The context 

The Middle ages

Life in Saxons England

Anglo-Saxon society was based on the family unit which branched out the clan, the tribe and the kingdom.

In the poem Beowulf the legendary hero Scyld is mostly praised for his outstanding personal valour.

The spread of Christianity

Christianity began to spread throughout pagan Britain towards the end of the 6^th century.

Saint Augustine established a monastery at Canterbury and became the highest ecclesiastical authority.

The Cultural Context

The coming of Christianity introduced into England the continental Christian culture which had a strong classical component within its content and style.

On a practical level it brought written documents.

Anglo-Saxons work passed through Christian hands, which resulted in a mingling of Christian trends with old German culture.

Features

Anglo-Saxons culture had distinctive features of its own.

It was both a military culture, based on the practice of war and dominated by the figure of the powerful noble-hearted warrior, and a refined culture.

The story of English

The Germanic tribes - the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes - which invaded Britain in the year  AD 449 imposed their language, know today as Old English.

The Celtic languages of the native Britons have survived only in Wales, Ireland and in north-west of Scotland.

The conversion of England to Christianity, started by St Augustine and his followers in the year AD 597, enriched Old English with a great wealth of Latin words.

Anglo-Norman or Middle English Period (1066-1485)

In1066 at the Battle of Hastings the Saxon King Harold was defeated by William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.

The battle marked the invasion and occupation of the country by the Normans. The Normans were descended from the Vikings.

The Normans imposed the French language upon their English subjects.

Until the 14^th century three languages were spoken in England:

1 French among the nobility;

2 Latin among the clergy;

3 English among the ordinary people.

The Normans also introduced the feudal system as it was practiced on the Continent.

The Church  also grew in strength. Conflict between Church and State became inevitable and led to the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket, in the 1170.

In the 13^th century feudalism began to decline. The nobilities forced King John to sign Magna Carta in 1215 and started to act in co-operation with the merchant class of the towns.

The following years saw the foundation of Parliament which began as a council of nobles but before the end of the 13^th century had come to include the gentry and merchants from the towns.

Discontent began to grow among the poor because of the heavy taxation imposed by the king and led to the Peasants' Revolt (1381).

Abroad a long war broke out with France, know as the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453)

The peace was soon broken at home by a bloody civil war for the possessions of the crown between the supporters of the House of Lancaster and the House of York (War of the Roses).

Society was firmly based upon rank and each person was classified according his or her place on the social scale which depend on birth, profession, marital status.

Women's place was well-established in society and inferior to men's. Their duty was to cook food for the family and keep the house in good order.

Most people lived in the country and were active in farming and herding but towns began to grow in population and importance. Though London was not yet the capital of the country, it was already by far the greatest city in England.

The cultural context

The Church played a key role in preserving and transmitting culture. Monasteries were centers of learning and of the arts where manuscripts were copied, collected and distributed.

The great English cathedrals were built in this period and soon became the center of the communal life of the city. The development of architectural style sows a progressive refinement of taste.

Among the nobility a powerful force was the institution of chivalry which imposed a new code of conduct.

Romances of chivalry and love were imported from France and became extremely popular in this period.

Ballads, carols, mystery and morality plays are evidence of a popular cultural life which was quite active among the uneducated classes of society.

Prose literature existed too but mainly in the form of moral instruction and exhortation.

The story of English

After the Battle of Hastings (1066) the Norman king and authorities in London spoke French and wrote in  Latin. The English language grew richer with French borrowings, while the use of French in Britain went slowly into decline.

The Development of Poetry - Old English poetry (449-1066)

Old English refers to the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons. Old English poetry was composed orally by bards (scops). The scops or bards had a very important function within the community they belonged to.

They knew by heart many tales about the heroes of their people which they recited before an audience to the accompaniment of harp or lyre.

Their poems made use of a special poetic vocabulary of fixed phrases and ornate expressions which were a powerful aid to composition and memorization.

Beowulf

The story of English poetry traditionally begins with Beowulf, a long narrative epic whose authorship and date and place of composition are all unknown.

It tells the deeds of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who fights first against the monster Grendel and then against a dragon by whom he is mortally wounded.

The poem's subjects matter derives from the history of the tribes of northern Europe which was handed down orally by 'scops' in the from of traditional tales and legends.

The only surviving manuscript of Beowulf dates from around the years 1000, but the poems is certainly much older.

The poem has the following features of epic:

o      It tells of the noble heroic actions of a mythical hero and involves the fate of a whole people;

o      It begins in medias res after starting its theme

o      The characters speak in long majestic speeches,

o      Lists of objects and detailed descriptions of people occur quite frequently.

The verse is typically of traditional oral poetry in the use it makes of poetic devices to aid memory such as the repetition of fixed phrases and alliteration.

Alliteration was a major aspect of Anglo-Saxons poetry: its metre was based on a pattern of stressed and alliteration words.

The number of syllables in a line was irrelevant and rhyme was never used.

Besides Beowulf lyric poems and riddles have also survived from the Anglo-Saxon period.

Middle English poetry (1066-1450)

When the Norman invaded England (1066) French became the language of the Norman ruling class and English was the language of the common people.

The nobility favored the French form of the romance, a long narrative poem telling the heroic adventures of noble knights and including intricate love stories and all sorts of wonders (legends of King Arthur and the knights of the round table).

The influence of French literature also effected the poetic form.

The rhymed line began to develop side by side with the alliterative line

The number of syllables per line acquired more and more importance

Complicated stanza changed the layout of the poem on the page.

Poets continued writing in their own regional dialects and spelling according to their own pronunciation. From about 1400 the written language to conform to the East Midlands dialect.

Chaucer => classic English verse line 10-syllable line, pentameter, and used it with great freedom.

From the common people of England and Scotland came the traditional or folk ballad.

Ballads were songs committed to memory and handed down orally from one generation to the next.

The story line is simple, begins in the middle of things and proceeds quickly to its conclusion;

The subjects matter is usually drawn from events and situations in the everyday life of the common people,

The form is also simple and regular: each stanza has four lines which usually rhyme abcb;

The language is direct and straightforward and makes considerable use of repetition especially in the refrain.

The Development of Drama

The origins of British drama date back to the middle ages. Before that time, street performers with various skill went around the country and performed their shows in market squares.

In the medieval period, a more formal theatre began to emerge from the rituals of the Church.

In the middle ages, Drama was used to give peasants a religious education in the mysteries of faith and the Bible. At first liturgical drama was used to involve the congregation in coral celebration of religious mysteries and to commemorate the great Christian events.

Religious performances moved out of the Church when a new religious festival was introduced in the month of June to celebrate ' Corpus Christi'.

In time, the processions developed into a new form of drama which took place outside the churches and consisted of a number of plays dealing with stories of the Old and New Testament. These were called Mystery Plays.

The subjects of these plays were either biblical stories, such as Noah an the Flood, or events from the life of Christi.

Each play was financed and performed by the trade of the town, that is associations of merchants and skilled workers such as saddlers, carpenters and smiths.

Guilds took responsibility for the proprieties all the objects that had to be used on stage during the play, the scenery, the costumes and the actors.

Mystery Cycle was staged outdoors, each play was performed on a movable stage wagon called a pageant.

Medieval drama was important in the development of the genre for 3 reason:

It added a human element in the religious themes of the Mysteries and created characters corresponding to English social types;

It took the firs tentative steps towards a psychological observation of character in the moralities;

It appealed strongly to people of all social classes.