THE BEGINNING OF ENGLISH: OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH

(600 – 1100)

English Literature I

CONTEXTS AND CONDITIONS

• In English, the first signs of oral literature tend to have three kinds of subject matter – religion, war, and the trials of daily life – all of which continues as themes of a great deal of writing.

• The Old English Language, also called Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest form of English. It is difficult to give exact dates for the rise and development of a language, because it does not change suddenly; but perhaps it is true to say that Old English was spoken from about A.D. 600 to about 1100.

PERSONAL AND RELIGIOUS VOICES• Caedmon´s Hymn → The first fragment of

literature known. • It dates from the late 7th century (around 670). • The story goes that Caedmon was a lay worker on

the state of the monastery of Whitby, in Northumbria, and the voice of God came to him.

• His hymn is therefore the first song of praise in English culture, and the first Christian religious poem in English, although many Latin hymns were known at the time.

• It was preserved by the monks of Whitby, and it is not certain whether the few lines which have survived through the ages are the complete hymn or not.

• Christian monks and nuns were, in effect, the guardians of culture.

• The most of the native English culture they preserved is not in Latin, the language of the church, but in Old English, the language of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

• It is the voice of everyday people, rather than of a self-consciuous “artist”, that we hear in Caedmon´s Hymn, and in such texts as Deor´s Lament or The Seafarer. These reflect ordinary human experience and are told in the first person. They make the reader or hearer relate directly with the narratorial “I”, and frequently contain intertextual references to religious texts.

LANGUAGE NOTE: The Earliest Figurative Language

• Old English poetry is characterised by a number of poetic tropes which enable a writer to describe things indirectly and which require a reader imaginatively to construct their meaning. The most widespread of these figurative descriptions are what are known as kennings, which often occur in compounds.

• Beowulf → The greatest Old English poem.

• Belongs to the 7th century. • It is a story of about 3,000 lines, and

it is the first English epic. • The people and the setting are both

Germanic. • The poem recalls a shared heroic

past, somewhere in the general consciousness of the audience who would hear it.

• The name of its author is unknown.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y13cES7MMd8

• Beowulf is about Hrothgar, King of the Danes, and about a brave young man, Beowulf, from southern Sweden, who goes to help him.

• Hrothgar is in trouble. His great hall, called Heorot, is visited at night by a terrible creature, Grendel, which lives in a lake and comes to kill and eat Hrothgar´s men. One night Beowulf waits secretly for this thing, attacks it, and in a fierce fight pulls its arm off. It manages to reach the lake again, but dies there. Then its mother comes to the hall in search of revenge, and the attacks begin again. Beowulf follows her to the bottom of the lake and kills her there.

• In later days, Beowulf, now king of his people, has to defend his country against a fire-breathing creature. He kills the animal but is badly wounded in the fight, and dies.

• The poem ends with a sorrowful description of Beowulf´s funeral fire.

• Beowulf (about 1000) stands out as a poem which makes extensive use of figurative language. There are over one thousand compounds in the poem, totalling one-third of all the words in the text. Many of these compounds are kennings.

• The word “to ken” is still used in many Scottish and Northern English dialects, meaning “to know”.

• In the lines of Beowulf, each half-line has two main beats. There is no rhyme. Instead, each half-line is joined to the other by alliteration (middes/maerne; haeleth/hiofend/hlaford; beorge/bael; wigend/weccan/wudu; sweart/swiothle/swogende).

• The most interesting piece of prose is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the main literary source of Anglo-Saxon history, an early history of the country.

• There are, in fact, several chronicles, belonging to different cities.

• King Alfred (849 – 901) had a great influence on his work. He probably brought the different writings into some kind of order.

• He also translated a number of Latin books into Old English, so that his people could read them.

• He brought back learning to England and improved the education of his people.

MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1100 – 1485)

• The gratest poet of the time was Geoffrey Chaucer.

• He is often called the father of English poetry, although, as we know, there were many English poets before him.

• The language had changed a great deal in the seven hundred years since the time of Beowulf and it is much easier to read Chaucer than to read anything written in Old English. Here are the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales (about 1387), his greatest work:

The Canterbury TalesWhan that Aprille with his shoures swoteThe droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote

When April with his sweet showers has struck to the roots the dryness of March...

• The Canterbury Tales total altogether about 17,000 lines – about half of Chaucer´s literary production.

• Le Mort D´Arthur (1470), → Sir Thomas Malory.

• The stories of Arthur and his knights have attracted many British and other writers. Arthur is a shadowy figure of the past, but probably really lived. Many tales gathered round him and his knights.

• One of the main subjects was the search for the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. (This cup is known as The Holy Grail.) Another subject was Arthur´s battles against his enemies, including the Romans. Malory´s fine prose can tell a direct story well, but can also express deep feelings in musical sentences.

• Myth and history• Chivalry as as a kind of moral code of honour. • Supernatural and fantastic aspects of the story,

as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, are played down, and the more political aspects, of firm government and virtue, emphasised.

English plays• Miracle or Mystery Plays → Told religious stories and were

performed in or near the churches. • They are in four main groups, according to the city where they

were acted: Chester, Coventry, York and Wakefield.• Their subjects: the disobedience of Adam and Eve; Noah and the

great flood; Abraham and Isaac; events in the life of Christ.• Acted by people of the town on a kind of stage on wheels called

a pageant. • Often several Miracle Plays were being performed at the same

time in different places. • Although the Miracles were serious and religious in intention,

English comedy was born in them.

• Morality Plays → The characters were virtues (such as Truth) or bad qualities (such as Greed or Revenge) which walked and talked.

• The plays presented moral truths in a new and effective way.

• Interlude → common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

• Perhaps they were played between the acts of long Moralities, in the middle of meals or the name means a play by two or three performers. They are often funny, and were performed away from churches, in colleges or rich men’s houses or gardens.

THE RENAISSANCE(1485 – 1660)

• HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:• Reformation• The conquest of the America by Columbus• Copernicus / Galileo• Humanism• Discoverings (science, mathematics and

astronomy)• Shakespeare

RENAISSANCE POETRY• Many imitators of Chaucer appeared after his death in 1400, but few are of great interest.

More than a century had to pass before any further important English poetry was written. Queen Elizabeth ruled from 1558 to 1603, but the great Elizabethan literary age is not considered as beginning until 1579.

• The direct literary influence on the English Renaissance love sonnet was the Italian Francesco Petrarca – known in English as Petrarch – who wrote sonnets to his ideal woman, Laura. This idealisation is very much a feature of early Renaissance verse. Classical allusions, Italian Renaissance references, and contemporary concerns make the poetry of the sixteenth century noticeably different in tone and content from the poetry of the early seventeenth century, when Elizabeth was no longer the monarch. There is a universalisation of personal feeling and a concern with praise in the earlier verse. This becomes more directly personal and more anguished as the sixteenth century comes to a close.

• Poetry became the pastime of educated high society. It is poetry of love and loss, of solitude and change. The theme is transience, which was to feature strongly in all Shakespeare’s work, began to appear with greater frequency through the 1570s and 1580s.

• A number of contrasts, or binaries, begin to emerge; these, from the Renaissance onwards, will be found again and again to express the contrasts, the extremes, and the ambiguities of the modern world:

• Spenser invented a special metre for The Faerie Queene. The verse has nine lines; of these the last has six feet, the others five. The rhyme plan is ababbcbcc. This verse, the “Spenserian Stanza” is justly famous and has often been used since:

Long thus she travelèd through deserts wide, By which she thought her wand´ring knight should pass, Yet never show of living wight espied; Till that attn lenght she found the trodden grass In which the track of people´s footing was, Under the steep foot of the mountain hoar; The same she follows, till attn last she has The damsel spied slow-footing her before, That on her shoulders sad the pot of water bore.

THE SONNET FORM

Italian Sonnet FormPetrarch

• The original form of the sonnet was the Italian sonnet, developed by the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch.

• It consisted of an eight line octet (also known as the "Italian octave") and a six line sestet (also known as the "Sicilian sestet").

• Each section of an Italian sestet has a specific rhyme scheme and a specific purpose.

• Octet rhyme scheme: ABBA ABBA, and the purpose of the octet is to present a situation or a problem.

• Sestet rhyme scheme: CDECDE or CDCDCD, and its purpose is to comment on or resolve the situation or problem posed in the octet. When this (or any sonnet form) is used in English, it is traditionally in iambic pentameter, and, "the tradition is a strong one."

Petrarchan sonnetLONDON, 1802

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: - AEngland hath need of thee: she is a fen - BOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, - BFireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, - AHave forfeited their ancient English dower - AOf inward happiness. We are selfish men; - BOh! raise us up, return to us again; - BAnd give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. - AThy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; - CThou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: - DPure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, - DSo didst thou travel on life's common way, - EIn cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart - CThe lowliest duties on herself did lay. – E

William Wordsworth

Spenserian Sonnet Form• It is a sonnet variation developed in the sixteenth century

by English poet Edmund Spenser. While few poets have used this form, it serves as a bridge between the Italian sonnet and the form used by Shakespeare.

• In a Spenserian sonnet, the rhyme scheme used is ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, and there does not appear to be a requirement that the initial octet sets up a problem which the closing sestet answers. Instead, the form is treated as three quatrains (linked by the connected rhyme scheme described above) followed by a couplet. Again, iambic pentameter is used.

Spenserian SonnetAmoretti

Fresh Spring! the herald of Loves mighty king, - AIn whose coat-armour richly are displayed -BAll sorts of flowers, the which on earth do spring - AIn goodly colours gloriously arrayed - - BGo to my love, where she is careless laid, - BYet in her winters bower, not well awake; - CTell her the joyous time will not be staid, - BUnless she do him by the forelock take: - CBid her, therefore, herself soon ready make - CTo wait on Love amongst his lovely crew, - DWhere every one that misseth then her make, - CShall be by him amerced with penance dew. - DMake haste, therefore, sweet Love! whilst it is prime; - EFor none can call again the passed time. - E

Edmund Spenser

English Sonnet FormShakespeare

• The rhyme scheme of the English sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

• Shakespeare has eliminated the close linking, via rhymes, of the individual quatrains, presumably to allow more flexibility in English, which does not provide as many rhyming possibilities as Italian.

• One of the interesting elements of Shakespeare's sonnets is the "enjambment" of "phrases" with "sonnet lines." This is done frequently in Shakespeare's plays (which use a great deal of non-rhymed iambic pentameter, a form known as "blank verse"); less frequently in the sonnets.

Shakespearean SonnetXVIIIShall I compare thee to a summer's day? - AThou art more lovely and more temperate: - BRough winds do shake the darling buds of May, - AAnd summer's lease hath all too short a date: - BSometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, - CAnd often is his gold complexion dimm'd; - DAnd every fair from fair sometime declines, - CBy chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; - DBut thy eternal summer shall not fade - ENor lose possession of that fair thou owest; - FNor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, - EWhen in eternal lines to time thou growest: - F So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, - G So long lives this and this gives life to thee. - G

Revelation or epiphany