3 Christian monks (7th c.

): CAEDMON, ALDHELM, CYNEWULF

10-11th c., BENEDICTINE REVIVAL - Saint Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (959-988)

organised a reform of education, learning, and the arts

400 surviving manuscripts

the Junius manuscript – Caedmon manuscript (biblical poetry)

the Beowulf manuscript – the Nowell Codex (includes Judith)

the Vercelli Book (includes “The Dream of the Rood”)

the Exeter Book (includes “The Ruin,” “The Wanderer,” “The Seaferer,” “The Husband’s
Message,” “The Wife’s Lament”)

Old English Poetry:

Anonymous, oral literature

scop

ALLITERATIVE poetry

ALLITERATION - a regularly recurring structural feature of the verse – a repeated consonant

in successive words

"For fear of a feud were forced to disown him....„

"Grisly and greedy, that the grim one's dominion..." ..

"He bound to the bank then the broad-bosomed vessel...„

From Boewulf

alliteration

a CAESURA

compound nouns , e.g., mead-hall, gold-lord, hall-men

kennings – stock phrases used in place of a more familiar word (fire-dwelling = the body)

list of names, often non legendary

theme of fleeting life

Riddles

Middle Ages

9th century – Viking invasions

At the end of the 10th century, the Saxon King, Ethelred, decided to pay the Danegeld
Cnut (or Canute), the leader of the Danish Vikings who controlled much of England, became
king.

After his death, one of Saxon Ethelred’s sons, Edward the Confessor, became king.

In 1066 the Saxons chose Harold of the Godwinsons to be the next king of England

His right to the throne was challenged by William, the Duke of Normandy.

14 October, 1066 - The Battle of Hastings

Bayeux Tapestry

A record of the Norman / English Battle

a Saxon rebellion every year until 1070

the Norman invasion marks the beginning of England as one kingdom

feudal system (vassals, free knigths, serfs)

the Domesday Book – 1086

14th-15th

Black death

Alliance of the Scots with the French in the 14th c.

1337 – 1453 the Hundred Years War –(loss of all possessions in France, except for Calais)

1455 – 1487 The War of the Roses – the victory of the Lancastrian Henry Tudor , who
founded the House of Tudor

Peasant rebellions

The LOLLARDS – John Wycliffe – 1396 translation of the Bible

House of Commons / House of Lords

landed gentry

Middle English Literature: the alliterative revival

20 poems, including:

The Vision of Piers Plowman

WILLIAM LANGLAND (1330-1386)

Dream vision, allegory: The Holy Church -a beautiful lady, Truth – God - a man, the ruler of
the tower. While wandering on the Malvern Hills, the narrator falls asleep and has 8 visions

The first vision is a vision of a Tower where Truth dwells, a deep Dungeon, and between
them “a fair field ful of folk

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Stock motifs of the Arthurian romance

in Sir Gawain
a challenge by a mysterious superhuman knight

a bargain

a lone quest

the attempted seduction of a knight

the setting

as an exemplum – a short narrative about a penitent Christian used to illustrate a moral

point

Gawain has to accept his humanity i.e. that he is mutable, mortal and imperfect

a chivalric romance – a medieval tale of chivalric or love adventures, with a fictional content

a romance – a tendency in fiction opposite to that of realism: improbable adventures,

idealized characters, remote settings

code of love: amour courtois (originally fin’ amors), neo-platonism

reflected a biological conception of the knigths’ superiority to the lower classes.

The Pearl, Cleanness, Patience

iambic tetrameter

spotless innocence

3 trends of la littérature courtoise :

“the matter of Rome”

“the matter of France”

”the matter of Brittany”

Chrétien de Troyes (1135-1190)

fabliau - a short story in verse, comic in character, the subject matter of which is often
indecent and involves practical jokes or a witty turn. The motive is love and revenge.

Romance: The Knight’s Tale, the Squire’s, the Franklin’s, the Wife of Bath’s (parody) (anti-
misogynist)

Fabliau: The Miller’s Tale, the Merchant’s, the Cook’s, the Summoner’s, the Shipman’s

Mystery Play

- a performance designed to keep remembrance of the Passion of Christ

pageants

Oberammergau Passion Play

Cycles

4 complete cycles survive : of York, Chester, Wakefield, the “N-town”

Guilds – co-operations of laymen who followed the same craft (dyers, grocers, tailors)

Second Shepherd’s Play

Morality play

Interlude

The mystery play dramatized biblical events in order to show their relevance to everyday life;
the morality play dramatized the conflict between good and evil, the struggle between
virtues and vices in the soul of the individual.

a dramatized allegory representing the struggle for the soul of man as he travels from birth
to death

The Castle of Perseverance (anonymous) c. 1420

Fifteenth century prose

Sir Thomas Malroy or Malory - (d. 1471) La Morte D’Arthur – the Round Table, Lancelot,
Guinevere, Galahad

Margery Kempe (c.1373-1439) – Autobiography

Early Renaissance

The court, aristocratic households and universities as centres of intellectual and artistic life

Progresses

Roger ASCHAM - Elizabeth’s tutor – “Schoolmaster” (1570) proposed that Englishmen

should combine action with learning.

2 phases of cultural development:

1. Established the authority of the Antiquity via Arab texts discovered after the fall of
Constantinople – models to be imitated from Latin.

2. These models could be imitated in vernacular languages.

Poetry – influence
of Italian Renaissance

Poems were mostly to be sung, they were printed with music.

The aim of poetry was to teach by delighting – to “interpret nature” and to influence men’s
actions, an assumption barely questioned till the 19th c.

Petrarch’s sonnets as a model for lyrical poetry

Petrarchan tradition

TOTTEL’S MISCELLANY - a collection of Songs and Sonnets published by Richard Tottel in

1557. It included works by the greatest sonneteers – Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). They introduced the Italian sonnet into English
poetry, experimenting with the metre and rhyme. Conceit
Fashion for sonnets

Astrophel and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney (1591)

Amoretti by Edmund Spenser (1595)

Delia by Samuel Daniel (1592)

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by Mary Wroth(1621)

Edmund Spenser

The Shepherd’s Calendar (1579) – modelled on classical literature, a pastoral poem consisting
of 12 parts, each for one month of the year.

The Faerie Queene – his masterpiece (1590-96) – an epic poem in which Spenser combined
romance and moral allegory. Spenserian Stanza (later used by Romantic poets) – a beautiful
stanza of 9 lines.

Cavalier Poetry

a school of English poets who supported King Charles I during the Civil War

leader: Ben Jonson

clarity, discipline, proportion, symmetry, precision, classical forms.

Richard Lovelace (1618-58)

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Metaphysical Poetry

a group of poets who produced highly intellectualized poetry (inventive conceits)

leader: John Donne (1573-1631)

“wit” – intellectual humour – the power to make surprising metaphors and arguments. Erotic
poetry as a vehicle for intellectual reflection and the crisis in religious faith.

Philosophical Prose

Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) – in appearance a medical work but in
effect a humorous satire on human learning and actions.

“melancholy” - universally present in mankind, an “inbred malady in every one of us”; later -
“neurosis”

Fiction

- Sir PHILIP SIDNEY’s prose romance The Arcadia (1590)

- JOHN LYLY’S Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) – ”first novel in English”: little plot, but
many conversations, discourses, and letters on the subject of love.

- THOMAS NASHE’s The Unfortunate Traveller or the Life of Jack Wilton (1594) written in
prose – the first picaresque novel in English. Picaro – a rogue [Flourished in Spain with
Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605).]
UTOPIA

Intellectual debates about sovereignty

the basis of royal authority

the rightfulness / sinfulness of rebellion against the King, God’s deputy on Earth

the status of Parliament in political decision-making

the role of religious faith in political ideology

the importance of patriotism and nationalism

Colonial INSPIRATIONS

Projections of European fantasies

Native: Barbarian / child-like

Eroticisation of colonies: imaginary space into which Europeans could project their fears and
desires

Virgin land

Utopia – an imagined form of ideal or superior human society; or a written work describing
such a society.

Estrangement - another world, the utopian one, is constructed in the text and the reader is
positioned to see her / his own society from a different perspective.

Plato’s The Republic

380 BC

Sir Thomas More

Utopia 1516

It is a pun on 2 Greek words, Eutopos (“good place”) and Outopos (“no place”)

De optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia literally translates, "Of a republic's
best state and of the new island Utopia".

A traveller, Raphael Hythlodaeus (babbler), discovers a “Nowhere land” - an ideal

state. Utopia is similar to English monarchy yet its laws and social arrangements differ in
complex ways. The reader is thus encouraged to question the mechanisms of her/his own
society.

More utopia

No private ownership

No locks on doors

Rotation of houses

Agriculture is the most important job on the island.

Farming is compulsory, parallel with some other trades

Work is compulsory, working hours are minimized

Free hospitals

Euthanasia

Community dining halls

Simple laws

Religious tolerance, priests allowed to marry

Slavery

Restrictions on travelling and sexual liaisons

Some gender equality but still women as the ”weaker sex”

Utopia as a land of order and clear hierarchies: maintaing the status quo.

Progressive ideas that question More’s Catholicism and his work as the most important
lawyer in England.

Alternative to harsh reality, distancing More from his political thoughts.

Francis Bacon’s
New Atlantis (1624)

Elizabethan Drama

The playhouses

Egalitarian conception of drama: mixed public

The authorities’ hostility vs the Queen's taste

Francis Bacon: “It is not good to stay too long in the theatre”

the establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an essential enabling factor in
the success of English Renaissance drama:

1576 James Burbage - the Theatre

Theatres beyond the authority’s control – the liberty of Southwark

the Rose (1587)

the Swan (1595)

The public theatres were circular, had three floors in hight, were built around an open space
at the centre, and open to the sky vs private ones, more modern-looking

the Globe (1599)

Public / private theatres

the total theatre capacity of London - 5000 spectators (1580), 10,000 (1610)

The players
 Professional companies with noble patrons

Two main companies emerged at the end of the 16th century:

- The Admiral’s Men

- the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men)

Professional actors – men

20 plays a month

Puritans closed the theatres 1642-1660

The playwrights

• commercial writers -self-made men from modest backgrounds

• University Wits – blend of university culture with gentlemanly sophistication (Marlowe, Kyd)

• the profession was far from profitable

• collaborations (solo artists – an exception)

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593) introduction of blank verse and a new type of character – a
morally ambivalent one – one the stage

• Tamburlaine (1590)

• The Jew of Malta (1633)

• Doctor Faustus (1604)- a Renaissance scholar ready to sacrifice his soul for the sake of
learning - the antithesis of the medieval theologian

THOMAS KYD (1558-1594) Revenge tragedies. Inspiration: the 9 plays by the Roman Seneca (4BC-
AD65) characterised by bloodthirsty plots: ghosts, horrible crimes, supernatural elements. The
Spanish Tragedy (1589)by THOMAS KYD a model revenge tragedy - attempts to avenge the murder
of a loved one, sometimes at the prompting of the victim’s ghost; complex intrigues; exploration of
the morality of revenge.

Szekspir:

• 1580s: historical plays: Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, Titus Andronicus

• 1590s: comedies: A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives
of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing; also Romeo and Juliet

• 1600s – tragedies: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra;

• 1609-1611: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest; common theme: a
relationship between breakdown and reconstruction, evil and innocence, guilt and
forgiveness.

Geniusz Szekspira:

• Shakespeare was familiar with at least 4 languages: borrowings, neologisms, word play

• 1,700 new phrases/words: ’critical’, ‘advertising’, ‘eyeball’, ‘submerge’, ‘lonely’, ‘obscene’ ‘a

sorry sight’; ‘all of a sudden’, as dead as a doornail’
 • The Hogarth Shakespeare project

• Suspense

• Unity of characterization and plot

• Psychological transformation of the characters on stage

• Variety of human emotions

• Tragic error (hamartia) which reveals human vulnerability and frailty

• Excellent command of language

Benjamin Jonson (1572-1637) The master of Renaissance comedy, satire, realism and grotesque.
Volpone or the Fox (1606) - attacks human avarice, set in Venice

JOHN WEBSTER (1578-1632) With Cyril Tourneur and John Ford, he represents the 3rd generation of
Elizabethan artists – their works were much more macabre and sombre than Shakespeare’s or
Marlowe’s. Machiavellian immorality, investigation of the themes of death and morality

The White Devil (1612)

The Duchess of Malfi (1623)

ELIZABETH CARY (1585–1639) The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) – is the first dramatic work to be
published by an English woman under her own name. It was not intended for performance but for
reading. Set in ancient Rome, it concentrates upon female political and emotional experience as well
as Christian ethics.

The Puritans

• A group of religious reformers who became active within the Church of England in the middle
of the sixteenth century. They shared a common Calvinist theology and a critical attitude to
the Anglican Church and English society and government. They desired more "purity" as well
as personal and group piety.

• Puritans opposed the use of the Holy Cross during baptism, music at Church, and kneeling
during the sacrament.

• The Great Migration, the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

• Dissenters

• Bible - the origin of many Puritan cultural ideals

• They emphasized the importance of the individual interpretation of the Bible.

• The belief that God had decided who would be saved or damned before the beginning of
human history.

• They believed that leading a moral life was the effect of having been chosen by God to enjoy
eternal happiness in heaven.

• Ethos of hard work

• Simple, humble, modest lives, no entertainment, no luxury

• Conversion - true evidence of God’s grace in their souls; required to be admitted to full
church membership

• Marginalization of women

• Puritan journal – the need for

• self-examination

John Milton (1608-1674) He devoted much energy to political activity and to the defence of
religious, civil and political freedoms.

During the 1650s he worked for Cromwell’s government and published and essay against
Restoration.

• The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)

• Lycidas (1637) - a lament in a pastoral form on the death of a friend. Milton emphasizes the
value of Puritan lives dedicated to hard work.

• Paradise Lost (1667)

▪ Rejection of God’s Laws

▪ Satan as a hero, language of democratic rule

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven

▪ Blank verse, beautiful, harmonious use of language

• Paradise Regained (1671)

John Bunyan (1628-1688) Grace Abounding – a model of Puritan spiritual autobiography

The Pilgrim’s Progress, from this World to that which is to come (1678-1684) - a dream allegory
which shows the difficult way to the Eternal City.

Restoration and the Late 17th Century

Restoration drama

• developed after the re-opening of the theatres under the influence of the comic French
drama (Molière)

• comedies of manners – manners were more important than ethics

• witty, amoral, cynical tone

• the audience became limited to the upper classes - drama depicted the world of the court

• female actresses

John Dryden (1631-1700) a poet, dramatist, satirist, literary critic, translator of Horace, Homer,
Ovid, Virgil; the author of many tragedies, studies of literature, odes, lyrical poems. Dryden was
also one of the creators of modern English prose. An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668)

In 1668 he was appointed the first official English Poet Laureate – the title given to a poet who
receives a stipend as an officer of the Royal Household. His duty (no longer enforced today) was
to write court-odes.
 Today: Simon Armitage

The Glorious Revolution

In England it is the period of The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, or the
Bloodless Revolution. Its result was the overthrow of the Catholic King James II of England in 1688 by
a union of Parliamentarians with an invading army led by the Dutch William of Orange who ascended
the English throne as William III of England

Contractual philosophy

• John Locke Two Treatises of Government (1690)

• Leviathan (1651) was the masterpiece on political philosophy written by Thomas Hobbes
(1588 – 1679) to justify absolute sovereignty. According to Hobbes, the chaos of civil war —
situations identified with a ”State of Nature”— could only be avoided by a strong central
government. All individuals must enter into a contract “to confer all their power and strength
upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of Men”. Thus all the people in a state become one
person.

The Enlightenment

• The Age of Reason, the Age of Rationalism

• Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637): clarity, certainty, detachment, objectivism

• Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687)

• Immanuel Kant What is Enlightenment? (1784) – the freedom to use one's own intelligence

• scientific rigor

• increasing questioning of religious orthodoxy.

• freedom, democracy, and reason as the central values of the society

• Industrial revolution, the development of capitalism

• Mathematics, map drawing, imperialism

• egalitarianism?

British Philosophy

 Empiricism: the importance of scientific METHOD – all hypotheses and theories must be
tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a priori
reasoning, intuition, or revelation.

The Bourgeois Public Sphere

 A realm of communication marked by new arenas of debate, more open and accessible
forms of urban public space and sociability, and an explosion of print culture

 Coffee houses, cafes, salons, clubs, debating societies

Modernity
  In a philosophical sense, The Enlightenment is also connected with the rise of modernity
typically referred to as "a post-traditional,” ”post-medieval” historical period, marked in
particular by the rise of industrialism, capitalism, secularizaton, the development of nation-
states, and various forms of social control resulting in the alienation of the individual.

 The disintegration of the organic, centered, female cosmos of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance: mechanistic conception of the universe

 Mining and the invention of steam engine (1784) by James Watt - the beginning of
Anthropocene – humans as a force of nature – climate change

 Distrust of the body, the body as an obstacle to knowledge; dualism

 The desire for purification, demarcation, separation, assumed to be a UNIVERSAL framework

of thought

The Augustan Age

 derived from the prestige of Latin Literature in the age of Augustus – the period of the
highest refinement of any national literature. Classicism.

 decorative and elegant? dull and unimaginative? – cliches

 the first cultural period that defined the ordinary man as a norm: ”To follow Nature”;
”Human Nature is ever the same”

 buisness as a marker of distinction

 the Augustan Trinity of Reason, Nature, and Society.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) A Roman Catholic

 The Ode of Solitude written at the age of 12

 translations of Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey

 satires (typical of the age)

 mock-heroic poems: The Rape of the Lock (1712)

 poetic diction – very sophisticated use of poetical language in contrast to everyday language.

 heroic couplet

 An Essay on Criticism (1712) – created the Augustan creed “to follow Nature”, “Nature
Methodized”

 Identification of Nature with rules and of rules with the Ancients: to imitate the Ancients and
obey the rules.

 In literary criticism he relies on knowledge and classical readings:

Doctor Samuel Johnson A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) - definitions of over 40, 000
words, thousands of quotations

 periodical The Rambler

 an essayist, a poet, and a playwright.

 the founder of a prestigious literary Club (1763)