literature: the Middle English Period
This lesson contains 39 slides, with text slides and 14 videos.
Items in this lesson
Slide 1 - Slide
- King Edward
- Harold Godwinson
- William, Duke of Normandy
- Battle of Hastings
Slide 2 - Slide
Slide 3 - Video
Slide 4 - Slide
Slide 5 - Video
- record of everything everyone owned
- rights and duties of every landowner
- rights and duties of every court
Slide 6 - Slide
Slide 7 - Video
- French; language of Royal court
- French: language of ruling classes (nobility)
- French: language of business
- English: language of commoners
- Latin: language of the clergy
- 14th century: English became the dominant language again! This language is called Middle English
- Much influence of French on this language ( many French words)
Slide 8 - Slide
Slide 9 - Video
- Memento Mori ( remember that you will die)
- importance of religion in the Middle Ages
- to recover the Holy Land and to defend Christianity
Slide 10 - Slide
- 1215 King John (Plantagenets) forced by his barons to sign the Magna Charta
- first English Law Book
- limit to the king's authority
Slide 11 - Slide
Slide 12 - Video
- the English claimed the French throne, leading to hostilities
- after the war both the houses of Lancaster and York claimed the throne, leading to the Wars of the Roses ( 1445-1487)
- The Tudors came to the throne
Slide 13 - Slide
Slide 14 - Video
- popular genres were: fables, ballads and romances
- courtly love
Slide 15 - Slide
Fable is a literary device that can be defined as a concise and brief story intended to provide a moral lesson at the end. In literature, it is described as a didactic lesson given through some sort of animal story. In prose and verse, a fable is described through plants, animals, forces, of nature, and inanimate objects by giving them human attributes wherein they demonstrate a moral lesson at the end.
Features of a Fable
- A fable is intended to provide a moral story.
- Fables often use animals as the main characters. They are presented with anthropomorphic characteristics, such as the ability to speak and to reason.
- Fables personify the animal characters.
Slide 16 - Slide
- Beatrix Potter's Mr Tod and Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox were based on Reynard.
- first version in Middle Dutch in 13th century: Reynard
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Slide 19 - Video
Ballads, no matter which category they fall into, mostly rely on simple and easy-to-understand language, or dialect from its origin. Stories about hardships, tragedies, love, and romance are standard ingredients of the ballad. This is irrespective of geographical origins.
Another conspicuous element of any ballad is the recurrence of certain lines at regular intervals. Ballads can also be in interrogative form, with appropriate answers to every question asked. Ballads seldom offer a direct message about a certain event, character, or situation. It is left to the audience to deduce the moral of the story from the whole narration.
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Slide 25 - Video
Slide 26 - Slide
Medieval literature includes several examples of courtly love. Sir Lancelot expresses this kind of love for Lady Guinevere in Arthurian legend, though he breaks the rules and takes Guinevere for his own.
In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, this type of love is depicted.
Many poets also dedicated their writing to noble ladies in acts of courtly love, such as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which he dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. The poem depicts the Redcrosse knight's courtly love for the Lady Una. He protects her and professes to love her, while always behaving with the most chivalrous propriety.
Slide 27 - Slide
Slide 28 - Video
- knight of the Round Table (king Arthur)
- The poem translated in Modern English prose can be found at: https://www.yorku.ca/inpar/sggk_neilson.pdf
Slide 29 - Slide
- 1340-1400
- The Canterbury Tales
Slide 30 - Slide
- link-in-frame story
- Thomas Becket's tomb in Canterbury Cathedral
- unfinished
- General Prologue
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Slide 32 - Video
Slide 33 - Video
Slide 34 - Video
- gold digger
- 5 marriages
- enjoys sex
Slide 35 - Slide
There was a housewife come from Bath, or near,
Who—sad to say—was deaf in either ear.
At making cloth she had so great a bent
She bettered those of Ypres and even of Ghent.
Her kerchiefs were of finest weave and ground;(5)
I dare swear that they weighed a full ten pound
Which, of a Sunday, she wore on her head.
Her hose were of the choicest scarlet red,
Close gartered, and her shoes were soft and new.
Bold was her face, and fair, and red of hue.(10)
She’d been respectable throughout her life,
With five churched husbands bringing joy and strife,
Not counting other company in youth;
But thereof there’s no need to speak, in truth.
Three times she’d journeyed to Jerusalem;(15)
And many a foreign stream she’d had to stem;
At Rome she’d been, and she’d been in Boulogne,
In Spain at Santiago, and at Cologne.
.
She could tell much of wandering by the way:
Gap-toothed was she, it is no lie to say.(20)
Upon an ambler easily she sat,
Well wimpled, aye, and over all a hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe,
A rug was tucked around her buttocks large,
And on her feet a pair of spurs quite sharp.(25)
In company well could she laugh and carp.
The remedies of love she knew, perchance,
For of that art she’d learned the old, old dance
