The Middle Ages (to ca. 1485): A Comprehensive Overview

January 7, 2018 | Author: Anonymous | Category: Engineering & Technology, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering
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The Middle Ages (to ca. 1485): A Comprehensive Overview LITERATURE 207 GAZZARA

Introducing the Period Treasures from the oldest Writers of English  Ancient Celtic poets of England and its neighboring lands  Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Potter…  Characteristics of modern heroism and heroic plots/stakes 

Strengths of Medieval Poetry  Powerful storytelling  Moments of riddling wit  Moral and political challenges  Incantatory patterns of sound  Surreal landscapes  Piercing invasions of the supernatural

Pagan and Christian  Germanic art of writing post conversion  597 Pope Gregory the Great to southeastern kingdom of Kent  Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People 

From illiterate cowherd to poet

 Predominance of religious works comprise

preserved works from Anglo-Saxon/medieval period Produced and preserved by Church, where literacy thrived  Christianity used Germanic poetry for its own purposes 

“Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?”  797  Alcuin’s letter to the bishop of Lindisfarne  “What has Ingeld to do with Christ?”  Alcuin’s “Ingeld” = “heroic poetry” recited to the

monks  “We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.”  A little versus A lot.

Beowulf hints…  Knowledge of Germanic mythology and heroic

literature = limited  Archaeology and Beowulf (a Christian conception of paganism)  Alcuin’s letter  Beowulf poet HEARD and adapted oral poems  Scholars think, though, that writing of the poem occurred (not oral first)

The Legend of Arthur  History and Romance  The French barons  rulers in the Twelth Century  Britannia versus Anglo-Saxon invaders  “The Britons told stories…”: LEGEND BORN

Medieval Sexuality  Idealization NOT as motive  Sexual love heavy in medieval romance  “Courtly love” idealizes women but emphasizes their

difference (“mercy”)  LOVE AS SERVICE (slavery, religion, politics) = women as objects of erotic-worship  Usually presented as extramarital

Old English Epic and Bede  Celebrated the deeds of heroes in a warrior society  Psychodynamics of orality (Walter Ong); possible in

Twitter age?  Similar traditions in German  Connections between epic and history: “We have heard…” Remember that Bede was a scholar of rhetoric—

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