上海交通大学英美文学笔记-中古时期 时间：2005-6-7 10:15:50 作者：ginger 点击： 1046 评论 English literature The Anglo-Saxon Period 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes gained control of England in the 500's. Their scops (poets) composed songs and ballads. Their gleemen (minstrels) chanted the songs at the king's court and at tribal feasts. England was converted to Christianity (597) and monks began to record these poems in Old English (a Germanic language). The Anglo-Saxon poets wrote unrhymed verse using alliteration. Heroic Epics—the first long poem in Old English, Beowulf Christian Epics—The Fates of the Apostles by Cynewulf (750?-825) Early Prose Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation by Venerable Bede (673-735) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sponsored by Alfred the Great Lyric poems—The Exeter Book The Anglo-Norman Period 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The Norman Conquest (1066). Norman introduced French culture into England under William the Conqueror. During the 300 years after conquest most literature was written in French or Latin. The upper classes spoke French; the common people continued to speak Old English. In the late 1100's a few popular writings began to appear in Middle English. The religious Moral Ode (about 1170), anon., was the first English poem with rhymed couplets. Cursor Mundi (early 1300's), anon., told Biblical stories in verse. Romantic poems (known as metrical romances) about chivalry and knightly love appeared in the 1200's and 1300's. o Brut (a romance) by the priest Layamon o Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (a romance), anon., (or The Pearl Poet) o The Pearl, anon., (or the Pearl Poet) The Age of Chaucer 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. By the mid-1300's, Middle English had become the spoken and written language of the upper classes. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) was the greatest poet of the Middle Ages. The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories built around a pilgrimage to Canterbury, is his masterpiece. John Gower (1330?-1408) was even more popular in his day than Chaucer. His poems expressed the attitude of the ruling class toward the peasants. William Langland (1332?-1400) wrote (?) Piers the Plowman, an allegory criticizing the church and the upper classes. Religious drama grew in popularity during the 1300's. The earliest dramas were mystery and miracle plays. The Second Shepherds' Play, anon., is the finest example of miracle play. From 1440 to the 1550's 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. After the golden age of Chaucer, English literature declined until the late 1400's. The best literature of the period included the ballads and folk songs of the border region between England and Scotland. A new form of drama, the morality play, became popular. Everyman, anon., is the first example of morality play. The invention of printing in Germany helped bring about a rebirth of learning. William Caxton (1421?-1491) set up the first printing press in England in 1476 and printed Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in 1478. Sir Thomas Malory (?-1471) His The Death of Arthur, a collection of prose romances, was published in 1485 by Caxton. The Flowering (1550-1660) Points to remember 1. 2. The Renaissance reached England in the 1500's Men began to reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and asserted their importance as individuals. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Scholars, called humanists, rediscovered the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Humanists tried to combine Christian ethics with classic learning. Sir Thomas More (1477-1535) More's Utopia pictured an ideal society in which no evil existed. Roger Ascham (1515-1568) Ascham's most important work was Schoolmaster, a treatise on education. Elizabethan Poetry and Prose Two humanists, Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?-1542) and Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), brought the Italian sonnet form to poetry. Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599) His greatest work, The Fairy Queen, was the first epic in Modern English verse. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) combined prose with poetry in his pastoral romance Arcadia. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) perfected the sonnet form into English literature. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) introduced the essay form into English literature. Elizabethan Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Elizabethan drama became the greatest literature of the age. In 1576, James Burbage built the first English play house, called The Theater, in London. Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and historical dramas overshadow all other literary works of his age. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) He popularized blank verse in Tamburlaine the Great and The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus. Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) His Volpone, or the Fox, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman, and The Alchemist are masterpieces of satiric drama. Everyman in His Humour is perhaps his best representative of the comedy of “humours.” Cavaliers and Puritans 1. 2. 3. 4. For many years after the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, England was torn by conflict. Literature reflected the struggle between the Cavaliers (followers of King Charles I) and the Puritans (supporters of Parliament). The Puritans closed the theaters. John Donne (1571?-1631) and John Milton (1608-1674) were the two greatest poets of the age. Donne wrote deeply personal and
上海交通大学英美文学笔记-中古时期
