Engels literatuur samenvatting The Middle Ages (Isis)

From 55BC to about 450 AD most of Britain was under Roman rule. In about 450, the Romans withdrew from Britain in order to defend what remained of their continental empire. The British were attacked by the Celts of Scotland and Ireland, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Also the Huns made an appearance and drove the other tribes away.
After a period in which they plundered a lot, the Anglo-Saxon raiders became settlers. They established several kingdoms. Wales, Scotland and Cornwall remained beyond Anglo-Saxon rule and the Romano-British continued to hold power over those pieces of land.
We know more about the ruling classes than about the farmers. But we do know they traded with Scandinavia and Friesland.
Most famous work in Old English is Beowulf. Shorter poems are also preserved, as are translations of Latin texts. From the ninth century, monks and clerks started to maintain chronicles: annual records of contemporary events.
The first recorded attack made on Britain by Scandinavian Vikings took place in 793. Throughout the following century, Vikings raids continued. Wealthy monasteries were consequently prime targets.
Right up to the eleventh century, the Scandinavians, Anglo-Saxons and Normans continued to fight over the English crown. Duke of Normandy saw an opportunity to claim the throne: he crossed the channel with his army and defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Norman period of English history began.  

Sutton Hoo is the burial site of a seventh-century king, laid to rest in a ship twenty-seven metres long.  In the boat were also weapons and jewellery.

King Alfred of Wessex: Important king. He defeated the Danes in 878, halting the advance of Viking rule. He made a peace treaty with the Danes, reorganised the Anglo-Saxon army and created a line of fortifications along the border. He also built a fleet of ships; the English navy.
He also convinced to translate Latin texts into Old English, so that more people could read it.

Bede: famous monk who wrote one of the most important historical works of the Early Middle Ages (in 731). King Alfred (871-899) regarded the book as sufficiently important to the development of his country. He insisted on translating the texts.

Beowulf was the work of Anglo-Saxon literature. It is the oldest European text in a common people’s language. It is not known who wrote Beowulf or how old the poem is, but it seems from somewhere around the sixth century.

Few kings managed to remain in power for long: they tended to die young (often in battle) or were deposed by rivals. Loyalty was rewarded with gold. It meant the common people were expected to be willing to die for their lords.

Beowulf’s storyline centres on a hero of enormous strength, who acquires fame by fighting various monsters. It begins with the family history of the Danish King Hrothgar. Beowulf travels from Geatland to Heorot, to slay the bloodthirsty monster. A few years later he is king and he tackles a dragon. All his ‘loyal’ comrades flight except for Wiglaf. He is injured by the dragon and dies of his wounds. The poem ends with Beowulf’s cremation on an enormous pyre.

Late 9^th century – 12^th century: The era of King Alfred the Great. The chronicle became established as a literary genre in England. Some were very short, others were quite detailed.

A chronicle could never be finished, because every year there were further noteworthy events.
Chronicles were usually written in monasteries by monks, who did not put their names in their work.
The events recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle span more than a millennium: the first relates to the year 1 AD, the last to 1154 AD.
For events prior to the ninth century, they relied mainly on established sources, such as  earlier chronicles, or oral sources.

King Harold (1066): He came from York to Westminister because the king passed away. There was a sign in the heavens. It was a star. The Northmen almost won the land, but King Harold came upon the Northmen by surprise. The Northmen flight but most of them were killed.
He let the son of the Norse’s’ king live and let him swear an oath of peace. He then let the remaining Northmen leave with 24 ships.

The first riddles, written in Latin, were introduced to England by one Abbott Aldhelm at the end of the 7^th century. 

The Anglo-Saxon riddle is based on the device of presenting one object/phenomenon as another. Many riddles contain errors as a result of being copied incorrectly or not properly understood by the people who passed them on.
The riddles are very varied in their form and content: they differ in length and in style. Most contain subjects as tools, weapons, animals, food, drink and natural phenomena.

THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: 1066-1500

William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxon army at The Battle of Hastings. The society became divided into three classes: the nobility (French-speaking), the clergy (Latin) and the commoners (English). The first two groups held almost all the land, which was worked by the farmers from the third group. The first king of England who actually spoke English was Edward III, who did not reign until 1327 to 1377!
To demonstrate their power and protect themselves against possible rebellion, the Norman lords built castles.
The population expanded rapidly, men began building churches in the Romanesque style imported from France. Religion played an important role in society: life on earth was regarded as merely a precursor to the ever after. The Latin motto: Memento Mori (remember that you will die).

The First Crusade (1095) was organised with the aim of recovering the Holy Land from the Saracens and defending Christendom. The Second Crusade (1147) came after that and many more. All a Crusader’s sins were automatically forgiven, so many criminals and social misfits set sail for Jerusalem.

A new dynasty for the crown in 1154: The Plantagenets. They wanted more power and wealth for themselves, at the expense of the nobility and the Church. This almost led to civil war, when several nobles rose against the tyranny of King John. In 1215, he was forced to sign the Magna Carta, a contract under which the nobility were granted certain privileges in return for their loyalty.

Edward III claimed to be heir to the French throne through his mother’s family and declared war on France in 1337, there was open hostility for more than a hundred years: The Hundred Years’ War. The fighting came to an end in 1453, with the English left in control only of the area around Calais. However, it was not until 1801 that the English finally gave up their formal claim to the French throne. 

Midway through the 14^th century, the population growth came to an end. The cause was the Plague, also known as the black death: a highly virulent disease spread by rat fleas, whose host animals came from Asia to Europe in the holds of ships. England was first hit in 1348. Nearly half the population died. This caused a major economic downturn.
The lower classes demanded greater rights because they felt more self-confident, and began an open rebellion in 1381. King Richard II (14 years) managed to put the revolt down, but was severe as ever with the lower classes.

Immediately following the Hundred Years’ War was a power struggle. The crown was contested by two nobles houses: the House of Lancaster and the House of York. There was a lot of fighting and the throne was seized by first the one side and then the other.
The symbol of the House of Lancaster was a red rose, while that of York was a white rose: the conflicts consist a period from 1455 till 1485 and is called The Wars of  the roses.
These brought a new dynasty to the throne in 1485: the Tudors, who ruled until 1603.

The architecture and literature of this period exhibit strong French influences. Romanesque style, churches and monasteries. Gothic style, higher buildings with pointed arches and an increased use of decorative elements. French language stories, introduction of rhyme.

Late 14^th century: literature written in the language of the ordinary people begins to gain importance. The most famous writer was Geoffrey Chaucer, whose best-known work was The Canterbury Tales. Another famous writer was Thomas Malory, whose Morte d’Arthur, stories about King Arthur, appeared in about 1500.

The most popular genres were fables, ballads and ‘romances’. It was a rich period in literary terms, especially when one considers how little material has actually been preserved. Much was never written down.

In the middle ages was no democracy, but a feudal system with three levels:
1.) The Nobility. The kin ‘lent’ pieces of land to men who had served him well in the army. This was not only good for the loyalty they gave him, but he owned too much to manage it all efficiently himself. The vassals (lend-ers) swore an oath to the king; promising to rule the land in the king’s name and to aid the king in times of war. After time it began to be hereditary property (familie eigendom). The increasingly independent and powerful descendants of the vassals became a distinct social class: the nobility.
2.) The Clergy. The Church was in effect part of the political system of the day. Following the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings to Christianity, not only warriors, but also bishops and other powerful church leaders were lent or given land. Other rich nobles left property to the Church, in the hope of securing a place in heaven.
3.) The commoners. Made up of peasant farmers, traders and craftsmen. These people were largely free to run their own lives, although it was normal for them to have to give a proportion of what they produced to the nobility or clergy as a sort of tax.

There were also serfs (farmer who owned a small piece of land, but also had obligations to an overlord (a member of the nobility of clergy)), villeins (works on lord’s land, can’t be sold separately from the land they worked on, could have families) and slaves (no rights whatsoever).

Romance: And English-language story about chivalrous adventures and romantic love, written in verse form, with between one and three thousand lines. Each story has a single central character, a young hero who develops in various ways as events take their course. Contrast between good and evil, sea journeys, banishment and return, disguise, revenge and marriage.

King Horn is one of the oldest romance from the Middle Ages. It was written towards the end of the 13^th century. Horn makes the passage to manhood. There is a sharp contract between good and evil. The loyal Arhulf is the opposite of the treacherous Fikenhild.

King Horn begins with the death of the hero's father at the hands of the Saracens who send Horn and his companions into exile. The young Horn finds himself with his twelve companions abandoned in Westernesse. There the king's daughter, Rymenhild, declares her passion for Horn, and persuades her father to make him a knight. But Horn will not marry her until he has proved his worthiness, which he does by killing some invading Saracens. Jealous of his exploits, Horn's companion Fikenhild tells the king that Horn plans to kill him. Horn goes into exile again, this time in Ireland where he proves his military skill further by killing yet more invading Saracens. Though King Thurston offers his daughter Reynild in marriage as a reward, Horn remains loyal to Rymenhild. He returns in disguise when she is about to be forced into marriage with one King Mody, but then goes off to defeat the Saracens who murdered his father. When he returns he discovers that the evil Fikenhild has just forced Rymenhild to marry him. Horn quickly kills the traitor comrade, and he and Rymenhild then marry. Reynild, Thurston's daughter Reynild is given in marriage to Horn's faithful comrade, Athulf, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain is in four parts, each containing a different number of stanzas. (Verhaal: Blz. 26 t/m 30)
It was written in the late 14^th century by an unknown author from Cheshire. Only one manuscreipt copy of Sir Gawain (=King Arthur’s nephew) remains.

The Ballad is a genre that developed in England in the Early Middle Ages.Its ‘golden era’was a period of roughly three hundred years, between about 1200 and 1500. During the Resistance however, its popularity lessened for a time.
Ballads developed out of the ancient oral tradition that existed among uneducated people who could not read or write. Such people used ballads to communicate news, relate real or fictitious stories and to express their opinions. As more people learnt to write and read, ballads becme less popular. However, they never fell entirely out of favour and enjoyed a comeback in the Romantic Period and in the 20^th century.

1. A balled always tells a story
2. The story and the language are relatively simple
3. The subject matter is typically betrayal, lost love, revenge and death
4. The supernatural and superstition play important roles
5. There is frequent use of repetition and set phrases or short sentences
6. There are often unexpected jumps in the flow of the narrative
7. Detailed description is avoided and obvious words are often left implicit
8. The narrator tends to remain surprisingly unemotional, like a journalist
9. A ballad is usually made up of four-line stanzas
10. ABCB is the rhyme pattern
11. Almost every line is made up of a set number of syllables (lettergrepen): eight in the first and third and six in the other lines
12. Syllables pattern: 4-3-4-3

Because ballads were performed, not two performances were quite the same. What remaind the same was the story, which normally involved a single central event. It starts at the climax and a lot of detail is left to the listener’s imagination.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400):
Almost his whole life was spent in the service of the English court. He travelled to France at the age of 16, to fight in the Hundred Years’ War. In about 1366, he married a lady named Philippa Roet. The couple had two sons. A year later, Chaucer entered the service of the English king, Edward III, for whom he undertook a number of diplomatic missions where he met famous writers Petrarcha and Boccaccio.
Economically, Chaucer did very well for himself. Between 1374 and 1385, he worked in London as a tax inspector. He was able to find time to write and to travel. He wrote his less well-known works in this period.
In 1385, Chaucer was appointed as a judge in the county of Kent. His wife died and in 1389, King Richard II gave Chaucer the well-paid office of Clerk of the King’s Works, he was responsible for looking after important buildings (tower of London).

The Canterbury Tales (1386-1400)
Chaucer’s most famous work. It tells the story of a pilgrimage to the grave of Saint Thomas Becket, a bishop who was murdered in 1170 by the king’s followers. The prologue describes how a group of pilgrims meet in London and set out together to Canterbury. To pass the time, they agree to tell each other stories as they travel. The innkeeper, who came up with the idea, promises a free meal to the teller of the best story on his return. Unfortunately, Chaucer died before ending the story, which thus consists twenty-two stories, although there should have been around 120 (!): each pilgrim told 2 on the outward journey and 2 on the way home.
The text begins with a General Prologue where you are told how the people are and how they come to be together. The overall narrator is Chaucer himself, who passes on to the reader the tales that the pilgrims tell each other. Several of the storytellers preface their tales with personal prologues, in which they say something about themselves and perhaps respond to the previous tales.

One of the great charms of the story is the individuality of the characters: they come from all levels and are not at all alike.

Bladzijde 44 tot en met 50 zijn verhalen uit The Canterbury Tales. -EINDE!