Textuality » 3A Interacting
GPaparot - The Development of Literature
by - (2009-02-08)
Up to Studying about English History
- Beowulf is the oldest surviving British poetry. It dates from around 1000. Author and place are unknown. It is wrote in Old English. It tells the deed of a Scandinavian hero, called Beowulf, who fights first against a monster and a dragon by whom he is mortally wounded. The verse is typical of traditional oral poetry.
- There are no many Anglo-Saxon's poems besides Beowulf. In the end of 14th century start to emerge a written form of the English language.
- In Anglo-Norman period remained poetry primarily oral and anonymous. The nobility favoured the French form of the romance (for example King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table).
- In the 14th century French and English had amalgamated, in the write language they used "Middle English", the dialect used in London, Oxford and Cambridge. The most popular poetic forms were the descriptive poem and the ballad. The most famous example of a narrative-descriptive poem is "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer. The book included 24 tales. A group of 29 pilgrims setting of on a pilgrimage to Canterbury are the tellers of the tales. Chaucer describes characters from the feudal, ecclesiastical and urban classes. He wrote in Middle English. He laid the foundations of the classic English verse line and so he is considerated the father of English poetry.
- Ballad is an oral and anonymous form which is a combination of verse, song and dance. The subject is about everyday life of common people, or the conflicts between English and Scots other the legends of Robin Hood.
- In the 12th century Mystery Plays began to emerge. The Church give by them a religious education to people who can't write and read. They tells about biblical stories. The other popular form of medieval drama, that began to emerge in the second half of 14th century, were Morality Plays. They gave a moral lesson.