BEOWULF
The story of English literature begins with ''Beowulf'', an epic poem which celebrates the deeds of Beowulf, the protagonist and the hero, in 3200 lines. He went to Denmark to fight and kill two monsters ( Grendel and his mother) which killed the thanes of the king of Denmark. Beowulf succeed to kill the enemy but was also mortally wounded.
The poem is anonymous , but thanks to a manuscript we can date it from around the year 1000; the poem is written in Old English ( a series of Germanic dialets).

 

EPIC POEM
The poem's topics derive from the Icelandic and Scandinavian ''sagas'' that are tales and legends which were probably inspired by anciente historical events.
''Beowulf''' is an Anglo-Saxon epic poem and so it belongs to Anglo-Saxon oral poetry in which alliteration and repetition were used to help memorisation, on the contrary, the number of syllables in a line was irrelevant and rhyme was never used.

OLD ENGLISH POETRY
In Anglo-Saxon times Old English poetry was composed orally by bards ( itinerant or stationary musicians) who recited poems with the accompaniment of harp or lyre.
Anglo-Saxon poems that have survived in manuscripts are mainly about religious subjects.

ROMANCES
After the Norman conquest (1066) , English Literature didn't produce anything until the year 1200.
This was because French was the language of the Norman ruling class, Latin that of the literate people and English that of the illiterate people.
In the 13th century the nobility favoured the French form of the Romance , an anonymous long narrative poem telling the adventures of noble knights and including love stories. This genre of poem became very popular.

THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
A book written in Latin about 1130, ''History of the Kings of Britain'' by Geoffrey of Monmouth, had an enermous influence on English and French Literature.
It became the source of the cycle of legends dealing with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table which provided the topics of many French and English romances. The Arthurian cycle describes the heroic life and deeds of King Arthur and his knights who used to meet at the round table and their search for the Holy Grail, the cup which received Christ's blood at the Cross.

 

MIDDLE ENGLISH
From the Norman invasion to 1350, the language changed.
French and English were amalgamated.
The term ''Middle English'' refers to the English spoken from 1150 to 1500. There were several varieties of English in different areas of the island but the dialect spoken in London, Oxford, Cambridge and in the South East established their supremacy because of the importance of these places as centres of education, law and trade; in addition it was the dialect used by Geoffrey Chaucer who set a literary model followed by other writers.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER
Chaucer was the son of a wine-merchant in London and spent more of his life as a civil servant in the courts of Edward III and Richard II. He received a good education - he knew Latin and could speak French and Italian- and travelled abroad.
Chaucer was also writing poetry, when French or Latin were the languages of culture, his decision to write in English was revolutionary; his works reflect continetal influences, in particular from Petrarch's and Bocaccio's works.

THE CANTERBURY TALES
The Canterbury Tales is the main Chaucer's work.
He begun to write it in 1387 and he was probably inspired to the collection of stories of Bocaccio's Decameron. The Canterbury Tales is about 29 piligrims who are the narrators of the tales in the collection, there are 24 tales and there should have been many more but the work was not completed. It is mainly written in verse even if there are parts in prose; it has come to us in manuscript form.

CHAUCER'S CHARACTERS
In The Canterbury Tales, the piligrims represent various classes of English society of the later Middle Ages : the military, the clergy,the middle class, the trades.
The tales are a means to illustrate aspects of the personalities of the narrators more clearly.

CHAUCER'S HUMANISM
Chaucer is considered the first humanist in English literature thanks to his emphasis on human beings, their life and world.

METRICAL INNOVATIONS
Chaucer is also considered '' the father of English poetry'' because of the several metrical innovations he introduced. He imported the 10-syllable line, the pentamer, he made the lines rhyme in pairs and used alliteration only occasionally.

OTHER POEMS
There were also other famous narrative poems written in different English dialects for example Scottish poetry appeared in this period; other forms and types of poetry of the period were religious and love lyrics.

 

BALLADS
At the end of the 14th century, poetry was no longer anonymous.
Anonymity continued only for those poetic works which originated among common people or derived from oral tradition.
Ballads were the most popular forms in the poetry of the period : they were anonymous songs commited to the memory and handed down orally from one generation to the next.
This form had a simple storyline usually developed in regular four-line stanzas rhyming ABCB.
The topics were events and situations of everyday life, the fight between English and Scots and the legends of Robin Hood.
The origins of this poetic form are a mystery.

ORIGINS OF MEDIEVAL DRAMA
During the Middle Ages, British drama began to emerge from the rituals of the Church.
Drama was used to give a religious education to illiterate peasants by the mysteries of faith and the Bible.

MISTERY PLAYS
Religious rituals moved out of the church when, in the early 14th century a new religious festival was introduced in the month of June to celebrate Corpus Christi. In that day, the consecrated Host was carried out of the church in procession around the village or town.
In times, the processions developed into a new form of drama which took place outisde the churches and consisted of a number of plays dealing with stories of the Old and New Testament.
These were called '' Mistery'' plays.

THE SUBJETCS
The subjects of the Mistery plays were single episodes strung together in a Mistery Cycle and they were biblical stories or events from the life of Christ.
They were written in the English spoken by local people.

THE PERFORMANCE
Each play was financed and performed by the trade of the town, it was performed on a movable stage wagon called ''pageant''.
Performances went on from early morning until late evening to take advantage of the long daylight hours in June. All business and activities were suspended so that everybody could take part in the festivities, people would stop in front of a pageant and watch an episode they wanted to see or move on to another one.

THE MANUSCRIPTS
The manuscripts of various versions of the complete Mystery Cycle have been preserved; they bring the name of the town where they were probably presented, their authors are anonymous.

MORALITY PLAYS
In the late Middle Ages, other forms of drama became popular.
They were called Morality Plays and were also anonymous.
At first they were performed by travelling professional companies on a platform built in an open space, later they moved into the banquet of noblemen or into the common room of universities.
These plays usually narrated an allegoricale tale, not a biblical one, with the aim to teach religious and moral education to common people.

EVERYMAN
The finest Morality play which has come down to us is Everyman: its hero, who also gives his name to the title of the play, is a character representing mankind; the story offers a moral lesson for the salvation of man's soul.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDIEVAL DRAMA
Medieval drama was important in the development of the genre because it added a human element to the religious themes of the Mysteries and created characters corresponding to English social types.