The Old English and Medieval Periods

Essential Questions

• What is the relationship between literature and place in this time period?– How did English writers respond to their island ge

ography?– How did literature make a nation of an island?

NEXT ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

How did English writers respond to their island geography?

• The English writers would creates poems that take place at sea. They responded in a way where work of creation begins with an awareness of what is opposite of place. Which is sea.

How did Literature make a nation of an island?

• The island in the ocean, with its abundant resources is on its way to becoming the earth to which Shakespeare's Richard ll will kneel. Bede was aware that the island was becoming a nation and that a place is as much about its history as about its geography

Essential Questions continued...

• How does literature shape or reflect society?– How did writers capture a vanishing world of tribe

s and clans?– How did Chaucer reflect social trends without pre

aching?

NEXT ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

How did writers capture a vanishing world of tribes and clans?

• Writers made an Epic Poem, Beowulf. It’s about a young warrior who must prove himself in battle. So Beowulf crosses the sea to aid his Kinsman Hrothgar, who can’t protect his people from the monster, Grendel. After defeating Grendel, Beowulf becomes the leader of his tribe. But at the end, Beowulf battles a dragon and dies.

How did Chaucer reflect social trends without preaching?

• Chaucer does not rant, rave, or preach about corruption in religious orders. Instead, he shows us characters like the Monk, who spends more time hunting than praying.

Essential Questions continued again…

• What is the relationship of writer to tradition?– How do writers change what they have inherited?– How did Chaucer respond to and create literary tr

aditions?

VOCABULARY

How did writers change what they have inherited?

• Sir Thomas Malory writing in the fifteenth century at the end of the age of Chivalry, uses Arthurian legend in a different way. In his book Morte d’ Arthur, Malory gathers many legends of Arthur and his Knights to write an elegy of farewell to the era of knights

How did Chaucer respond to and create literary traditions?

• Chaucer changed what he inherited. His pilgrims reflect almost all levels of society. Chaucer used a line of ten syllable and five alternating accents, which was the form of known as Iambic Pentameter

Vocabulary

• Exile- v. force a person to leave home or country.

• Geography- n. surface features of a place or region

• Pilgrimage- A journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion (long journey to a holy or important place)

Vocab Continued…

• Sociologist- scientists who studied societies and the behavior of people in groups

• Turbulent- full of commotion or wild disorder • Feudal- relating to a system in which overlords

granted land to lesser lords, or vassals, in return for military service and in which poor farmers worked the land for vassals

Vocab Continued…

• Traditional- relating to or based on old customs, beliefs, and ways of doing things.

• Inheritance- goods, ideas, literary creations, or skills received from the past

• Legend- story handed down for generations and believed to be based on actual events