Textuality » 3A Interacting

KGkritzapi_Medieval Ballads. Summary
by KGkritzapi - (2012-04-10)
Up to  3 A - Medieval Ballads. Dis-cover The Middle Ages and Its Literay Output Up to task document list

The Origins of Genres

 

During the Norman conquest period, English was the language of the illiterate common people so literature didn’t produce anything. The high class language was French and in the 13th  century a French form of literature developed: the romance of chivalry. Thos form strongly influenced English literature making love a popular topic in poetry.

A very important work for English literature was written by Geoffrey of Mon mouth in the 1130: the Histroria Regum Britannie. This book is the source of the heroic legends and deed of King Arthur and his knights, which were searching for the Holy Grail, and it was written in Latin and highly influenced English and French literature. This  book inspired Layamon to write Brut, the first English epic poem, in the 1200 which is about Britain’s history from the fall of Troy to the king Arthur’s reign. Another work inspired to History of the Kings of Britain was Le Morte D’Arthur of Thomas Malory.

 

Speaking about language, English spoken between 1150 and 1500 was called Middle English. It had a wider vocabulary and a simpler structure. There were a lot of dialects along the island but the most important ones, because of the trade and government, were London’s and the South East’s and also because it was the dialect used by Geoffrey Chaucer: a literary model followed by most of the writers of the period.

 Geoffrey Chaucer was born in a wealthy merchant family in London in the 14th century and received a good education: he knew Latin, French and Italian. He was a civil servant at the Edward III and Richard II’s courts but also a writer. He decided to write in English, even if it wasn’t the most important language of the period, highly influenced but Boccaccio and Petrarch. His most famous work is a collection of stories of 29 pilgrims who went on pilgrimage to Canterbury: The Canterbury Tales. It is made of 24 stories and was unfinished. This pilgrims are the story tellers and they represent some classes of the period’s society and have an economical, social and moral dimension: military, clergy, middle class and trades.
Chaucer is the first humanist in English literature because of his emphasis on human beings and their word. The Canterbury tales is a masterpiece of humor and skilful narration. He also offered a lot of metrical innovations such as pentameter and 10-syllabe lines which he imported from France. He gave rise to the classic English verse line and therefore he’s now called ‘the father of English poetry’.

 Other famous narrative poems written in other dialects and were mainly about love and religion.
By the 14th century, anonymity wasn’t usual anymore in poems unless they were written by common people or derived from oral tradition. The illiterate class had an active cultural life; they were really bonded to drama and ballads which were between the most popular forms of poetry. Ballads were anonymous songs handed down orally for generations and had a simple storyline usually developed in 4line stanzas with abcb rhyme. They were mostly about situations of everyday life, conflicts between English and Scots and Robin Hood’s legends.

The drama emerged from the church’s rituals and it was used to educate illiterate people on the Bible. A type of play was the Mystery Play which used to take place during the Corpus Christi celebration. On that day they carried a Host out of the church and around the village while a number of plays about stories of the New and Old Testament passed off. These were single episodes which made part of a Mystery Cycle. The main subjects were biblical stories or Christ’s life events and were written in common English.
The plays were financed by the trade guilds of the town. The plays were performed on movable wagons in the centre of the town or near the town hall and all activities were suspended for this day so everybody could take part.
The Mystery Cycle has been preserved in anonymous manuscripts that took the name of the town they came from and presented.
There was another form of drama that became famous: the Morality Plays. They were performed by travelling professional companies at first, afterwards they moved in banquet halls of noble man or universities. These plays were allegorical with the aim of improving common people’s moral education. A morality play was Everyman which was a hero who represented the humanity and it’s about the salvation of the man’s soul.