Textuality » 3A Interacting
Poetry: much of the surviving literature of the Middle Ages.
Fiction: as a genre in prose was not born yet, stories in verse were the content of the best medieval works.
Drama: began to develop from the rituals of the church in the 12th century.
Epic poetry:
Beowulf is a British epic poetry ,about 3200 lines long. The only manuscript of Beowulf dates from around 1000 but is certainly much older ,probably from the 7th century.
Author and place is unknown. It is in Anglo -Saxon .It tells the deeds of Beowulf , a Scandinavian hero ,who fights against a monster and a dragon. In this poem, fixed sentences are used, in such a way to help the reader's memory.
Anglo Norman Poetry:
In the Anglo Norman period ,nothing of any literary interest was produced in English until about the year 1200 because French and Latin were the dominant languages.
The nobility favoured the French form of the romance , a poem telling the heroic adventures of noble knights and intricate love. In Britain the most famous romance is a cycle of king Arthur and the Knights of the Round table.
Poetry in the Age of Chaucer:
By the end of 14th century French and English had amalgamated. The narrative descriptive poem and the ballad were the more important popular poetic forms of the period.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is the most famous example of a narrative descriptive poem in this period. From Boccaccio's Decameron ,he copied the idea for the general framework that links stories. A group of 29 piligrims setting off on a piligrimage to Canterbury are the tellers of the tales.
The Ballad :
The ballad was an oral anonymous form. The subject matter is about events and situations in the everyday life of common people or about the conflicts between English and Scot.