing led to an enlarged reading public and a commercial market for literature;

2>The great economic and political changes led to the rise of democracy; 3> The spirit of nationalism;

4>The growing of \"new science” etc

2. Renaissance in England

1>The time: mainly from the reign of Henry VIII, Edward, Mary and then to Queen Elizabeth and Jacobean Era

2>Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age:

An age of comparative religious tolerance; /An age of comparative

social contentment; /An age of dreams, of adventures of unbounded enthusiasm; /An age of intellectual liberty, of growing intelligence and comfort among all classes and of unbounded patriotism.

3. The main artistic styles

translation: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Iliad, Montaigne’s Essays travel books: More’s Utopia Thomas More and his Utopia:  Forerunner of utopian socialism  An imaginative travel narrative written in the form of conversation between More and Hythloday, a returned voyager describing an ideal state governed by reason, influenced by Plato’s Republic  The subject is the search for the best possible form of government: Utopia---a community of property---a pure, pre-Marx form of communism ) poetry: Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard; Phlip Sidney; Walter Raleigh; Edmund Spenser

Poetry: Edmund Spenser and his works  The Shepherd’s Calendar:12 pastoral poems and eclogues, one for each month,

mainly for his loss of Rosalind

 Amoertti: a series of 88 sonnets in honor of his lover Elizabeth.All except one was written in the Spenserian sonnet, a linked quatrains rhyming abab, bcbc, cdcd,ee.

 Epithlamion: marriage hymns to celebrate his marriage with Elizabeth.  The Faerie Queene(《仙后》):

 The blending of religious and historical allegory with chivalric romance:

Gloriana for Queen Elizabeth I, 12 knights for the qualities of the chivalric virtues--- the six completed books are holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy, with Prince Arthur and Gloriana in all.

 Spenserian stanza:it is a nine-line stanza with the first 8 lines iambic

pentameter and the ninth, iambic hexameter rhyming ababbcbcc which is the typical verse in The Faerie Queene. 

essay: Francis Bacon

 A philosopher, essayist and statesment

 Major works are: The Advancement of Learning; The New Method and Essays.  Some quotations:

1. Knowledge is power.

2.The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

3.Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.

4. Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

5. Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle-age, and old men’s nurses.

6. There is no excellent beauty that has not some strangeness in the proportion

 “Of Studies” is the most popular of Bacon’s 58 essays: it analyzes what studies chiefly serve for, the different ways adopted by different people to pursue studies and how studies exert influence over human character.

---Studies serve of delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in private- ness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.

drama: “University Wits”, Shakespeare

 they were the humanist dramatists in late 16th century England such as John Lily, Robert Greene, Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, all of whom were from Oxford or Cambridge.

 They were all of humble birth and struggled for a livelihood through writing, reformed the drama in some way  they paved the way for Shakespeare

 三》