English Lit from Middle Ages to Renaissance
Topics:
Introduction
Key dates:
43 - ca. 420: Roman invasion of Britain
ca. 450: Anglo-Saxon conquest of England
597: St. Augustine arrives in Kent (England) and starts spreading Christianity
1066: Norman Conquest (king William I, William the Conqueror) of England
1485: Henry VII (Tudor Dynasty) and beginning of Renaissance
Middle ages or Medieval period:
Time between the fall of the Roman empire (ca. 450) and the beginning of Renaissance
(1485)
Early Renaissance:
The Tudors (1485-1603)
The Stuarts (1603-1714)
Two periods:
1. Old English Literature (Anglo-Saxon) - until 1066
2. Middle English Literature (1066 - ca. 1500)
1. Old English Literature:
Main dialects: West Saxon (influenced the most the actual English); Mercian; Northumbrian;
Kentish
Main features: runic alphabet; pronunciation (all words are stressed in the first syllable,
except those with unstressed prefix; no silent letters); inflections (cases; singular and plural
forms; verbs); morphology (new words are formed by linking existing ones); mainly oral
(spoken stories and poems >> only after conversion to Christianity, they began to be written
down)
Old English Poetry:
1. Secular (relating to the physical world)
2. Religious
Style:
Repetition of parallel syntactic structures (repetition of adjacent sentences and clauses)
Formulaic phrases (“dear lord”)
Alliterative verse:
- Lines are divided into two halves by a caesura. Each half has two stressed syllables
and two or three of these are alliterated.
,Old English Period Prose:
Mostly written in Latin:
- Gildas Sapiens – De Excidio Britanniae (before 547)
- Historia Brittonum (compiled around 679, anon.)
- Aldhelm, Bede and Alcuin (8th century): lives of saints, ecclesiastical history
English as a medium to disseminate (spread) knowledge:
- Aethelberht, King of Kent (560-616)
- Alfred, King of Wessex (849-901): The Laws of Alfred, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The
Prose Psalms and he translate many Latin works.
2. Middle English Literature (1066-1500 approx.):
Language changes: English with Latin and French influences
- Pronunciation becomes more simple
- Inflections begin to disappear (only plural nouns and genitive survive)
- Borrowings from French
Medieval society:
Three estates: clergy (religious leaders), nobility and common people
Feudalism pyramid: Kings and queens; church officials and nobles; knights; peasants and
serfs.
Birth of the middle class
1348: Black Death >> unbalanced the feudal pyramid
14th century: end of feudalism
French influence on Medieval literature:
Romance
- Chivalry and romantic literature (11th-13th century)
- Repeated themes and motifs
- English romance tended to imitate the octosyllabic couplet, but also to parody the form
- Tail rhyme: rhyming couplet or triplet followed by a shorter line (the tail) that rhymes with
the other tails. (AABCCB)
Courtly love
- Philosophy of love and code of lovemaking
- Fixed structure
Beast epics
- Humorous
- e.g.: The Fox and the Wolf
Allegorical poetry
- Most popular form after the decline of the romance
- the symbolic meaning is more important than the literal meaning
- Extended metaphor
Dream vision
- Work framed as a dream
,- Circular structure
- We learn from dreams
Writers, audiences and readers:
- Originally
- Writers mostly anonymous until 1050-1200
- The text was performed, read aloud
- Occasions: churches and houses
- Change
- As church moved into its scholastic phase, new demands for written material (universities,
professions and gentry (people of high social class))
- invention of the printing press (1436) – modern period
- 1100-1500: increase in literacy (people who can read and write)
- Beginning of the “silent” reader
- Circulation of manuscripts
Birth of theatre
- The romans brought the theatre to England when they invaded the country.
- British theatre origins: religious performances put on by church ministers in the 10th
Century.
- This early form of theatre was often transported from town to town on pageant
wagons*. Before the end of the medieval period, many towns had permanent spaces
set aside for public performances.
- The popularity of religious theatre came to an end with the English Reformation. >>
King Henry VIII outlawed any performers who were not in possession of a royal
licence or part of a noble household. >> theatre based around the personal tastes of
wealthy merchants and noblemen.
*The pageant wagon was a structure where the plays would take place, all of them with a
biblical theme, the first one representing creation, and the last one the end of all,
represented as a “Hell Mouth” wagon.
Three different types of plays: mystery play, miracle plays and morality plays
Mystery plays:
- stories taken from the Bible.
- Each play had four or five different scenes or acts.
- The priests and monks were the actors.
- Each scene or act was performed at a different place in town and the people moved
from one stage to the next to watch the play.
- The play usually ended outside the church so that the people would go to church and
hear a sermon after watching the play.
Miracle plays:
- was about the life or actions of a saint, usually about the actions that made that person
a saint.
, - Now the plays are in English and performed by secular performers in secular costumes
Morality plays:
- form of drama in pre-modern England.
- were designed to teach people a lesson in how to live their life according to the rules
of the church.
- Only 5 plays have survived: The pride of life; The castle of perseverance (1440);
Wisdom (1460-65); Mankind (1465-70); Everyman.
- Shared features of these plays: moral instruction; set in no time; written in verse;
protagonist represents all humanity; characters personify moral qualities; fall into sin;
fragmented lines of blasphemy (no respect to God/religion).
Mankind
- Most widely-read medieval morality play
- Survived in the Macro manuscript, which also includes The Castle of Perseverance
- the play is concerned with the most fundamental aspects of human behaviour, namely, the
difficulties of leading a virtuous life in the face of hardships, distractions, and temptations.
- Mankind tells the story of its eponymous hero's temptation, fall into sin, and ultimate
redemption.
- The story revolves around the struggles of a farmer, Mankind, as he attempts to lead a
virtuous life in the face of repeated temptations which bring him to the brink of despair and
damnation.
- He is aided (=assisted) by the “virtue” character, Mercy, here unusually cast as a clergyman
>> choice that emphasises church's powerful role in effecting salvation.
- 1-52: The play opens with a sermon-like speech by Mercy, who admonishes the spectators to
remember the sacrifices that were made for their salvation and to reflect on the impending
day of judgement. >> Mercy warns, “Prike not yowr felicites in thingys transitorye”, but think
instead about the coming day of judgment on which there will be a strict reckoning and “The
corn shall be savyde, the chaffe shalle be brente”.
- Mercy's speech is barely over when Mischief enters, spouting doggerel (=poetry that is
irregular in rhythm and in rhyme) Latin in a parodic challenge to Mercy's advice. He is quickly
joined by Newguise, Nought, and Nowadays, “vice” characters who represent the worldly
pleasures Mercy has just denounced.
- They engage in rough-and-tumble verbal bantering filled with blasphemous jokes that
explicitly taunt Mercy and all he stands for.
- Even their aaab cccb tail-rhymed verses mock and invert Mercy's measured octaves and
quatrains. (they speak very differently!)
- Warning them that they will repent their “idyll language”, Mercy sends the vices on their
way.
- 186-204: At this point we are introduced to Mankind, who enters carrying his spade.
(Mankind's spade is a visible symbol of the hard, badly paid, physical labour he performs >>
emphasis on honest labour, which represents a life of spiritual virtue, over sinful sloth)
- Mankind is immediately set upon by Nought, Newguise, and Nowadays, who try to persuade
him that he is wasting his life in fruitless labour >> Standing firm against their foolery, he
beats them back with his spade.
- 554-564: His success is short-lived, however, for when Mischief learns that the vices have
failed to tempt Mankind, he summons up the devil Titivillus >>Titivillus goes to Mankind's
