Middle ages
Mankind
The Castle of Perseverance
Renaissance
Old English
Birth of Theatre
Early English
Comedy and tragedy
Freytag's Triangle
Doctor Faustus
Hamlet
Midsummer Night's Dream
English Literature from Middle Ages to Renaissance
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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
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