Worksheet on Images of Middle English Literature

Answer the questions using Times New Roman font 12. Write no more than two lines for each
answer. Use word, name your file with your surname and save the it as doc or docx (no others,
please, I cannot open them) and upload your task in the section Compiti of didattica, where you
downloaded it from..

1. What are ballads?

2. What themes did ‘mystery plays’ deal with? Bible theme
3. Why was the circulation of books in the Middle Ages very limited? So expensive
4. Who were limners? a painter of ornamental decoration (illuminations) (to illuminate)
5. What made up the literary audience of the time?
6. Who wrote the History of the Kings of Britain? What kind of work was it? Geoffrey of Monmouth

What were ‘romances’? rappresente episodes of Arthurian themes

7.
8. When did the English language start to be used a literary language, together with French and
Latin? 7th to 10th Century this period contains some of the earliest documented evidence of the
English language

Who can be regarded as the ‘fathers’ of English literature? Geoffrey Chaucer

9.
10. What is the subject of Canterbury Tales?