British Literature before the 16th Century
Outline of the lecture
1. Making of England
2. Roman conquest and its significance to
English society
3. Anglo-Saxon period and its significance
• Beowulf
4. Norman conquest and its significance
• Tudor Dynasty
• Geoffrey Chaucer
5. 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
from?
• Powerful Celts in central
and 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
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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
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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 1366
7) 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 periods
1) 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 beststoryteller
• 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 soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath 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
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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 18
1) 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?