History of English Literature

Prologue The British Islands have long been the last areas of land reached by people migrating west from Continental Europe. The Neolithic (or New Stone Age) may have come from the Iberian (Spain) peninsula or even the North African coast. Around 2400 Before Christ, new groups of people arrived from Europe. Their arrival is marked by the first individual graves, furnished with poetry ‘beakers’ -> from which they get their name The Beaker people spoke probably an Indo-European languages. About 1300BC, the henge civilization was overtaken by a new form of society in the south of England, a settled farming class. This farming society developed in order to feed the people. But it became more important and powerful and as it grew richer fortifications was needed for defending these family villages. Around 700BC the country was invaded by the Celtic Tribes that had crossed over from central Europe in search of empty lands for settlement. Celtic were such highly successful farmer, capable of feeding a large population. The Celtic Tribes were ruled over by a warrior class, of which Druids and Priests had been particularly important. Nevertheless these Druids were not interested in developing writing and reading skills, they memorized all the knowledge necessary in Celtic society: - Religious teaching -tribal Laws -History -Medicine -… Women had a certain degree of independence. Many Women fought against the Romans but the most famous is Boudica. She had become Queen of her Tribes after her the death of her husband. In 61 AD she destroyed London, the Roman capital, but get killed afterwards. The Celtic Britain was invaded by the Romans because they were supporting the Celts of Gaul by feeding them and hiding them in Britain. The Romans decided to reverse this Logic and make use of the Celt’s British food for their own army fighting the Gauls. They brought their writing and reading skills when they invaded Britain, and eventually Christianized the Celts. They also established a Romano- British culture across the southern half of Britain, this part was inside the Roman Empire. But they could not conquer ‘Caledonia’ (Scotland) this is why Hadrian decided to build a strong wall along the northern border in order to keep out raiders from the north. But the romans lost the control in 367 AD, when the Celts coming from Caledonia attacked them. Germanic groups known as Saxons and Franks began to raid the Coast of Gaul- European mainland-, another sign that put the Romans out of the control of Britain.

In 409, Rome pulled its last soldier out of Britain, and only the Celts Christianized, or Romano-British were left alone to fight against the invaders. It came to an end in the course of the 5th century, with the defeat of the Christian Celts. But a long series of invasions or migrations came later, - 8th and 9th centuries: Vikings came raiding in order to settle down -11th: Norman Invasion changed the political and cultural history in a radical way -20th: Arrival of people from the British Colonies mainly the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent

The people that lived before the Germanic invasions had obviously developed a culture, including tale telling poetry. But it has been hard to keep a trace of the history before the introduction of Christianity because they only existed orally.

Chapter One: The Old English Period

1. Historical background Two important events affected the island of Britain in the Old English period, also called the Anglo Saxon Period. 1) The Anglo-Saxon invasions:

The invaders came to Britain in latter part of the 5th century, coming from three powerful Germanic Tribes: The Jutes, The Saxons and the Angles. The Jutes settled in Kent and along the south Coast The Angles settled in the East and also the north Midland and the Saxons settle down between the Angles and the Jutes. To the Romans, these people were barbarians who endangered the political structure of the Empire, these Germanic tribes were pagans, their way of thinking were alien to the Christians Romans. 2) Re-introduction of Christianity: The second main event is the period of reconversion of these tribes, settled in England, to Christianity. In 597, the Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine, a monk, in order to (re) establish Christianity in England. He began by converting the Jutes because of their king’s wife who was already Christian.

After what Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury, capital of the Jutes and also several ruling families accepted Christianity. But Augustine did not really Christianized ordinary people because he was interested in establishing Christian authority. -> bringing the rulers to a new faith.

It was the Celtic Christian Church which brought Christianity to the ordinary people, while Romans bishops were living at the courts of the king, making their centers of Church Power across England. Nevertheless the two Christian traditions disagreed on such matters as vestment and tonsure but also on the way of deciding on liturgical dates such as Easter. The fundamental issue was Pelagius though, indeed, the Celtic brand of Christianity was Pelagian and then did not subscribe to the notion of the original sin. ‘ We are born free of sin and can achieve grace by our free will, away from the trapping of the Church’. -> In 663, the Celtic Christian Monasteries were declared heretical by the king of North Umbria, and its influence retreated as Rome extended its authority over all Christians even those part of the Britain. The Anglo-Saxons benefited from many influences. ‘There is never such a thing as a ‘pure’ race or ‘pure’ culture, such as thing is always a myth. At the end of the 8th and the beginning of the 9th century, the Vikings coming from Norway and Denmark came for invading the Britain. Alfred of Wessex defeated the Danes in 878, thanks to the unification of the little kingdoms of the south England. But the Danish Invasions started anew in the 10th and the early 11th, their leader knew as Canute or Cnut, already king of Sweden and Norway became king of England.

He tried to unite Danish with Saxon people; he also developed trading links across the continent. When he died, in 1035, the Witan, an Anglo-Saxon institution, composed by churchmen and warriors that became a formal body issuing laws and charters chose Edward, son of the Saxon king. Edward was more interested in the Church than in kingship -> Called ‘Edward the Confessor’

Under his reign the Norman influence spread all over Britain, because he spent most of his life in Normandy, his mother was also Norman, one of the daughter of the Duke of Normandy. When he died, in 1066, Harold of Wessex, a Saxon baron, was chosen to be king but the throne was claimed by a relative of Canute but also by William of Normandy, Edward’s cousin. Harold defeated the invasions coming from Norway but he was not prepared to fight two war in a row.. And then his Cousin defeated him on the same year and became William the Conqueror, crowned on Christmas day. The Anglo-Saxons had their own religion, non-Christian and their own way of life. Their social organization reflected on heroic ideals, bravery, loyalty and physical courage. -> Far removed from the Christian ideal. The literature of the Old English Period was recorded in manuscripts, but the majority were lost in wars, fires monasteries’ destruction during the Danish invasions. It was written in Old English, vernacular language of that Time, when English had Inflections, this

language was not unified, also considered as a dialect into several.

Old English literature begins with poetry, not with prose. The earlier texts were based on a tradition of oral poetry brought by the Germanic invaders. This Oral poetry was written down by Clerics after the Christianization in the 7th century.

2. Old English Poetry 2.A Secular Poetry 2.A.1 Heroic Poetry Old English poetry is the nearest of the oral tradition of the heroic age of Germania( referring to wherever Germanic people were roaming). The technique used in Anglo-Saxon poetry is stressed alliterative verse, which is clearly the product of an oral tradition. Poems were recited by gleemen or jongleurs, ‘itinerant medieval entertainers’. Those who were attached to the court were minstrels or called ‘scops’. Most of the Time Heroic poems, practically always set to music, were intended for an aristocratic audience. Old English verse is alliterative (repetition of the initial consonant) and stressed with no rhyme, it means that each lines contains four stressed syllables and two or three alliterations, plus a varying number of unstressed syllables. There is a definite pause, caesura, between the two half of each line with two stresses on each side of the caesura. For example: Forth fled the hours: floated on the waves the ship cliff sheltered: shield-bearer ready Stood at the stem: the streaming waters Brake upon the beach: men bore the treasure è ‘…’ Unstressed syllables to the bark’s bosom: bright and costly with the wealth of weapons: on willing journey the boat iron-bound was borne to seaward. (From Beowulf, adapted into modern English)

These poems were part of an oral tradition, which was written down after the Germanic tribes had settled down in England and had been Christianized. REM: the passage of writing could only occur after the Christianization, since it is in the monasteries

that the monks went confining these stories to their manuscripts. None of these stories refers to a local, British hero, they tell about continental Europe or Scandinavia, as in Beowulf. 2. A.1.1 Beowulf It had been written in the first half of the 8th century, this is the greatest Old English poem. Over 3,000 lines, it deals about the traditional Germanic theme, and gives a picture of the culture and society of the heroic age of the Germanic peoples. This poem is a combination of the heroic idealism and of the sombre fatalism, part of the Germanic temperament. They believed in afterlife but not in the Christian sense, they thought that heroes killed in battled would go to the Walhalla. The poem consists of two major episodes with many digressions. Beowulf, nephew of the King of the Geats (Southern Sweden) The First part deals with the visit of Beowulf and his knights to the King of Denmark, getting old and unable to get rid of Grendel, a Monster terrorizing his peoples. It is in order to kill the Monster that Beowulf came to Denmark. It is to prove his generous fidelity toward the king, that he will establish his reputation as a Hero. Beowulf wounds Grendel mortally but its mother wants the revenge, Beowulf kills it also, then the kingdom is rid of both of the monsters, and Beowulf can leave the country with many present s. The second part of the work is telling what is happening 50 years later. Beowulf, had long been the King of the Geats, and as an old man he das to defend his people from a dragon. He succeeds in killing the beast but Beowulf himself is wounded mortally, the poem ends with Beowulf’s funeral, and his body is burned on an elaborate funeral pyre, amid the lamentations of his warriors. Rem: The poem was written down in England speaking of the period of Germanic history before the Anglo-Saxons settled in England.

Beowulf is a mixture of historical and supernatural elements. It refers to Kings and heroes but also mystic and magic creatures such as Grendel, his mother or the fiery dragon. These stories and heroes were common to all of Germania; they belonged to the culture of variety of peoples, sharing the same frame of reference. But there is no patriotic feeling, Beowulf is a Hero in his own rights, example of individual courage and virtue and generosity. There are some similarities between Beowulf and Homer’s Odyssey or Virgil’s Aeneid: - the Great courtesy with which men of rank are received and leave of - the generosity of a ruler, who rewards with presents the value and courage of his men - the thirst for fame gained through the achievement of great deeds of courage and endurance

- the solemn boasting of warriors before and after the battle Christians intrusions are introduced by the clerics who wrote the poem after the Christianization of the country. But it did not weaken the pagan spirit of the poem; they placed general Christian notions, such as God’s creation of the World. The civilizations evoked were based on Germanic ideal of nobility, loyalty, generosity, and bravery, and physical strength, typical features of the heroic age and not of the Christian doctrine. In terms of technique the poem is written in stressed alliterative line, with no rhyme, the poet uses extensive vocabulary, including ‘kenning’- picture names. For instance: -‘sea’-> the Swan Road -‘body’-> the Bones House -‘ship’-> sea wood or Wave floater, or Sea-goer,…

But there are only two texts that belong to the epic tradition: ‘Finnsburgh’ and ‘Waldhere’. The following poems are found in a manuscript known as the ‘Exeter Ms’ 2.A.1.2 Widsith (The Far Wanderer) Written down back at the end of 7th century starting 8th, still after the Christianization of England, it tells about an autobiographical itinerary of a scop. It deals about a world of wandering and conquests, with the Roman Empire destroyed. The scop tells about his travel around the Germanic world with mentioning many people he met, such as rulers. These heroic poems were based on history and incorporated historical figures. The heroes that are mentioned in these texts are not regional or national; they were admired and praised for their deeds .

2.A.1.3 Deor (9th or 10th century) it is a short poem, about 42 lines, divided into seven unequal sections, expressing the complaint of a scop, who after many years of service toward hos loved lord have been supplanted by a rival. He consoles himself by narrating the past and misfortunes of Germanic Heroes. After each reference to the troubles of a famous character, he adds: ‘That grief passed away, so may this sorrow pass’. This poem contains also a note of elegiac note (nostalgia or lament) which is usually the transience of things and the unreliability of the world thought sometimes the end comes with a Christian consolation which is the case in Deor. These three poems, (Beowulf, Widsith and Deor) are the only remaining of the early Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry dealing with continental heroes and their deeds in Germania. But a note of old heroic period reappears in ‘The Battle of Maldon’ around the 10th century.

This poem deals with contemporary event (in the 10th century). It uses epic manner, treating about the clashes between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes ending with the conquest of the country with Canute in 1012. It still does deal with contemporary event but in an old manner, which is not the case in ‘The Battle of Brunanburgh’ (937). Battle of Brunanburgh written down in the 10th century but contains something new: note of patriotism. -> The Hero is no longer an example of individual heroic virtue but more like the champion of the nation. It has to do with King Alfred, who worked hard in the union of the Germanic Tribes (Angles, Jutes and Saxons) against the common enemy, the Danes. After what a national spirit was born. 2. A.2 Elegiac Poetry The poems in this section are said ‘Pagan’ Germanic narrative, not heroic. They were written down after the Christianization of the England, which means that they all end with a conventional religious sentiment, two of them especially: ‘the Wanderer’ and ‘the Seafarer’. 2.A.2.1 The Wanderer It records the complaint of a solitary man, who had served a loved lord but who after his death, decided to exile himself across the sea. This is a narrative poem, containing an impressive note of lament for the departed joys. The theme of ‘ubi sunt’ is also used which was going to be one of the favorite theme of the middles Ages.

2. A.2.2 The Seafarer

It is another narrative poem which records the monologue of an old sailor leaving loneliness and hardship of life at sea but also the fascination of the people who live on it. Rem, there are also a number of narrative poems which contain an elegiac note but without any Christian intrusion. 2. A.2.3 The Ruin it is about a description of a ruined city, providing a sad picture of desolation, contrasted with the former prosperity of the place. The mood of this text is more fatalistic, showing the Anglo-Saxon poetry tone. The inevitable consequence of the destruction caused by heroism is part of the Anglo-Saxon Mood. We could say that the elegiac mood is the counterpart of the heroic mood. The last two poems contain both dramatic monologues, but the person who says ‘I’ is no the poet.

These poems are not truly lyrical, they are not mostly about personal feeling, but they are more narrative poems, intent on telling story. 2. A.2.4 The Wife’s Lament It focuses on a wife waiting for her husband. She also curses on the enemy, the responsible of her absent love. The circumstances are not really clear but it seems like the husband has gone away on a boat, and she is now forced to dwell in cave under an oak tree because of her husband’s relatives. This poem is interesting because it introduces a female perspective as opposed to male heroism.

2. 2. A.2.5 The husband’s message This is a short poem of 53 lines, in which the speaker is a piece of wood on which a message has been carved. It is left by a husband who reminds his wife that he has been driven from her by enemies, and finally he asks her join him across the sea.

2.A.3 Riddles Meaning ‘ enigmas’ it is another kind of secular poetry, composed in England by Clerics around the 7th and 8th centuries. Some of them are translations from Latin original. They were a literary amusement of the time, mainly for the aristocracy but also intended for common people. They give us am idea of daily life in Anglo-Saxon England, for example: A life-thief stole my world-strength Ripped off flesh and left me skin Dipped me in water and drew me out Stretched me bare in the tight sun The hard blade, clean steel, cut Scrapped-finger folded, shaped me. (Riddle 26, trans. Williamson) 2. A.4 Gnomic Verse They deal with generalizations about morals and experience with the properties of objects encountered in daily life. They are the only group of Anglo-Saxon poems that are not aristocratic in origin.

‘Gnomic’ comes from Greek, meaning ‘ to do with judgment’. Gnomic Verses contain: - Maxims of popular wisdom - Short impressive statements of general truths. The word ‘Gnomic’ is derived from early Greek poetry (6th century BC) but many ancient poems contained wisdom in their texts. They can be found in the Scandinavian Eddas, which are a written form of the ancient Germanic Oral Tradition.

2.B. Religious poetry Just a very little Anglo-Saxon poetry has survived before they were Christianized, even Hymn sung at festival have disappeared, but we still have traces of songs that were part of fertility rituals. The Christianization had more important effect on Anglo-Saxon literature than just the addition of Christian elements to heroic and elegiac narrative poems. By the 8th century the technique of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry were applied to purely Christian themes. Religious poetry uses the same verse and vocabulary as the heroic pagan poems narrating the exploits of Germanic heroes.

The Church used the old poetic forms in fights for Christianity. The Christian missionaries saw they could not simply eradicate the old heroic tradition; this is why they expressed the new subject-matter (Biblical stories) in the old way. è They used alliterative and stressed verse and sounded the old heroic note of Germanic people. As mentioned already, heroic poems were mostly recited at the courts of leaders, or members of the upper-class. But these recitals were also intended to public performance, and more people they were listening, more better it was. Same as Religious poetry, as a vengeance. Two names represent this religion poetry: Caedmon and Cynewulf 2.B.1 Caedmon and his school around the 7th century, he is the first Anglo-Saxon Christian poet, said to have received the gift of poetry miraculously. His main work is ‘the first Hymn’, composed in a dream and preserved in Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. The others called ‘Caedmon’s poems’ have been written later, in the 8th century. They are interesting because they show a vocabulary of praise, used earlier by a scop praising his lord. The only difference now is that is applied to God, the new kind of ‘Leader’ to be serve, it is obvious that the heroic style was adapted to Biblical subjects

There are four Caedomian poems, three of which are based on the old Testament Story: - Genesis A (3000 lines) it tells the substance of the first 22 chapters of the Genesis, within included Genesis B, dealing with the temptation of Adam and Eva and their fall, but also with Satan’s Rebellion. Genesis B show more real poetic imagination at work and ability to give vigorous life to the traditional character Satan, the rebel. -Exodus (8th century), in this poem Germanic heroic poetry is clearly felt. The Biblical narrative is followed is not that much followed, not as much as in genesis A though. About the characters, -at some stages, Moses (Moise) emerge as a ‘glorious hero’ leading his warlike people. - We get a picture of Satan in Hell, not as a rebel but more like a lost soul of lamenting his exclusion from the joys of the Heaven. There is an elegiac eloquence announcing the other school, Cynewulf (9th century)

2. B.2 Cynewulf and his School This Movement show a more self-conscious craftsmanship on the part of the poet. Instead of the Germanic heroic trend we find here a more contemplative and meditative tone as in Christ, Juliana, Elene and The Fate of the Apostles. the first poem is about the ascension, and the others are more about the lives of Saints. è Anglo-Saxon religious poetry moves into the didactic, the devotional, and the mystical. The oldest surviving poem in the form of a dream is ‘The Dream of the Rood’. It deal with the determination of the God and how he commands the worlds but also the suffering of a young Hero (Jesus Christ) who redeems mankind because he ascended the cross. This is done with a particular note of religious passion and wonder. Especially Cynewulf has expressed throughout his Texts a personal devotional feeling. None of them can be said to be really lyrical in character, or to have been written primarily for the purpose of exploring personal emotions.

3 Old English Prose The Anglo-Saxons invaders brought with them some poetry but there is no evidence of them having any literary prose tradition. So the development of Prose is purely the result of Christianization. 3. A. Anglo-Latin Prose

In the Middle age Latin was the language of learning, of philosophy, of theology, of the Church but also of all the religious scholar who lived in monasteries (centers of learning at that time). 3. A.1 Venerable Bede (673-735) He was one of the many scholar living and studying in monasteries, such as Wearmouth and Jarrow. He wrote in Latin ‘Ecclesiastical History of The English People’ (truly done in 731) which gained him a European reputation. This work offers a summary of events from the Roman invasion until the arrival of Saint- Augustine in 597 and many details from the year 597-731. Bede has been called ‘the Father of the English history’, we actually own him what is much known about English history in the 7th century. Unfortunately, in the following century, Danish Invasions broke up the new Christian civilization and some monasteries were burned down and destroyed. fortunately King Alfred with the unification of the little kingdom succeed in saving the English history, indeed he and a team of scholars, invited by himself, translated many Latin works into English. è These translations contributed to the beginning of English Prose.

3. B Old English secular Prose English Prose begins under king Alfred ‘reign, and the king himself with some associated made efforts to reestablish some aspects of the earlier education to the governing class and to the clergy. The most significant thing he done for the recovering of the earlier education destabilized by the Danish invaders, was the translations of Latin Work into the Vernacular, language spoken at that Time: Old English. King Alfred is known for his succeed in stopping the Danish conquest in England, but also the unification of the little kingdoms of the South England. He was considered as a statesman, as a military strategist, as a patriot but also as a leading figure in the world of letters and culture. What he actually translated… - Pope Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule (as a manual of instruction for the clergy) -The Psalms, he used the Ten Commandments as an epigraph to his own book of law - Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People -Orosius’ History of the World He also wrote a book of Blossoms derived from the soliloquies of Saint Augustine King Alfred’s Purpose: Bringing to his contemporaries a knowledge of the works of the past. His contribution to English Prose is an important phenomenon, because prose is the best medium for the writing of history, it is more precise than poetry. Thanks to Alfred, the English were the first in Europe to use prose rather than poetry for the writing of historical work.

It is also under his authority that the Anglo-Saxon chronicle was begun, a compiled history presenting an outline of English poetry from Julius Caesar’s invasion to the middle of the 5th century. But some passage of this chronicle continues until 1154. The famous passages are the struggles between King Alfred and the Danish but also the plight of the people during the civil wars under King Stephen (1135-1154). Beside its historical interest, the Chronicle shows the development of the language of Middle English, derived from Old English.

3. C Religious Prose 3.C.1 Alfred (Around 950-960) Member of the community of Saint Cuthbert that a fled the monasteries when it was raided by the Vikings, translated the Latin text of the Lindisfarme Gospels into the vernacular. -> It revealed come monastic reform and abuses of clerical power. 3. C.2 Aelfric (end of the 10th- beginning of the 11th century) He wrote homilies and lives of the saints. He was also the first translator of the first seven book of the Old Testament into West Saxon form of Old English. Like most of the translators he was working from the Latin version of the Bible by saint Jerome, the Vulgate. 3. C.3 Wulfstan (10-11th centuries) He is another religious prose writer, and archbishop of York and wrote sermons which appear in his Sermon to the English. Through what he give a vivid picture of the horror of the second wave of the Danish Invasions, the desolation of the country and condemns the vices and lack of stamina of the people.

Chapter two: The Middle English Period (1066-1485)

1. Historical Background the Norman Conquest was the last of a series of migrations which put an end to the Roman Empire. The social culture was altered, and the literature changed completely. The heroic age was replaced by a feudal society, based on the ownership of land and on strictly defined bonds between social strata. -> It introduced new conventions of service, honor and obligation of the vassal toward their lords.

Expressing obviously the literature of the period, new kind of sophistication in manners replaced the heroic ideal. Rem: The change is noticeable from the ‘Chanson de geste’ (Half historical half legendary dealing with famous battles, mainly in France) to the ‘Arthurian romances’ with their stress behavior and on the news ideals of love and honor. In 1066, William the Conqueror is crowed, and himself established a Roman dynasty all around the England, which would last until 1154. After what the Plantagenets occupied the throne until 1485, Year marking the end of the Middle English Period.

In 1095, started the beginning of the Crusades, military expeditions undertaken by the Christian trying to recover the ‘Holy Land’ from the ‘Mohamedans’. History has shown that it was not without economic and political side-effects. They lasted until the middle of the 13th century. In 1215, King John, nicknamed ‘Lackland’ because he lost Normandy, had to issue with the ‘Great Charter’. He was unsuccessful in defending his dominions in Normandy, and his administration of justice was considered ‘capricious’. -> In 1215 a group of barons asked a charter of liberties as a safeguard against the King, and finally took up arms and captured London on May. King John faced it and on June of the same Year, both parties met and held negotiations at Runnymede. ‘Magna Carta’ or ‘Great Charter’ is considered as the corner-stone of liberty and the chief defense against arbitrary and unjust rule in England. It established for the first time a very significant constitutional principle. -> The power of the King could be now limited by a written grant. But it also contained: -the rights and privileges of the clergy - the right and privileges of the aristocracy (Barons) and of the Gentry (Knights and other wealthy freemen) -articles referring to the importance of borrowing money (necessarily from the Jews) and other trading activities. - In order to facilitate transactions, it establishes national standards various measures. è This Document, would led to what we call ‘Constitutional Monarchy’ The Hundred Years’ War confronted England to France from the mid-14th to mid-15th century. It was during that war that the English Peasants’ Revolt took place. In 1422 Henry VI became the King of France, and Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake on 1431 The 15th century was a period of transition, both on economic and political fields. 1455-1485: war of the Roses, opposing the House of the Lancaster to the House of the York.

I ended with the death of Richard III and the accession of Henri VII to the Throne, Earl of Richmond and from the House of the Tudors. He brought together the Houses of Lancaster and of York. The War contributed to the rise of the middle-class; likewise nobility has destroyed each other. The development of international trade and the crusades boosted the merchant class. -> The feudal system died out. Printing had been developed earlier in Far East, but the first European printer is known under the name of Caxton (1422-1491). As a consequence a new class of reader developed but the information started to circulate more freely, all this contributed to the public’s interest (Humanism). The Church saw in printing a good way to make some decent money: the Commerce of indulgences, with already printed ready-made forms which would only need to be filled by the pardoners (sellers of indulgences). The result of the Norman Conquest was the establishment of a new French-Speaking aristocracy in England. The Normans occupied all the important positions in the England (State and Church) and their language, Norman-French became the language of the governing classes: the court, the aristocracy and the clergy. Instead of what, Middle-English was spoken by the mass of the people, mainly uneducated. à The literature became to be written down in French and it new kind of literature reached a climax (apogee) under the Reign of Henri II, first Plantagenet and great-Grandson of William the conqueror.

In 1204, under King John ‘Lackland’ Normandy was lost for the English -> the connection between French aristocracy (in France) and the Anglo-Norman was weakened. And the French speaker living in England started gradually to blend with the English to form only one sort of people. The break up with France favored the recovery of the English language used in all circles; even many French words were introduced into English. By the Beginning of the 14th century, English has reasserted itself as one of the languages used in literature. We can distinguish three phases in the uses of the language in the Middle-English period: A:- Up to 1250, news forms of poetry, written in French, were for the entertainment of the aristocracy and the court. But English was used by clergy in works intended for the common people; these works were mainly religious in order to instruct the people about the Bible and the right way of life.

B: - After 1250, the upper class began to use English. And up to 1350 English literature becomes more varied including both religious (edification) and secular literature (entertainment) It is also up to this period that the first English Romances had been written in verse, which replaced the heroic poetry.

C: - After 1350 English was used by everyone, and was enriched and refined by the experimental effort of the poets. -> Climax of the Middle English literature. The end of the 14th century marked also the period of great individual writers Rem: the French speaking governing class, in England, temporarily interrupted the development of English literature. In the 12th century, French poetry was more advanced than English Poetry which provided a large body of new material for English poets. It gave them news models and standards for imitation, for example: the Romance, the new kind of aristocratic narrative verse. It is partly an effect of the popularity of the romance that the old heroic poetry has been replaced by the new kind of courtly sophistication in manners and feelings. Indeed, the old alliterative verse was largely replaced by the French syllabic and rhyming verse. But on the other hand, thanks to King Alfred (among others), Anglo-Saxon prose had become much more advanced than anything in French prose. Under French influence, historical writing was written in French verse or in Latin. In the field of prose, the French influence was a drawback which restricted the range and the development of English prose until the 14th century. Simultaneously, Anglo-Latin (Written in Latin but produced in England) literature continued to develop. Latin was the learned language of the Christian world in the middle ages; it was the languages of theology, philosophy, history and also a great deal of poetry. Moreover Latin was used for all official documents. Among these Anglo-Latin writers Geoffrey Monmouth is the most remarkable with his ‘Historia Regum Britanniae, written in verse in the 12th century. Giving a picture of the Anglo-Saxon invasions seen through the eyes of the retreating Celts it introduced also the stories of Lear and Cymbeline and the full story of the King Arthur. In 12th and 13th centuries many French chroniclers wrote in French verse, among them Wace is noteworthy because he translated Monmouth’s Historia later translated by Layamon into English verse. Thanks to Layamon, Arthur appeared in English Literature. Among these French poems, the stories were written purely for entertainment and based on actions, on adventures but also on sentiment (courtly love in particular). There were also Breton lais, verse narrative or lyrical pieces introduced by minstrels from Brittany and dealing with Celtic Manners. They were based on folklore, often referred to the supernatural. Marie de France is the best known author of Breton lais; she dedicated her lais to Henry II

2. Middle English Prose

Anglo-Saxon prose was the result of the translations from Latin, homilies, didactic and devotional religious work, and most importantly historical writing. Rem, the Anglo-Saxon tradition was the first to use prose for historical work. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle started by King Alfred in the 9th century came to an end in 1154. Year after what, Latin and French verse was then used for historical record, it is only later under Tudors’ reign that English prose re-emerged for historical records. On the other hand, religious prose in English was not replaced by Latin or French forms, after the conquest English prose continued to be used by the Clergy in order to instruct (in religious matters) the common people, especially the women because only a few of them knew Latin. This ensured the continuity and the survival of English prose up to the 15th and 16th centuries.

2. A Early religious prose in English (didactic work) The Katherine groups is the name given to five Middle English works of devotional prose, three of which focus on the lives of a virgin Saint: Katherine, Margaret and Juliana. They insist of the discomforts of married life, presenting the advantages of virginity. -> Addressed to female audience and exalted martyrdom (female related to Christ’s brides) The fourth text is called ‘Holy Maidenhood’ and still praises virginity while presenting a horrible picture of married life and motherhood. Ancrene Wisse (also called Ancrene Riwle) is a book of devotional advice, a manual of instruction intended for three young girls who decided to become anchoresses (female hermits). This work was written by Chaplain, in 1230, considered as the most remarkable prose work written between the work of King Alfred and that of Malory (late 15th century). Religious poems were pervaded with the heroic spirit of the Old English periods, giving the new courtly love spirit, in which the Christ the perfect knight. Religious poems deal with religious observance and the advantages of a life of retirement, but also all sort of temptations which must be resisted. It gives specific advice such as the way of how anchoresses would eat and dress. This work has survived in today’s life, in proverbs, anecdotes, character sketches and realistic details. à It makes the work an important document about the time, with human interest added to it. It has also an important thematic and linguistic connection with the Katherine Group; linguistically both have been written in a West Midland dialect.

It is a distinctive and interesting language from a period when English was undergoing a transition, but also suffering of the French influence (this, up to the 14th century). 2. B Later religious prose works In the 14th century, the religious prose works were no longer didactic only… 2.B.1 Mystical writings. Some were written by great contemplative mystical writers like Richard Rolle of Hampole (1300-1349) and his followers, for example Walter Hamilton (1396). The latter is the mystical author of The Scale of Perfection which has something in common with the work of Richard Rolle and the Cloud of Unknowing. [Mysticism: is an intensely personal experience in which the subject feels some sort of ineffable fusion with the divinity] The Cloud of unknowing is one of the most admired products of the Middle English Mystical tradition, and dates from the 14th century. Its author wad probably a priest but there no evidence of certain identification. The title refers to the intellectual or the blankness of ignorance, with Knowing God as achievement. The idea is that the soul must concentrate on God as he is in himself, wholly, and solely. -> The consideration of the purity of contemplation. Consider the following passage:

Julian of Norwich (14th century) turned into a saint by the Catholic Church, she also became an anchoress attached to a Benedict community and wrote in a similar mystical vein. There are two versions of her work: Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, where the Christ is perceived as a mothering figure. 2. B.2 Socially committed religious writing

John Wycliffe (1320-1384), fellow at Oxford University, had a completely different attitude from the members of the Rolle Group. They were contemplative mystics instead of J. Wycliffe who was a controversialist philosopher and reformer who even attacked the Church. He thought that the Church should not concern itself with temporal matters, and that the clergy should have no right to hold property. He considered that the Church had become too worldly, and he urged the King to take back the possessions of the Church and to restore the clergy to their original poverty. Wycliffe wrote social work revealing his attitude. One of them was ‘Of servant and Lords’ where he defends peasants revolt of 1381 another one was titled ‘Wedded Men and Wives’ dealing with marriage and the rearing of Children. But he was well known for his translations of the Bible for the people who were speaking Middle English. Since the Church was highly corrupted he wanted people to have a direct access to the Bible in a language which they could understand. He announced the Protestant attitude with his belief in man’s direct and individual relation to God. -> He anticipated the Reformation which divided Europe in the 16th century. His work his regarded as one of the foundation works of English prose. There were two translations (1382and1388) but the second one was better. His disciples were called ‘Lollards’, because they were mumbling away passages they had learned by Heart, and many of them were burnt at the stake, accused of heresy. In conclusion, Richard Rolle and his followers were mystical writers and made their religion personal in a subjective way, instead of what john Wycliffe and his fellows were concerned in human’s lot and tried to restore the truly meaning of religion at a time when Church and the clergy were more engrossed in worldly riches than with spiritual life.

2. B.3 more prose works.

The 14th century was under the French influence and some French writer wrote new style of literature: fiction. One of them wrote the Travel of Sir john de Mandeville, which is a fiction or compilation from narratives by other travelers. This story claims to be a sort of genuine journeys written by Mandeville himself, this work was translated into English in 1377. it became extremely popular, and was regarded as a genuine even if Mandeville was a pure fictional hero, he never existed and the author never set a foot away from home. In this work, the traveler pretends to have seen incredible things such a gigantic race of people with only one eye in the middle of their forehead, people with no heads but with eyes on their shoulders, others with great ears hanging on their knees. The book was meant as a guide-book for pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Crusades until the middle of the 13th century). But the author narrates also other imaginary travels: to Egypt, to Persia, To China.

And again… John Trevisa translated many Medieval Latin works into vernacular among ‘Polychronikon ’, bestseller, a history of the world. In his preface he deals with the controversial issue of translation, and his prose shows a certain degree of conscious artistry -> He anticipated the sophistication and the sense of balance in prose style that would be found under the Renaissance, called ‘eupheuism’. Rem: Prose Works in the Middle English period are important because -They helped to keep a certain standard of English prose alive under the French influence And up to the 15th century, English prose was used for secular and religious writings -> French influence was definitely over 3.Middle English narrative poetry 3.A Religious didactic poetry there was no break in the writing of religious didactic poetry, tradition first inaugurated in the Old English period with the schools of Caedmon and Cynewulf. This writing was meant for the ordinary people, and was written in alliterative verse up to the 13th C. It mainly consists in paraphrases of the Bible, tried to make more accessible and attractive to the public. But in the course of the 13th century, alliterative verses were gradually replaced by the French octosyllabic rhyming rhyming couplet. Nevertheless the alliterative tradition survived and led to the alliterative revival, in the 14th century.

2.B secular didactic poetry a certain Poem, The Owl and the Nightingale is an interesting work, an example of octosyllabic couplet (French form) and also a manifestation of French poetry (already existing in Latin) called the ‘debat’ or contest. It is more about a poetic debate on some political subject, particular subject. The Owl and the Nightingale is a contest between two birds presented with vividness. One is the respectable and serious owl, and the other is the light and hedonistic (pleasure loving) nightingale. They represent a contrasting point of view, and perhaps also a different kind of poetry (didactic vs. romance). The author, Nicolas Guildford, gives an account of the two characters but also of aspects of daily life at the time. Content of the poem: the Nightingale is hidden and safe from its opponent’s claw while the owl is perched on an old tree-stump. The nightdale opens with insults’ Monster, Fly away…!’ but the Owl waits until the evening to reply, it keeps its emotions under control. The nightingale, quite wrong about the owl’s intentions accuses it (the owl) of unclean habits, of being in general representative of all that is worthless, after which the nightingale breaks out into a melodious song.

The owl listens, and then it accuses the nightdale of singing amatory song (inciting sexual love or desire), leading men and women to sin. The Nightingale retorts that the owl whose song il always a sign of sorrow and misfortune. [The poet cleverly disclaims any knowledge of the outcome (final decision takes by the Judge)] This poem can be interpreted as symbolizing the antagonism between beauty and pleasure against moral ascetism: between gaiety and gravity against art and philosophy: the minstrel against the preacher, the ideals of new courtly love as opposed to the religious, didactic poetry so prominent in Medieval verse. The Owl and the Nightingale in which the poet give life and spirit to a Latin and French tradition, the contest in which he opposes the values of two antagonistic approaches to life and literature, on light and cheerful and one serious and moralizing, two views which we can in fact recognize in every age. It is didactic since its readers or listeners are free to choose (or not choose) whichever side they find more appealing.

3. C Verse Romances Another kind of narrative poetry, increasing the importance the effect of the Norman Conquest, through the verse romance, originally from France. The French romance is a narrative poem written in octosyllabic and rhyming lines. It combines action and sentiment (the French ‘amour courtois’ and in English ‘courtly love’). In England, the replacement of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry by the verse romance put a significant change in taste and sensibility; it reflected also the changes of the society. It is no longer a feudal society with its conventions of services but a lord and refined in manners and morals. Rem: we should remember that Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry dealt about realistic in treatment and telling the exploits of heroes who had a real place in history, instead of what verse romance was about a more frankly escapist, introducing the marvelous. In Heroic poetry, fight was a grim affair in which the hero fought for a specific purpose (cf Beowulf). It was also a reflection of the age, age of conquest and migrations in which being a warrior was a manner to survive. The result of the fight depends on the character of the fighter, no longer on his fate: if he is morally good, he is then bound to win. In the mid-13th century, the French romances were translated into English. The English translator adapted the sophisticated and sentimental French romances for a much less sophisticated English audience, more interested in the story (action) than courtly love and honor. Rem: courtly love and honor were the characteristic of the courtly love tradition in France. -> The English romances verse were shorter and straightforward (centered on the story) than French romances verse. Some English romances deal with England and its connections with Scandinavia (Matter in England) and others go back to the Celtic past of the Island (Matter of Britain)

3. C.1 Matter of England These romances deal with English history, particularly with the Scandinavian raids on England. The earliest dates from 1250, known as King Horn, it is based on a romance originally written in French. It tells about the adventures of Horn, Prince driven out of his country (south-west of Scotland) by pagan invaders (Scandinavian). He is abandoned on sea with his men and comes to Westerness where the King’s daughter falls in love with him (without the king’s agreement though). To prove his knightly qualities he destroys a pirate crew and once back to the kingdom of Westerness he kisses the Princess, the king under knowing that banishes him and the knight goes fighting in Ireland. He returns again to Westerness even if he has been banished, just in time to prevent the marriage of the King’s daughter: Rimenhild, with another prince. Horn kills his rivals, regains his own kingdom and marries Rimenhild. The poem is written in short rhyming couplets, like French romances, but the lines are not syllabic (as they would be in French) but accentuated. This early English romances illustrates the way of how the English literature left out the courtly elements of the French version. Love is mentioned as a pretext for adventures. As in the story of the ‘King Horn’ [exiled and then returning for his love Rimenhild] These elements show how a legend originally inspired by history can be enlarged upon and modified, becoming more unsophisticated in English romance. The plot of Havelok the Dane is also inspired by Viking invasions. It is written in octosyllabic couplets and it is based, as it is in ‘King Horn’, on an earlier French narrative. Here again we miss the French interest for courtly sophistication. Instead we have honor for respect labor, the hero is associated to common people and their daily activities. Havelok the Dane is a tale of adventure. The first part deals with the story of an English Princess, orphan at the age of two, submit to a wicked counselor of her dead father. The second part deals of the life of Havelok, son of the king of Denmark, victims of a similar treachery. He flees to England and meet the fisherman of the country, he becomes famous not because of his deeds as a knight but for the cheerful disposition he has into the common people society. He also enjoy his humble lot a fisherman even if he is born Prince. The third part is while Havelok is older; marrying the princess who at the beginning is disappointed to marry of man of his rank but later knows that she is married to a prince. Havelok return to Denmark and became king in order to conquer England and reward all those who were good to him (common people).

Both King Horn and Havelok are based on earlier French narratives and seem to reflect the spirit and the taste of the English Middle class rather than the French aristocracy. -> The authors were not attached with the court. 3. C.2 Matter of Britain These romances are based on the Celtic tradition of King Arthur, and were popular in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. There are two: Morte d’Arthur and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This poem was written in the north-west Midland dialect and it belongs to the alliterative revival of the 14th century. This is a rare combination of the French and Anglo-Saxon verse traditions: -arranged in Stanzas, each containing a number of long alliterative lines (Anglo-Saxon tradition) followed by five short rhyming lines (French tradition). The poets’ skills combine with his talent set a scene and show the movement of the season as reflected in the changing face of Nature. The story opens at the court of King Arthur, celebrating New Year’s Eve with his Queen Guinevere and his Knight. The feast is suddenly interrupted by a strange and menacing Green Knight, who is asking for a volunteer among the Knights of the Round Table. They are amazed and silent; Arthur himself is led to volunteer, but Gawain, a model of courtesy nobility and courage steps forth and strikes off the Green Knight’s head. The knight simply picks up and rides off asking Gawain to be the volunteer. On his way, Gawain is kindly and generously entertained by the Lord and lady of the place. While the lord is hunting, Gawain stays at the castle hanging with the lady who wants to make love to him. He hardly reject her offers since as a Knight of the Round Table, he is supposed to remain pure and chaste servant of Queen Guinevere. -> He does not go further than allow a few kisses of the Lady. During the evening, as promised, the Lord and Sir Gawain exchange whatever they have gained during the day. Gawain receives the animal hunted by the Lord, whom received the kisses that Gawain has received from the Lady. On his last day, the lady presses Gawain to accept a green girdle, which will give him invulnerability against the Green Knight. Later while the fight, when sir Gawain is wounded it is only very lightly because he wears the green girdle. He asks for a more fair combat, but the Green knight laughs at what he calls Gawain ‘ferocity’, and the strange man reveals himself as the Lord of the Castle and this time he wounds Gawain in his neck as punishment for him having the girdle took away from the lady in order to preserve his life. Gawain, humiliated, admits his weakness and reproaches himself bitterly. The Green Knight absolves him and tells him to keep the girdle. On his return to Arthur’s Castle, Gawain tells honestly the whole story, not as a heroic deed but as an example of moral failure. Arthur comforts him and all the Knights agree to wear a green belt for Gawain’s sake of the fallibility of the human condition (Emblem of man’s liability to fail).

3. C.2.1 Sir Gawain and the Green knight Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the finest Arthurian and courtly romance in English. It exemplifies the knightly virtues of courage and honor but also man’s imperfection, it is not told enforce a moral (it is not didactic): but told for entertainment, for the pleasure of an English aristocratic public interested in an idealized and unrealistic view of life and of themselves. The plot is skillfully constructed and the narrative is presented with grace and liveliness. From the beginning to the end we have a succession of scenes and situations full of color, movement and vivid details. There is a description of the New Year feast and and evocation of mirth at Arthur’s sophisticated court; the ladies and Queen Guinevere but also the entrance of the green Knight are fully described, and we move from one episode to the next as in a succession of tapestries:

The poet combines different dimensions, from the mystical to the psychological. He varies the action moving forward simultaneously, as when he passes from the lady’s advances to Gawain in the Castle

to the husband’s adventures in the hunt, then back to the bed chamber, until all parties are finally brought together at the end of the day:

This romance is also interesting for the mastery of dialogue, which sounds easy and natural. The poet gives long end full conversations between Gawain and the Lady, as he seeks to escape but is caught between the necessities to remain polite (according to the conventions of French courtly) and his desire to remain pure (as a Knight of the Round Table).

The poem is also remarkable for the vividness of the hunting scenes; they are full of physical vigor and as such testify an earlier Anglo-Saxon influence. It is also remarkable for the feeling of the nature and his sensibility to the movement of the seasons, in the description of the chilly winter morning when Gawain leaves the Castle to keep his appointment with the Green Knight. With this story, the romance achieves a literary status in England. It is an original work, representing the time. It combines and unites the Anglo-Saxon tradition which survived in the north (Anglo-Saxon vigor and the alliterative verses), the Celtic tradition centered in the west (magical folk element, as well as the Arthurian legend) and the sophistication and polish of the French (the five short rhyming lines at the end of each stanza). All the elements are integrated in what comes across as an original English romance, and as said before some romance deal neither with English history nor with Celtic legends.

3. C.2.2 Floris and Blancheflour It was written in rhymed couplets (French influence) in the 13th century. It was based on a 12th century French romance telling a popular love legend of western origin. This influence was due to the traffic between East and West caused by the crusades, the many travels of merchant, scholars and pilgrims at the time. The 13th century was characterized by great mutual exchanges between cultures.

It represents the constant fighting and from the tradition of courtly love which otherwise characterized the romance. It is also a change from the traditional treatment of the Saracens as infidels (found in most French romances with the subject). Blancheflour, daughter of a French widow, is captured and carried off Spain by a Saracen King, Floris’s father. The two young people fall in love but Blancheflour is banished… Floris sets off to find her and follows her to the harem of the Emir of Babylon who finally married them. -> This comes across as a romance celebrating a triumphant natural love, rather than the cold ritual of courtly love. 3. C.2.3 Sir Orfeo

It is another unclassified medieval romance showing a kind of cross-fertilization. It is based on the classical story of Orpheus and Eurydice, but the original story changed into a fairy story, full of magic and far removed in tone from the Greek myth of Orpheus’s descent to Hell. The setting is not Greek but medieval, some of the background is Celtic, and incorporates elements from the Breton Lays. It is a minstrel’s tale of rescue through the power of music combined with the force derived from an example of fidelity. Here Orfeo regains his lady, and he is allowed to look back at her, (not mentioned in the Greek myth) and the English version ends happily. 3. C.3 The Fabliau Rem: not all medieval French narrative poetry was polite and aristocratic, like the Romance. The Fabliau is a short narrative poem which was realistic, humorous, satirical and often even coarse. This kind of poetry existed side by side with the Romance, but for different publics. The romance begins in France as entertainment for a feudal aristocracy, while the fabliau is a product on the new rising class of merchants, a class that destroyed feudalism. The development of an economy based on money and the growth of towns took away the basis of feudalism. The new class growing (merchant) carried on commercial activities were not impressed by courtly notions of love and honor. They were realistic and prided themselves on knowing life as it really is. They refused to look at it from a sentimental or idealistic point of view. -> They favored a boisterous, realistic and satirical kind of narrative (opposed to the idealizing vision of the courtly knight or the pious churchman).

The fabliau represents the first real change in European literature to the notions of heroic idealism and of moral sophistication, which find expression in the romance. Before 1400, this new kind of narrations was rare in England, and the only one to have survived is Dame Sirith, a coarse and comic tale about Margery. (A merchant’s wife sleeping with a cleric man (Wilikin) while her husband is away):

Rem: The Clergy, guardian of the written word during the middle Ages, was not keen on this type of literature.

3. C.3 The Fable Here again another forms of narrative poetry in the Middle English, including also the ballad. It is a short narrative in verse in which animals act like human beings. -> This illustrate a simple secular moral Even if it was popular in England in the 12th and 13th centuries, there is no collection of Middle English fables. Their coarse and satirical tone made them unpopular with the clergy as the fabliaux.

3. C.4 Ballads They are orally transmitted narrative poems dealing with a tragic or violent subject matter and involving international folk song themes, historical or semi-historical events and popular heroes (such as Robin Hood) who stood up for the oppressed.

It is difficult to date the ballads since it is a product from an oral tradition, and we have only 14 ballads written before 1600 but we know that they existed in the 14th and were popular in the 15th century. The most impressive ones deal with a single situation involving revenge, or jealousy, or a return from the grave or simply the finality of loss. In a ballad the personality of the narrator is suppressed, it tells a story dramatically, in the form of a monologue or a dialogue by moving from one incident to the next without transition or comment. Repetitions are often used to create an incantatory effect. Here is a well-known title: ‘Lord Randall’

Ballads are still sung today, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez or even U2 and Bob Dylan.

The five types of narrative poetry (didactic poetry, the romance, the fabliau, the fable and the ballad) attest to the diversification of the genre, which took place in the Middle English period.

4. Middle English Lyrical poetry Lyrical poems were originally meant to sung, they are not narrative poems. -> Their prime purpose is not to tell a story, they express in a personal manner the feelings and moods of an individual speaker (‘I’ is not necessarily the author though). It focuses on the subject of love for a woman (secular) or God (religious)

There were no truly lyrical poetry in the Anglo-Saxon period but the Wanderer or the Seafarer, contain a meditative and elegiac strain. The wife’s Lament or the Husband’s Message reveal a love element. -> All of these were first to narrative poems. But in the Middle English period are some truly secular and religious lyrics.

4. A Secular poetry The first secular lyrics consist of preserved scraps dealing with something quite different:

It is about the 13th century that we find significant number of English lyrics, but their quality makes clear that tradition of lyrical poetry had emerged at that time. 3. C.1 English Love Song

It is different from the aristocratic tradition of chanson courtoise, in which love is courtly love. In this new kind of love, the lover is enlisted in the service of Love: he expects the lady to be haughty and capricious. The lover endures all kind of hardships, he suffers. The poet analyzes his own emotions, he finds enjoyment in his suffering, he considers the woman as a kind of divinity.

The popular love song (found in both France and England) is different; it is rooted in real life Love is a natural feeling developed between two people. It is not a cult to a divinity. The English Love Song is frank and outspoken, as in Alison in which the poet describes the young girl ‘normally’:

Here, the sentiments are different from the French variety, in nature and in tone. They express a sense of wonder at the beauty of the experience. Another difference with chanson courtoise the love song is associated with spring, a season tending to be revered more in the northern than in the southern countries. It is an expression of relief and rejoicing at the return of life in nature; and love is associated with spring because it appears as a revival of life. Rem: in the English love songs the harbingers of spring are usually the nightingale and the cuckoo bird. The Middle English period witnesses an expansion in the scope of its poetry, reflecting an increasing number of aspects of the life. It include: - the courtly love (found in the romances) -fresh and natural approach to love (typifying the English Love Song) -political or social lyrics (expressing feelings of indignation arising from concrete situation) -new diversification between the aristocratic and the more popular narrative poetry (whereas in the Anglo-Saxon period only Gnomic verses were not aristocratic in origin).

4. B Religious poetry Religious poetry contains the greatest number of surviving lyrics, which is not surprising. They express love for God and the range of these lyrics starts from the moral to the devotional and even the mystical. There are many Lyrics written in Praise of the Virgin or appealing to her as a link between God and Mankind or else related to various episodes of her life (as The Annunciation for example). There are also dramatic lyrics, in the form of a monologue or a dialogue (between the Virgin and her child, the Christ). Some of them are addressed to Christ, and these can be song of praise, or appeals to him for help or salvation. 5. The alliterative revival (14th century) The French influence in the Middle English period was responsible for a shift from the Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse to octosyllabic rhyming couplet of French origin. In the 14th century a number of poems re-emerged leading to the movement alliterative revival. This revival (of Anglo-Saxon alliterative line) occurred mostly in the north and the northwest of England. It concerns a group of four poems: Pearl, Patience, Cleanness also called Purity and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. They were found in the same manuscript and all of them (expect the last) were probably written by the same anonymous hand (called Pearl-Poet). Many poems of the alliterative revival expressed religious but also moral, social and political protest. The criticism is directed against the government for tolerating too many abuses. Like most forms of political opposition, this criticism came from people who were not part of the ruling class. Among the religious and social protest, Piers Plowman is the most famous. 5. A The ‘Pearl Poet’ 5. A.1 Pearl

It is a narrative poem, but also an elegy (a sad poem written in praise of a dead person, or expressing regret or nostalgia for something belonging to the past) in the form of a dream allegory (representation of an abstraction through something concrete) the poet recalls how a lovely pearl slipped from his hand into the grass and was lost. In his dream the poet finds himself in a land of great beauty, with a bright river running by, but he cannot cross it because it is the river of death (since Adam’s fall). Beside the river there is a part of the land even more beautiful and this is why the poet wants to cross it, but he is told by a Mermaid (the Pearl- his lost daughter) to be patient and to resign himself to God’s will and mercy. She also tells him about the means of salvation. Once the poet wakes up, he is filled with a new spiritual strength and religious fervor.

Pearl stands alone in Middle English poetry for its sustained emotional quality and for its technical mastery of versification. It is intense in mood, tone and emotional effect. 5. A.2 Patience and Purity also called Cleanness

It discusses the moral virtues by telling appropriate biblical stories, the lack of the special kind of sensibility making Pearl so impressive. These allegorical and narrative poems try to encourage moral and religious fervor at a time when the Church, the Government and the court were highly corrupted. (Wycliffe tried similar efforts in prose) 5. B Piers Plowman

This is a narrative poem expressing religious, social and moral protest in the form of and allegory. Its author, probably William Langland, written it by a deeply religious mind, he was indignant at the vices of a society (Church’s corruption) as Wycliffe. First the poet give a satirical picture of the actual world, and in a dream, he has a vision of the World as it would be if the teachings of the Gospels were truly practiced. The poem is a moral instruction, showing a powerful imagination, full of realistic and vivid paintings of characters and scenes. It is characterized by its trenchant satire and also its deep moral earnestness. Like Wycliffe, the author is convinced in the need of a reform of the Clergy, but does not want any innovations. Wycliffe anticipated Protestantism since he insisted on an individual interpretation of the Bible; he even attacked devotion to the saints and the use of indulgences. While Langland simply demanded a return to the true spirit of the gospels, he did condemn the use of indulgences though. The prologue describes how the poet fell asleep, and how he saw in his dream ‘a fair field full of folk’ (a picture of human society) with for example ploughmen, hermits, merchants, jesters,… each are going with their own business, and the list closes with the pardoners selling indulgences, and negligent priest deserting their flocks for an easy life of pleasure in the city of London.

Here are two excerpts from the prologue:

The vision develops into an allegorical interpretation of life. A lady named Holy Church tells the poet that people are busy with things of the earth rather than things of Heaven. This naturally leads the author to present a harsh criticism if both the socio-political and the religious worlds. A second dream is devoted to an allegorical presentation of the seven deadly sins pictured as real people who come to repent the sins they have illustrated: Pride, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Greed, Anger and Covetousness are personified and show the sins they stand for before they actually repent. Rem Gluttony is the most striking (when he stops his way to church going instead in a Tavern) When the sinners wish to repent, they figure that no one knows where to go for the sanctuary of Truth. Piers Plowman a good man accepts to guide them into the road but only after he has ploughed his fields. So the sinners are forced to hard work and those who refuse by hunger finally accept the hard work. The dreamer then wakes up and remarks on the superiority of good work over indulgences as a means of pardon.

Piers Plowman shows a treatment of the dream allegory with its alternation of bitter satire and of vivid realistic descriptions of contemporary life in time where corruption is growing, where materialism is for the rich and the suffering is grew among the poor. 14th century is also marked by the Black Death, but also by the heavy taxes and hardship of all king during the Hundred Year War (1338-1453) which has led to the Peasant’s Revolt (1381)

The poem is violent in its criticism of both Church and State, Piers Plowman is not a revolutionary poem, and it does not advocate changes in the structures of society. It only demands that ranks and professions should conform to the true teaching of Christ. It is the work of a religious idealist who is sincerely distressed by the social and moral condition of England and who tries to create a large and cumulative vision of what is wrong in society.

6. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)

Among the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer is considered as the poet the most ‘modern’ (which is not the case with Langland who was writing in the Anglo-Saxon Tradition (alliterative verse and Saxon idiom)). Chaucer was influenced by what happened in England. He is quite a phenomenon: he had metrical craftsmanship, the ability to handle English verse with subtlety and flexibility. He also gave his poetry such a polish: he turned English into a literary language. Moreover, he has an European consciousness, aware of what was going on in the Field of literature but at the same time he had also a national consciousness allowing him to present the English scene as it had never been before. He observed his contemporaries and dealt with them in his work with a combination of sympathy, irony and amusement. He also had the opportunity to know people from all rank of society. Chaucer was actually the son of a London wine merchant, trained in courtly and diplomatic life explaining why he was associated with people at the court. He visited quite a lot France and Italy, which brought him contacts with French and Italian writers. He had a remarkable largeness of view, a wide knowledge and experience of Life; he was also feeling much sympathy for his fellows. His masterpiece is the The Canterbury Tales, in which he has used all the intellectual and imaginative resources of the middle Ages. We can divide his career into three phases distinguishable between his French, his Italian and his English period. 1) The French Period: He first wrote under the influence of French poetry, he knew about the Roman de la Rose, a 13th century allegorical love romance written by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung. He translated part of it into English in eight syllable rhymed couplets under the title of Romaunt of the Rose.

The story us in the form of a dream; the poet visits the garden of Mirth, where he finds allegorical figures, including the God of Love. He sees a rose-bud which he falls in love with and desires to pick it up. The poet is assisted by Bialacoil, an allegorical figure and his friend, but Shame and Danger are his enemies. The Lover is made the servant of the God of Love, but he is opposed to Jealousy, who is building a castle around the rose-tree and shuts him out. The significance of the allegory is that possession of the bud represents possession of the lady, and the figures surrounding it are aspects of the lady herself or representative of her relatives. The poem is a classic statement of romantic love in Symbolic terms.

Also during this period, Chaucer wrote The Book of The Duchess, in 1369, showing the influences of the French poets Machault and Froissart and again written in eight syllable rhymed couplets. Into the form of a dream, a poet sees a ‘ man in black’ who tells him about his courtship of a beautiful lady, he even describes her, with her beauty, her gentle ways, he soft speech and her goodness, until the poem ends on the revelation that his present mourning is for her death. 2) The Italian period: Chaucer made two journeys to Italy where he came under the influence of Dante’s Divine comedy but also under Boccaccio. He adds new materials from Italy to what he built on the old French pattern of allegorical love visions. In particular, he added flexibility to his poetry. For example, The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls were both written in the dream allegory tradition but Chaucer imposes his own personality and sense of humor. It is under this period that he wrote his first Masterpiece, Troilus and Criseyde (between 1372 and 1386), a poem about tragic love set in Ancient Times, based on a legend of obscure origins. The poem is over 8,000 lines, in the 7-line stanzas known as the rhyme-royal. It is based on the Italian Il filostrato, written by Boccaccio. This poem is interesting because Chaucer gives a psychological complexity to his heroine, which the first truly complex heroine in European literature and this without losing the qualities of medieval romance.

3) The English Period, this is when he wrote his greatest work, The Canterbury Tales. In this unfinished work, Chaucer drew the various strands genius together. This work is a collection of stories in verse, told by pilgrims, drawn every class of the English society of his time. Chaucer had planned to have two stories by each of the pilgrims on the way to Canterbury and then another two on the way back to London. It is a unique work because it individualizes the narrator but also in the way of the vivid sense that Chaucer gives of the whole contemporary scene. He brings every class in the England of his day (excluding the extreme of richness and poverty). The group includes pilgrims fully realized, individualized and also representing his or her class of profession (knight, monk, prayer, lawyer, shipman, plowman, miller …) Rem: Chaucer is often ironic in the presentation of his character.

Here are excerpts from the Prologue:

Another enjoyable character is the Wife of Bath, story of a woman who is collecting husbands and firmly believes in the need to manage them. In her story, one of King Arthur’s knights must give within a year the answer to the question’ what do women love most?’, in order to save his life. An ugly old witch knows the answer (‘to rule’) and agrees to tell him if he marries her. The knight accepts and in their nuptial bed, the old bag becomes a beautiful young lady. Only the Knight, the parson and the plowman are represented almost as ideal figures, but with Chaucer it is difficult to decide if he is being ironical or not, especially with the Knight. Knight originally represents the highest ideal of chivalry and courtesy; the parson, genuine of Christian behavior; and the plowman honest hard work. But Chivalry and everything beside the Church was highly corrupted at Chaucer’s time (as Wycliffe and Langland pointed it out).

The Canterbury Tales is presented as an anthology of medieval literature, and thanks to Chaucer, medieval literature is brought to a climax. Every form of poetry is represented: the courtly romance and under the form of parody, the more popular type of romance. There is a Breton Lay, dealing with the fidelity of true lovers, including a supernatural element. -There is also a retelling of a classical legend, as in The Physician’s Tale where a character called Virginius kills his daughter to save her honor. -There is a folk tale- The Wife of Bath’s Tale -There are fabliaux of the miller. -There are many religious types of poetry like Saints’ legends (Nun’s Tale) or the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ - Finally a example of the Fable with the story of Chantecleer and Dame Pertelot. - And example of the short lyrics in the ‘envoy’ of the Clerk’s Table.

With Chaucer, the English language and English medieval literature grew to full maturity.

7. Chaucer’s epigones.

John Gower (1327-1408) wrote in Latin as well as in English and in French, which is evidence of the fact that Latin was still strong at the time. Naturally Gower suffers from comparison with the Master, Chaucer. His work are different than Chaucer’s work, Gower was more narrowly didactic, moralistic and conservative. He wrote Confessio Amantis (1386-1390), a collection tales in English about courtly love, in which he tries to be less didactic than his other work. It is about a preacher trying to teach more pleasantly by sprinkling with tales and anecdotes. In confession Amantis the poet makes confession to Genius, priest of Venus, who tells him exemplary stories of the Seven deadly Sins and their remedy. In the end, the poet is dismissed from the court of Venus because he is too old for love. The Tales are set in framework, like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Gower was not a poet by temperament, but simply an earnest man alarmed at the way the world was going. He was in favor of reform but within establishing order. The Peasant’s revolt of 1381 filled him with horror though. His concerns are similar to those of Langland in Piers Plowman but Langland is moral and personal, he is also more concerned with the religious, the social and the economic problems of the time. The Combination in Gower of courtly love with didacticism or ethical moralizing anticipates a characteristic combination in the 15th century, which was not a great period for poetry.

8. Drama

8. A. The origins of Drama

Drama is linked to religious rituals with Saturnalian folk celebrations and seasonal festivals accompanied by appropriate symbolic actions such as dancing and semi-dramatic performances. These had survived in ritual games and play-acting, which would later develop into the genre known as ‘May Games’. Seasonal festivals had a direct influence on the liturgical calendar, and so also on the early liturgical drama in England. A form of drama was to be found in the ecclesiastical liturgy, already before the Norman Conquest. English drama is not a continuation of classical drama (Greek and Roman) ended with the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. Like Dutch and German drama, it arose out of the performance of the Mass (religious service) from the Christ’s birth in Christmas to his crucifixion in Easter. These dramatic developments were called ‘tropes’ and represent the beginning of medieval drama in England (in Latin, in the 12th century). Then the elaboration of those episodes from Christ’s life made it difficult to confine the performance in the choir; so it extended down the nave. Finally, partly because of a lack of space, people moved out of the church altogether. The Churches run out of space, then the performance were starting to be held on marketplace or in a conveniently situated meadow (public places situated outside the church). Another reason for moving out of the church was that they sometimes had to call on outsiders, to help the performance. This added some more realistic and humorous elements, even sometimes verging on the vulgar. Such episodes were considered inappropriate to the solemn rituals of the church. Others changes occurred, when the acting took place outside the church: the vernacular ousted Latin, and the story moved away from the liturgy to make free use of the whole range of sacred history, from the Creation to the Last Judgment, including the lives of Saints.

8. B Miracles or Mystery plays

Once the English plays were performed in the open, called Miracles or Mystery Plays, were less closely connected to the liturgy. They were still religious in subject matter though. The common people took an increasing part in the performances until the 14th century while plays were in the hands of corporations. The subjects of the Miracle plays are various: the disobedience of Adam and Eve; Noah and the Great Flood; Abraham and Isaac; events in the life of Christ;…

These plays actually began in the 12th century and developed rapidly in the 13th, there are records of cycles of mystery plays in several regions of England during the 14th and 15th centuries, divided into four main groups according to the city where they were acted: -Chester -Coventry -York -Wakefield

Here is a short extract from Noah’s Flood:

Although the Miracles were serious and religious in intention, English comedy was born in them. Even if the original story is deadly serious, neither actors nor audience could resist to enjoy the humorous possibilities of all kind of situation.

8. C. The Morality play

The Early 15th century saw the emergence of another medieval dramatic form: The Morality play. It was going to be developed throughout the century. The Morality play differs from Miracle plays, it indeed dramatized episodes for the Bible and from the lives of Saints, and the former dramatized the life of man by personifying the forces of good and evil, such as the seven deadly sins and their corresponding virtues. The characters in this plays were not people but virtues (truth) or bad qualities (such as Greed or Revenge) which walked and talked. The morality plays deal with the personifications of abstract qualities or with generalized classes such as Everyman, King, and Bishop. They are still religious but no longer draw on Biblical stories (as the Miracle play). Its method is allegorical: a character stands for an abstract quality or vice.

The themes and subjects are: - The summons of death - The conflict of vices and virtues for supremacy in the soul of man - the question of man’s ultimate fate (his salvation or damnation)

The morality play teaches a lesson about right living; it preaches a sermon in dramatic form. The 15th century, when the Morality play coexisted with the Miracle play was the period of its fullest development.

The best know example of Morality play is Everyman, (Elkerlijk in Dutch and Jedermann in German) who, after leading a heedless and sinful life, receives the summons of death. He is told by a messenger that he must go on a long journey (must die). He pleads in vain for delay, and as only consolation his friends can accompany him. But they won’t go with him to the Next world, only Good Deeds, with whom he had a very little to do during his life, finally agrees to descend with him into the grave, and says: Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide In thy most need to be by thy side The lesson is obvious: only good deeds one performs during one’s life will decide of one’s salvation.

8. D May-Games Among the surviving forms of seasonal festivals distinct from liturgical drama we find May-Games, developing more and more elaborate stories. The French Jeu de Robin et Marion was not only translated but also adapted to the English context that the main character became the ballad hero Robin Hood, and his girls was Maid Marian. The influence of May Games can be felt in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale.

8. E The Interlude

Towards the end of the 15th another type of play is developed: the interlude. This was a short dramatic entertainment performed in banqueting halls or in the market place or village green originally between the acts of another play. It is a secular Morality play, which is characterized by its realistic and comic elements, and above all the new humanistic spirit of the Renaissance replacing the religious approach. Rem: interludes and moralities are not always easily distinguishable, and John Heywood (1497-1580) is the main representative of this genre.

9. Poetry in the 15th century At the beginning of the 15th century, England was marked by a progressive exhaustion or dying out of earlier, medieval modes of writing. The tradition of courtly poetry had worked itself out; narrative poetry (romance) and lyrical poetry were superseded by allegory and by the didacticism of someone like Gower. With the decline of feudalism and the rise of merchant class, there was no new source of idealism to revivify the romance tradition. Then the courtly love came to an end even if Malory tends a brief revival with The Morte d’Arthur (1469-1470) was written in prose (which is to be related to the introduction of the printing press) In the 15th century, there were also satirical, topical and political verses of little literary interest, as well as many didactic, moralistic and religious writings in verse.

John Lydgate (1373-1450) is quite representative of the period, his interests are heavily didactic and his versification is not subtle. He contributed to the themes of English literature and to the vocabulary of the English language. He also introduced and emphasized the theme of Death in the The Leveller who addresses all class of men. This is a theme of great significance in the literature and art of the period and it emphasizes the grim moral of a common mortality. Lygdate added words to the English vocabulary mostly words of Latin or French origin such as inexcusable, tolerance, credulity, adolescence, etc… In Scotland, the 15th century saw the flowering of the ‘Makars’ tradition combining medieval and Renaissance elements in a way that is similar to Chaucer.

The best known poet is probably William Dunbar (1456-1513) who lived in the city of Edinburgh, but who also traveled on the continent. His most famous poem is The Lament of the Makaris with its Latin motto that was pervasive in the Middle Ages. 10. Prose in the 15th Century 10. A Religious Prose

Margery Kempe’s spiritual is called the first autobiography in English. A married woman who attempted to live a life devoted to Christ, she sought official Church recognition for her status as a spiritual woman and mystic, while continuing to live and travel in the secular world. She experienced intense emotional encounters with Christ. Her Book records visions of her travels in Europe and pilgrimages (to Jerusalem and Santiago). Her particular spiritual trial was to be misrepresented, persecuted and rejected by many of her clerical and lay peers. The recording of her spiritual life became a symbolic act in itself, and the ‘Book’ is a fascinating record of life in turbulent early 15th century England.

10. B Secular Prose

The growth of the reading public, including merchant class, increased the use of prose for work. The 15th century is the beginning of the prose romance, translated from French. La Morte Arthur (1469-1470) is a collection of late versions of the legends of King Arthur, translated from the French by Sir Thomas Malory. The finest part comprises the unlawful love of Guinevere and Lancelot, and the destruction of the fellowship of the Round Table. One of the two Main subjects contained in this tale is the Holy Grail, and the other: Arthur’s Battles against his enemies (treacherous lords). Malory was able to to tell a direct story well or also expressing deep feelings in musical sentences, here are part of the book in modern form: Then Sir Bedivere took the king on his back and so went with him to the water’s edge. And when they were there, close by the bank, there came a little ship with many beautiful ladies in it; and among them all there was a queen. And they all had black head-dresses, and all wept and cried when they saw the King Arthur.

There were also courtesy books, treaties addressed to young people to teach them how to behave. These are another proof of the growth of the landed gentry and the rise of the middle class. Among the many prose works produced in the 15th century we should mention The Paston Letters, a collection of correspondence between members of the Paston family of Norfolk. These letters are an early example of good, informal prose but they also testify to the very active part played by women.

The Renaissance

The Renaissance is a complex West-European cultural movement which began in Italy in the 14th century and spread across Europe over the 15th and the 16th centuries. The word ‘Renaissance’ is to be related to the re-discovery of ancient Greece and Rome, their culture, philosophy, literature and arts, in their original forms. They were not interpreted and transmitted by the medieval Christian philosophers and scholars. This re-discovery of Antiquity coincided with the economic assertion of the individual that accompanies the development of capitalist society. It also led to the liberation of individual thought from the authority of the Church and from the weight of essentially theological approach. The Renaissance made man aware of himself and of the beauty and material joys of life on earth (considered ‘Sinful’ from the Church). The Renaissance was marked by a craving for knowledge and discovery, in the field of learning there was a freer and more ‘critical’ approach to the classics, their philosophy and literature, this was called New Learning or Humanism a term which indicates that man is the main focus of interest.

Because England was an Island, it has been one of the last countries to be stirred by Renaissance Ideas, and this in the first half of the 16th century.

1. The Early Tudors (1485-1558)

Under the reign of Henri VII (1485-1509) literature had not yet been influenced by the new ideas. At the end of the War of Roses, a confrontation between the Houses of York and Lancaster, writers felt some nostalgia for the past. And printing was introduced by Caxton in 1476 was starting to develop itself; among the first printed work, containing Malory’s Morte Arthur marking a brief revival of the courtly tradition. Caxton printed also poets such as Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate but imported and translated texts such as Aesop’s Fables and Virgil’s Eneydos. In his preface to the Eneydos, Caxton states the needs to use linguistic forms, and then leading any kind of literature understandable by any speaker of English.

Printing also represented a powerful impulse towards standardization of English across dialects and social registers. Modern English literature can be said to really begin under the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547)

1. A Intellectual background and the evolution of prose

There is two important movements that have influenced the development of literature at the time: The New learning or Humanism and the Reformation. 1. The first is the New Learning: the introduction. This involves a kind of Cultural Revolution, a return to the study of the pre- Christian culture of ancient Greece and Rome, viewed as something more civilized, more splendid and more representative of the best human achievements in the fields of art and science. This in reaction to the spirit of the Middle ages which were considered as an age of superstition, that have blocked out the classical culture.

The English Renaissance is a first a matter of borrowing from Italy and France (where the Renaissance occurred earlier). Afterwards, the English adapted whatever they borrowed from the Continent to their own culture and tastes. Two centers of learning contributed to the introduction of humanism in England: the court and the Universities.

The humanist movement increased the number of didactic prose work, and one of its humanists.

1. A. 1 Thomas Elyot (1490-1548)

Thomas Elyot wrote in English Book of the Governor (dedicated to Henry VIII). His main aim was to train the leaders and to educate people through the study of ancient history and philosophy; and also to refine the English language and extend English vocabulary. Elyot helped to create an English prose, more appreciated to deal with philosophical and cultural matters.

1. A.2 Roger Ascham (1515-1568)

He offers a good example of the way humanism was domesticated in England. His book The Schoolmaster (1570) is a plea for a more humane and thorough system of education. He wrote it in English for the English people. He thought that education should be persuasive rather than prescriptive but he thought also that the English people should refine their language.

1. A.3 Thomas More (1478-1535)

He was 14 years old when Christopher Columbus discovered America (1492), and like him he was a man who looked towards the future and more concerned with the expansion of man’s possibilities in the world rather than his salvation in the next. More wrote Utopia, in Latin, he thought that English prose, at that time, was not refined enough to explore and express complex philosophical and cultural topics. Utopia was translated into English in 1551, a while after his death. In Utopia he contrasts the present world with the new world. Book 1 is a description of the political, social and economic evils of England to national ambition, unjust taxation, and the unequal distribution of Wealth and the concomitant problem of poverty. In book 2, he takes his readers to Utopia, a land where there is no private property or money, no unemployment, no wars; a place, where men and women go to attend lecture on Greek learning.

More is different from the other Humanists, he did not follow the trend towards reformed doctrine: he died catholic and as a martyr in 1535 because he refused to recognize the Act of Supremacy, which aimed to establish the King (Henry VIII) as a supreme Head of the Church in England.

The Renaissance really started under the reign of Henry VIII with the prose works of humanists like Elyot, Ascham and More. They all leaded to an opening way: the new Learning, which is associated with the Reformation.

And then the second important movement: The Reformation, which took place until late in the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547), who was also called ‘defensor fidei’. Henry VIII broke with the Pope in Rome simply because he wanted a divorce. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy was passed abolishing the power of the Pope in England and declaring The King as the head of the Church of England. It did not mention any reform in doctrine. It is only in 1535 that Henri VIII changed his mind and patronized the version of the Bible known as the Tyndale and Coverdale Bible. Under Edward VI (1547-1553) the protestant Reformation was well under way with the Book of Common Prayer, the English Protestant prayer book which shows the gradual changed in doctrine. It is the work of Thomas Cranmer (1487-1556) who endeavored to reconstitute the original liturgy, but also to suppress the intrusions of news saints. Cranmer was archbishop of Canterbury, and had a magnificent prose style.

Under the reign of Mary, a Queen also nicknamed Bloody Mary; there was a return to Catholicism, which led to an important number of persecutions and hangings so that many protestant fled into exile. In exile, the protestant came into contact with continental reformers in Geneva (Calvin among them). Calvin [Jean Cauvin] was a French theologian and leader of Protestant Reformation.

The protestant, more ardent supporters of Protestantism came back to England, with their new ideas and their opposition to the church hierarchy and the privileges of the clergy. They became more and more unsatisfied and were one of the causes of the Puritan Revolution in England in the 17th century. They wanted more equality and democracy in the organization of the Church.

Under Queen Elizabeth (1588-1603) England experienced a period of religious toleration that opposed the Anglicans to the Puritans. The Anglican Church became the official Church of England, with the Monarch at its head whereas the Puritans and the lower clergy were more democratic and held stricter views in doctrine and matters of moral behavior. This led to the opposition between Church (of England) and Chapel (Protestant).

Rem: Prose has developed itself by translation works and this period was marked by a strong interest covering the rivalries between the families of York and Lancaster in the war of the Rose up to the Death of Richard III.

1. B Poetry 1. B.1 Lyrical Poetry Thomas Wyatt (1502-1542) and the Earl of Surrey (1517-1547) are two important lyrical poets and friends in this period. With his short lyrics and songs, Wyatt continues the Middle English tradition of the popular love song. He stands in the narrative popular tradition. But he also claimed that poetry no longer needed narrative or allegorical support. The typical poem by Wyatt is a series of Lyrical outbursts, an expression of personal emotions and feelings, repeated and modulated with a refrain at the end of each stanza.

Consider the following poem ‘The Lover Complayneth the Unkindness of his Love’:

Wyatt kept the refrain of popular poetry but adapted it for his own purposes. The following poem, the refrain of ‘Forget not Yet’ has a mounting effect of reproach and bitterness as he pleads with the Lady:

Wyatt introduced into English poetry a new poetic pattern called the sonnet, imported from Italy.

The Petrarchan sonnet is a poem of 14 lines consisting of an octave (an 8 line stanza) and a sextet (6 lines) or two tercets (3 lines). Petrarch reproduced all the characteristics of courtly love, including the tradition of the lover seen as a humble servant to a lady (often cruel). Petrarch gave English poetry through Wyatt a highly conventionalized form, and s sophisticated idealistic content (courtly love), in the guise of a new pattern called the sonnet.

Surrey (1517-1547) also wrote sonnets, characterized by a grace tenderness of feeling; he has less strength bur more polish than Wyatt. He is also more sophisticated in expression but also less spontaneous. Both of Wyatt and Surrey adapted and transformed the pattern of the sonnet, since they tended to divide the 14 lines into three quatrains (4-lines stanzas) and a final rhyming couplet. This is the form which Shakespeare and other would use later.

Rem: most of the poems written at the time were not printed in the poet’s lifetime; they simply

circulated in manuscripts. After the death of both Wyatt and Surrey, many of their poems were printed in Tottel’s Miscellany. Here is a famous sonnet by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey:

Although the Renaissance was characterized by an explosion of lyrical poetry (expressing feelings) and by the introduction of a new poetic pattern (the sonnet) from Italy; this poetry did not replace the older, medieval forms: in other words, there is also a tradition of narrative satirical verse.

1. B.2 Satirical verse

A lot satirical verse was still being written (Fabliaux, Langland, Chaucer, Lydgate…) It was then continued in the Renaissance with poet like: John Skelton (1460-1529), he wrote in the medieval tradition; he attacked the abuses of courtly life and satirized the new fashions in religion and behavior. One of his characters is the common Colyn Clout and in some of his works, he used the Skeltonic line, a short two-beat line with only two stressed syllables. Skelton was Henry VIII’s tutor and was held in high esteem by humanists such as Erasmus.

Alexander Barclay (1475-1552), like Skelton he was a traditional poet and his main work is The Ship of Fools, based on a common Renaissance motif and which seemed to have been an adaptation of an Alsatian version by Sebastian Brandt. These Satires all express a shift from the medieval religious interest in Moral Evil. This is significant of the new age, because people were not staying in the religious criteria of good and evil but were moving to an approach to life that was more centered on Man itself.

1. C Drama

In the Tudor period we move from the religious Morality play to a secular Morality play called the ‘interlude’. They deal with a particular topic relevant at the time, but they are also mundane and aristocratic; they were performed at the court and written by figures of definite importance. In some interludes of the Tudor period we find a mixture of serious and comic elements, which will be characteristic of Elizabeth drama and the humor is often derives from the description of low life and vices.

John Heywood (1497-1580) was the most striking representative of early Tudor Drama. He was a court entertainer and had two main qualities, liveliness of action and witty dialogue. With him, the interlude mainly aimed at entertaining, but also at edifying and instructing an aristocratic audience in the new ideas and sciences and the geographical discoveries of the time.

The interlude reached a high point under the reign of Henry VIII, and much of its effect depended on the brilliance of its social setting (court and the aristocracy) but it lost its carefree levity when it became political and snobbed its aristocratic public.

The interlude became a tribune or a platform for debating the current problems of the time. It continued to be produced up to the end of the reign of Elizabeth, side by side with comedies, tragedies and historical plays which started to be written and performed on English stages at that time. The new forms of drama were introduced into English literature as a result of Renaissance, which privileged the study of the Ancient.

2. The Reign of Elizabeth (1588-1603)

The Elizabeth period is one the greatest in English literature; it is an age of poetry and of drama, but also a period while proses entered the field of literature properly speaking since prose was used for works of fiction. It was a period of 1) Religious toleration, as Anglicanism represented a middle way between Catholicism and Lutheran Protestantism. The reigning monarch was the head of the Church.

2) Relative social contentment, where some laws were passed to help the poor and to suppress vagrancy. 3) Intellectual progress and development in the arts, there was a new approach to architecture, literature, and music and lyrical poetry. 4) National pride and enthusiasm, the English defeated the Spanish Armada (sent by Philip II) in 1588, which was celebrated not as just a military victory but as a religious one too. And Colonial expeditions to the New World were started with Sir Francis Drake. It is under the reign of Elizabeth that England was called ‘Merry England’: there were many fairs and various forms of popular entertainment; it is also remembered as the age of ‘progress and prosperity’.

Rem: the Renaissance means first of all the study and imitation of the original texts of the Ancients. We should expect an influence from both Antiquity and the Continent, but as we have seen, after borrowing and imitating things from abroad the English came to stand on their own feet, as they adapted what they borrowed to their own tastes and literary traditions.

2. A. Translation

The most significant translations were devoted to the text of the Bible. An Oxford scholar, William Tyndale proposed to emulate Luther and write a translation of the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular from the Hebrew and Greek original texts. The kings turned down his offer and sent him to exile, where he published his English version of the New Testament in 1526. It became an immediate success. His translation of the Old Testament was interrupted by his beheading in 1536; Coverdale took over and completed what came to be known as the Tyndale and Coverdale Bible. At that time there were competing translations, one side took on the collective work of Puritans when exiled in Geneva, and is called the Geneva Bible. In 1568 the official translations of the Church of England was the ‘Bishops’ Bible’. As to the Roman Church it was opposed to any vernacular version of the Holy Text (as officialized at the council of Trente, 1546). The Renaissance was characterized by great attention to the form of the text and a corresponding attempt to create real poetry to match the original. The most remarkable English translation of the Psalms of David was written by Phillip and Mary Sidney. Phillip translated 43 psalms and then died; this is his sister, Mary, who completed the task. Here is an illustration of her accomplishment by Jubilate Deo who turned it into sonnet:

Because of the new interest in ancient texts there were many translations from the classics: Thomas North’s translations of Plutarch’s Lives of Roman figures (1579), he used Jacques Amyot’s French text as his starting point. There were also translations of Italian writers: Harrington’s translation of Ariosto, an Italian poet and dramatist (15th-16th centuries) and Mary Sidney’s translation of Petrach’s Trionfi. These translations provided material for English Writers, whom had a favorable influence on the English Language. They were more than translations in the sense the original works were domesticated and adapted to the tastes of the time.

2. B Poetry

2. B.1 Lyrical Poetry

2. B.1.1 The Sonnet

It was inherited from Petrarch, in Italy, but also from the Pleiade, a group of seven poets, including Ronsard and Du Bellay, in France. It was then introduced into English Literature by Wyatt and Surrey; it became highly fashionable in the Elizabethan age and soon grew into a conventional form regulated by severe rules.

The most common theme is courtly love, with the lady making sure that she remains beyond the Lover’s reach, so that he complains of his own unworthiness and often, his lady’s coldness. This often means that the lover is ambivalent or contradictory towards the Lady.

This tendency to idealize the lady is perhaps because it was addressed to the Queen, and was meant as praise or flattery in order to get promotion or to ask a favor from her. under Elizabeth, writings sonnets almost had a social function: they were usually not meant to be published, but were considered the true accomplishment of a courtier and anyone who had anything to ask from the Queen, In some cases they were also a means of expressing criticism. Many sonnets were written by poets or courtiers who wanted to prove their skill or craftsmanship. The sonnets were appreciated for the poetic inventiveness to which they testify, not for their autobiographical revelations or for their sincerity. The situation was conventional: the woman concerned might fictitious but if she was real, the poet was perhaps not seriously in love with her; her essential function was to serve as a symbol for what was unattainable but infinitely desirable.

The only sure weapon the lover possessed was the reminder of mortality, as in this example from Samuel Daniel’s Sonnets to Delia (1592):

The poet addressing to the lady, appeals to her with a combination of reproach, threat and high compliment. Time is a mere figure of speech in Daniel’s sonnet, and his attitude is conventional. Better poets such as Shakespeare; use the convention for a serious meditation on Time, the paradox that the winning of the beloved is itself the beginning of the tragedy, since mortality has already doomed the lover to loss of the beloved:

With Great poet like Sidney and Shakespeare, the conventionalized form of the sonnet was used and vivified with a sense of ‘genuine’ experience, whatever the actual case may have been.

After Wyatt and Surrey the sonnet was practiced by Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton and William Shakespeare; later in the 17th century John Donne reacted against the conventional use of language, against the meaningless but decorative images, and against the oversweet melody used by minor Elizabethan poets.

2. B.1.2 the Song

The age delighted in Lyrics songs, this is clearly something in common with the middle Ages, though these Lyrics are mostly pleasant for their youthful and Romantic feelings (as opposed to medieval songs which were more realistic and less sophisticated in language) and also for their sweet diction and musicality (rhythm, sounds, alliterations, etc.)

Many song-books were published and we find the names of Nicholas Breton (1545-1626), Thomas Campion (1567-1620), George Gascoigne (1542-1577), their songs were light love lyrics.

Shakespeare also wrote many songs in his plays, mainly in his comedies, either illustrates the main theme or to offer a diversion from it.

Some of the songs dealt with pastoral theme, which is typical of the Renaissance. Here is an example from Nicolas Breton ‘The Ploughman’s Song:

On the pastoral theme, also called ‘Arcadia’, it goes back to the Greek and Latin traditions dealing with idealized shepherds and shepherdesses who are concerned with their love affairs. It can be found in all kind of work, from plays to prose romance, but it is often associated with poetry. The English wrote pastoral songs expressing a longing for the golden age: a natural mode of life that had supposedly been lost. -> The pastoral theme can express a desire to escape from the complexity of human problems and worries, or from the corruption of courts and cities.

In Shakespeare’s comedy As you like it, the author makes fun of this wish to return to nature as an answer to all problems. The pastoral theme was widely used during the Renaissance, in lyrical poetry but also in narrative poetry, when it was then combined with a satirical or moral purpose. -> The pastoral mode does not merely involved a dream-world, an escape from the complexity of real life, but it can also involve a criticism of society and be used therefore for moral and satirical purposes.

Under the Elizabethan age, there are also two women writers:

1) Isabella Whitney, an educated but lower middle-class woman writer who mostly used popular forms such as the Ballad. Most of her poems are occasional, she used classical and biblical reference, but many of her sources are popular and vernacular deriving from earlier English adaptations of classical stories. Her poem Will and testament is a part of the collection A sweet Nosgay (1573) takes a look at the mercantilism of 1560s. She even had a few lines about her own book:

2) Mary Sidney, Sir Phillip’s younger sister, was from a highly educated and upper social class, which did not, influenced her choice as being involved as a militant of Protestantism. Her remarkable political and literary activities led to her brother’s death in 1586, Most of her poetic production consists of the translation of the psalms of David and Petrarch’s triumph of Death.

2. B.2 narrative poetry

It was the main form of poetry in the Middle Ages, continues alongside lyrical poetry. It was high ranked in the Renaissance hierarchy of genres. One of the main works in this genre is The Mirror for Magistrates (1559), consisting of a series of stories in verse concerning the misfortunes of great figures in English History. It was written by several people, but was initiated by Thomas Sackville.

This work is a good example of the Renaissance interest in the didactic aspects of history, because it teaches a prince what should be emulated and what should be avoided. The authors are concerned with nature of order and of justice in the state. The Mirror for Magistrates reinterprets the medieval concept of the wheel of fortune and mankind’s unpredictable fate, in order to shows the political and ethical background of the spectacular falls of certain kings -> they try to show the moral causes of their fall. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) and Michael Drayton (1563-1631) were also part of this historical subject. Daniel wrote The Civil Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York, in which he treats the difficult period, covered also by Shakespeare in his history plays. Daniel is a moralist and a historian first of all, he wrote poetry of reflection, not of passion. Patriotism was his dominant interest and led him to devote most of his efforts to the country. He also wrote some fine lyrics and sonnets (To Delia).

Michael Drayton practiced many kinds of poetry: he could write good lyrics and sonnets, but his main interest was narrative verse. He wrote ‘The Barons’ War, a companion piece to Daniel’s Civil Wars. He also gave expression to his patriotism in his long Polyolbion.

2. B.3 Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

He was a scholar, a poet, a fiction writer, a critic, a diplomat and a courtier; he embodied the Renaissance ideal of aristocratic moral and intellectual virtue: he was learned, refined, and sincere idealist. He was also deeply involved in the diplomatic and political life of his country. From a literary point of view, three of his achievements rank him among the best of Elizabethan writers. His work is representative of Renaissance romanticism, in that he believed in the power of the imagination (as opposed to classicism, an attitude characterized by obedience to the strict forms of the classical models.)

He had a strong influence on the development of the prose romance with Arcadia (1590) a complex pastoral romance telling a pastoral love in an ideal country of the imagination. This world includes shipwrecked princes, and beautiful princess, chivalric adventures, lost infants, mistaken identities… The intention was to cultivate high aristocratic morality as well as entertain. Sidney was less extreme and mechanical than Lyly in his use of artifice. With him the sophistication in style echoes and contributes to the expression of a matching sophistication in content.

His main literary achievement lies in his poetry, a sequence of 108 sonnets entitled Astrophel and Stella (1591). This is a conventional sequence of sonnets in that it is an imitation of Petrarch and the French Pleiad poets, and the poems deal with courtly love.

Sidney’s sonnets reveal a strong autobiographical sincerity, Sidney realized (too late) that he loved a young lady, he then express in his sonnets the regret for lost happiness; the irresistible but impossible desire to possess the beloved; his despair at her first coldness; the sweetness of feeling himself loved by her even though she runs away from him and the struggle in his virtuous heart between duty and passion, reason and desire.

His third achievement is his Apology for Poesy (1595). Here, his first aim is to defend the art of poetry against the accusations of moral harmfulness made by the Puritans.

Sidney is the first in England to discuss the nature, the function and the possibilities of poetry. For him the poet is a maker, or a creator not just someone who writes in verse. He believes in the superiority of imagination over facts or acknowledges rules in art (Classicism); for him the poet creates and is a finer influence than the historian the philosopher or the mathematician:

Through this approach of poetry Sidney comes across as romantic. He insists that the main purpose of art is to elevate humanity above facts and figures:

Here again one perceives the idealizing nature of his conceptions.

In all his writings, Sidney reveals himself as belonging to the idealistic tendency present in the English Renaissance.

2. B.3 Edmund Spencer (1552-1599)

Spencer wrote long narrative and lyrical poems but no plays. He had the ambition to write English poems that would be as great as classical epics of Homer and Virgil. He also used the pastoral theme, very fashionable at the Time of Renaissance, for moral and satirical purposes. Spencer was aware of many popular stories and myths. He wanted to write narrative poems in which a mixture of native subjects combining a classical ambition in presentation. For example, he would use the form of the classical epics of Homer and Virgil, so in Spencer, the medieval and the Renaissance met, as do the popular and the courtly (aristocratic). His first long narrative poem, The Shepherd’s Calendar (1579) consists of two pastoral poems, one for each month of the year. Each gives an account of the English countryside but at the same time Spencer deals with a variety of contemporary themes, from church satire to the praise of the Queen. He expresses his patriotic, literary and ecclesiastical opinions. He stands for ‘ultra-English’ as incarnated by Chaucer, for Low Church theology and he is against High Church formalism. He also wrote other pastoral poems, in which the Queen is the great Shepherdess; elegies (one written for the death of Sidney) and a sequence of sonnets, Amoretti.

One of his great narrative poems is The Faerie Queene (1589-1596). This is the culmination, the great synthesis of themes and influences which the Elizabethan age had been awaiting. Here, Spencer absorbed and handled the moral and intellectual currents of the time, without forgetting the classical and the English medieval past. The poem is: 1) an allegorical pastoral romance in verse 2) a commentary on the religious, political and social scene 3) a poetic exploration of the Nature

The fairy Queen, Gloriana represents the glory which comes from the virtue, but is also an embodiment of Queen Elizabeth. She sends twelve Knights, each one representing virtue. Moreover, Spencer sends out Prince Arthur, a character derived from the Arthurian legends, example of superior virtue.

He attuned both the common people (with their superstitions) and the court of England (He is familiar with the traditions) but he also uses natural simple speech with an interest and involvement in the sophistication of the aristocrat.

The Faerie Queene is full of moral ideals, patriotism, polite learning and chivalry. He wants to train a gentleman or noble person in a culture of virtuous and gentle discipline, -> He wants to shape a conception of a truly civilized man. But he also wants to please and praise the Queen, in her two capacities as Monarch and Lady. He also aimed at the reformation of poetic diction, he wrote very pure English and fought against ‘inkhorn terms’ foreign words introduced by the Renaissance, and corrupting the English vocabulary. He tried to restore Chaucerian vigor and simplicity to the English language.

Moreover he invented the Spenserian stanza, composed of nine iambic lines, in which the first eight are pentameters and the last is a hexameter (twelve syllables) the whole rhyming on the following pattern: ABAB BCBC C. He designed this form for The Faerie Queene.

In conclusion Spencer drew together traditions from Medieval English poetry from the Latin and Greek Classics (the pastoral and the epic) and from the Renaissance itself (patriotism and abstract moral idealism).

2. C Prose

Under the Elizabethan age prose was used in works of fiction and for the sake of entertainment.

2. C.1 Prose narratives.

1. The romance. The Elizabethan romance is not written in verse as in the middle Ages, but it is a story expressing an idealized view of life for an educated and sophisticated public. There were first translations of Italian and French novellas. These translations introduced new themes and materials into English Literature, which enlarge its scopes. The writers learned to manipulate the English language and to give prose more suppleness and subtlety. They also introduced new words of Italian and French origin. They raised the status and quality of English prose style. A famous example of translations is William Painter’s The Palace of pleasure, in which the author introduces the reader to the love stories of Boccaccio, Bandello, Queen Margaret of Navarre… His intention is to please and he even announces it clearly: ‘ The sad shall be discharged of heaviness, the angry purged, the pleasant maintained in mirth, the sick relieved from grief’. After translating continental novellas, the English wrote their own romances in prose.

John Lyly (1554-1606) wrote the famous Euphues or the Anatomy of wit (1578). The narrative is simple and deals with both the attraction and the dangers of Italy. Euphues goes to Italy, where he leads a life of pleasure, he even loses his virtue, and he breaches his loyalty to a friend, and becomes morally corrupted and finally realized his error, but too late. -> The story ends with moral and religious dissertations. The book is filled with lessons in ‘wisdom’, and with attacks on the irreligion and immortality to be found in a catholic country. Italy was of course the target because it was the stronghold of the Roman Church: England in the revival of learning (humanism) was the work of people concerned with the Reformation.

Lyly’s second romance is Euphues and his England (1580), and again the plot is simple. It contains brilliant discussions on refined manners, sophisticated sentiments, which lead to moral reflections. He gives an idealized picture of England and its aristocracy because he wants to prevent them from going over the continent. He tells his fellow country people that they have the same refinement at home but without the moral corruption. Here is an example of Lyly’s nationalistic stance, expressed in his Euphues and his England:

Lyly tried also to refine English prose: he innovated a new kind of prose style, mannered and artificial, called euphuism. It is the decoration of style by images, comparisons, parallels; and the word became synonymous with affectation and artificiality, an over decorated style full of mechanical graces and sophistication. His innovations are important because they continued the work started by the early humanist. Lyly helped to refine the English prose and also to refine manners by writing for ladies.

Remember, Philip Sidney who wrote Arcadia (1581) which is a pastoral romance taking place in Greece. It is also a sophisticated work, full of symmetry, answering clauses, comparisons and stylistic devices of all sorts. -> It has a lot in common with euphuism with the only difference that Arcadia is fully imagined.

Sidney is more artistic or less mechanical in his use of artifice than Lyly was. His sophistication in style is only the reflexion of a corresponding complexity of feeling.

Robert Greene (150-1592) also wrote euphuistic romances because at that time it was very fashionable and in great demand. He wrote Pandosto in 1588, which was very popular, but served also for Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale. He improved on Lyly by two things:

1) By increasing the love interest 2) By accelerating the narrative and making it more vivid But he got tired of euphuistic unrealities in both style and content, this is why during the second phase of his career he turned to realism, style opposed to sophisticated, idealizing romances.

2. C.2 The Realistic prose tale

Greene wrote realistic prose full of sociological realism, describing the low life of Elizabethan London. His ‘conversion of an English Courtesan’ is a short novella, told in the first person, in which he presents a picture of low life in London.

He had many followers, such as Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) imitated his romances with Rosalynd (1590), which Shakespeare used and transformed in As You like it; and Greene’s realistic tales were imitated by a number of people: 1) Thomas Dekker (1570-1632), a dramatist who put Greene’s realism in a romantic setting 2)Thomas Nashe (1567-1601), whose work The Unfortunate Traveler is a chronicle of adventures taking the reader to France, Italy and Germany. 3) Thomas Deloney (1543-1600), who wrote realistic tales in the manner of Robert Greene, he described the work of Craftsmen in simple realistic narratives. In Jack of Newbury (1597) he presents the life of weavers and in Gentle Craft (1598) the life of shoemakers.

2. D Miscellaneous prose-rhetoric, pamphlet, guidebook

1. Treaties on rhetoric. An important problem for Elizabethan writers was how to manage and assimilate the quantity of words which humanism and translations introduced to the language. This is why there was an art of rhetoric, perceptible in the many treatises on grammar, on figures of rhetoric.

2. Pamphlets. There are many pamphlets dealing with the religious controversies of the time. For example the pamphlets (1588-1590) written by Martin Maprelate (anonymous author), written form a non-Anglican (Presbyterian ) standpoint and denying the validity of bishops, and the Anglican replies by the best pens of the Time: Lyly, Greene, Nashe, and others.

3. Guidebook. John Stow’s A Survey of London, written in the year 1598 combines what we would expect of a guidebook to a famous city, with historical and personal comments.

2. E Drama

The Elizabethan period is not only an age of poetry; it is also an age of drama. The re-discovery, the translations and the study of the work of the ancients provided lots of material and models for plays.

The Queen patronized the theatre and attended performances at the Inns of Court, institutions belonging to the legal profession in London. They were responsible for the education of those students of the law who intended to become barristers. But also in the Universities, royal schools, and in the new private theatre houses such as the Globe. In 1576 the first theatre opened, still outside the limit of the city, and in the 1590s the theatre was well established, but even if it was favored by the court, the city authorities found nuisance in it. This is why the companies were attached to the House of a particular lord, in spite of some protection. Another feature of drama is that woman’s parts were played by young boys.

In the Middle ages, there were Miracle and plays and Morality plays (both religious but in a different way), while the early 16th century saw the emergences of the interlude, as a secular morality play, used by the humanist in order to convey the new ideas and discoveries of the Renaissance. -> A shift from religious and moral values to more secular intellectual values appears.

However, the interlude had no particular form or structure; whereas the new dramatic forms were developed as a consequence of the re-discovery of the Ancients: English dramatists introduced the distinction between comedies and tragedies, which they adapted to their own tastes. Their models were mainly Latin plays by Terence (3rd century BC) and Plautus (2sd century BC) for comedy and plays by Seneca (1st century AD) for tragedy.

2. E.1 First Comedies in English

The first English comedies were written in imitation of Latin comedy writers Terence and Plautus, but also of Renaissance Italian dramatists.

1. Adaptations from Latin Comedies

Nicolas Udall (1505-15556 wrote) Ralph Roister Doister in 151, a play considered like the first English comedy because the earlier comic interludes, by John Heywood, were too slight too count. And Nicolas Udall’s work is an adaptation of the Miles Gloriosus by Plautus. Ralph is a foolish and boastful soldier encourage by a mischievous associate to make love to a respectable woman betrothed to a merchant. The play has a kind of farcical humor which it has in common with the popular interludes. On the other hand, it is an example of humanistic learning; it has a Latin model for the intrigue and the structure. This marriage of humanistic learning and popular entertainment is a union which was to give rise to the beginning of the great period of English drama.

Gammer Gurton’s Neddle (acted in 1566 and printed in 1575) is a slight but lively verse comedy of uncertain authorship. The play has a farcical intrigue: an old woman upsets everybody of her village because he has lost her needle, and finally finds it in the trousers of her farm-servant. This is a pure English country comedy on account of its realism, but the plot construction is in Latin. We can say that these two early English comedies are inoffensive in their morals but rather ‘vulgar’ in their social tone. They are neither refined nor immoral. They are farcical: the humor depends on the situation more than on the dialogues, and both were written in verse.

2. Adaptations from Italia comedies John Lyly wrote romances in prose but also comedies (mainly in prose), in which he introduced not only his euphuistic style but also a delicacy of tone and of sentiment: the approach is more romantic and fantastic than the one found in Udall’s farces. his plays are less farcical than his predecessors, and more refined and sophisticated, in much as they are based on feelings, on love, and are therefore more idealizing or ‘romantic’.

Robert Greene liked variety, he used complex plots with sub-plots, also Greene combined in his plays realistic, farcical elements derived from Latin Comedies with English interludes. Although his comedies contain all medieval and Latin elements, they have a new flavor because Greene subordinated the form to an atmosphere characterized by a gentle and dream-like romanticism, a sense of nostalgia and day-dreaming fantasy. He was different from the crude realism, or the farcical trend. His best-known comedy is Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (acted 1592). The play has a double plot - One concerns Bacon’s manufacturing - The other, is a pastoral love story about the rival loves of two aristocrats for a village maid.

To conclude, it is important to remember that in the course of the second half of the 16th century, the comedy, which was first farcical and realistic and which preserved the Latin structure, gradually broadened into the true English Renaissance comedy with people such as Lyly and Greene. This means that: 1) The social status of the characters was raised to more sophistication in language and sentiment. 2) The story was enlarged to include a love-plot and more refined feelings and manners 3) the literary medium was also refined with the use of blank verse and prose alternating within the same play 4) It also integrated comic realistic devices from both the English medieval tradition the classical development of one comic plot, English Comedy later developed in its own, freeway.

First tragedies in English

The first English tragedy, Gorboduc, acted in 1562, was written by Sackville and Norton in blank verse. Apart from the plot, it owes everything to Seneca. The plot is derived from the ancient history of Britain, as it is reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britaniae. The play is a special warning to the young Queen against the dangers of sedition and of divided sovereignty. The play is also in classical form, it conforms to the division into 5 acts and it respects the rules of the three unities invented by Aristotle [a Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC, who wrote about the dramatic work of his contemporaries and derived some rules from them]

Gorboduc and other similar tragedies were meant for restricted and educated audiences including lawyers, courtiers and of course the Queen.

Although he writes in verse, Kid is not a poet, but more a good deviser of stage tricks and a master of the art of giving the public the thrills they hunger for. He takes over three elements from Seneca: 1) The Ghost 2) the Theme of revenge (duty of revenge for the murder of a relative) 3) the frequent use of stage declamations and soliloquies

At the same Time, Kyd introduced new factors: 1) He does not take his subjects from classic mythology or from legendary British history, but give the audience a a play of modern love and war. 2) As the Elizabethans liked complexity of action and Seneca’s plays had a monotonous, single Plot, Kyd introduced many sub-plots with tricks and sensational incidents (at the end of the play, the main character bites its own tongue and spits it out on the stage) 3) he does not hesitate to show eight murders and suicides on stage (as Shakespeare will do later) 4) He also devised the arrangement of a play within a play, which also goes against the rule of the unity of action and which Shakespeare uses in Hamlet and in The Tempest.

All these tricks and devices were successful and started a main trend in the English Renaissance tragedy; they also opened the way for a non-classical tragedy, -> a tragedy which does not respect the three unities of classical drama.

There were other kinds of tragedies: 1) English chronicles or history plays presenting the tragedies of kings, for instance George Pelee’s Edward1 2) Domestic tragedies, tragedies of ordinary people in their ordinary lives, for instance Arden of Feversham (1592) which presents an account of the murder of a leading citizen in Feversham in Kent. This is a record of middle-class life, badly constructed but extremely vivid in picture of manners and customs.

Christophe Marlowe (1564-1593)

His first tragedy Tamburlaine the Great, written in blank verse, was performed and gained the people’s approval. This play illustrates the qualities of Marlowe’s mind and imagination. He is a man of the Renaissance and a poet using blank verse.

He was also a man who praises and glorifies life on earth as well as men free. His heroes are supermen to whom the petty rules of ordinary morality do not seem to apply.

In Tamburlaine his theme are ambition, lust for power, and the glory of conquest; Tamburlaine challenges men and God with his strength. No enemy overcomes him except death (like it is in Everyman) as in the Morality play. But there is a difference with morality play, the author of Everyman looked to life in the world as a spiritual journey in which the only hope of success of gaining salvation in after life. Marlowe, on the other hand, challenges divine rule for he believes that the ecstasy of earthly glory is really matters. -> This conception of character is Marlowe main contribution to drama, and it reflects his free and daring Mind, which is typical of the Renaissance spirit.

The Subject of Tamburlaine is the life of the 14th century, an Asian shepherd: Timur. He rose by his conquests, and by his gigantic and pitiless energy, from obscurity to the position of one of the most powerful in Asia.

With Tamburlaine, Marlowe created a characteristic of the Renaissance imagination. He is fascinated by the early magnificence available to men of imaginative power who have the energy of their convictions. The play is essentially non-moral, for Tamburlaine is not judged, but presented as a natural force his victories are presented as the triumph of immense natural energy over civilizations that are equally cruel but weak and decadent.

In the second part of his tragedy, Tamburlaine is forced to face the truth: he cannot beat the death; first of his wife and then his own. The play turns to tragedy, a man who feels himself to be infinite but is nonetheless mortal. For the first time in drama Marlowe uses blank verse eloquently. In Tamburlaine there is a sense in which the hero’s energy is conveyed through Marlowe’s own poetic energy. Consider the following passage, in which Tamburlaine’s passion drives him to the heights power and to the ecstasy of love:

His typical figure of speech is hyperbole, the words themselves are not poetical or ornate, they are rather plain and get their strength from their rhythm and unflagging purposefulness.

Marlowe also discovered the splendid power of the sound of proper names:

In Tamburlaine and the Jew of Malta the quest for material glory is unembarrassed by the Christian Values.

In his tragedy Doctor Faustus (1592), written also in blank verse, Marlowe had put both characteristics of the medieval Morality and of the Renaissance: 1) the medieval Morality play is felt when Faustus sell his soul to the Devil, and a Good Angel comes to exhort him and repent before it is too late, as well an Evil Angel tempt him to sin and damnation This conflict between Good and Evil is clearly typical from the medieval Morality Play 2) Doctor Faustus’ ambition is to achieve infinite knowledge, and this thirst for knowledge is typical of the Renaissance. Moreover, the conflict experienced by Doctor Faustus is convincing and his psychology is presented with moving insight. ->The middle Ages and the Renaissance are clearly contrasted in Doctor Faustus.

One of the things that Faustus orders the devil is to bring back to life Helen of Troy:

Marlowe introduces a tragic situation, he points forward to the great tragic heroes of Shakespeare, who are led to self-destruction as a result of the corruption or the misuse of their own virtue.

He also wrote Edward II (1593), in which the main interest is centered on one character, at the difference with the others that here tragedy is seen as a weakness and not as a strength and glorification of one’s power. Here Marlowe took a theme derived from English History, and raised it from the chronicle plays, recording the events in the life of a King, to the status of tragedy.

Marlowe helped Shakespeare with the writing of Henry IV, and other plays. He might even have rivaled with Shakespeare, because he gave tragedy the magnificent instrument of his blank verse, which is always eloquent. His plays are structured around a central figure who id driven by an overwhelming passion that finally leads him to death. Shakespeare added to these qualities his own mastery of plot and his human sympathy, drama reached its greatest heights.

2. E William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

William Shakespeare was a poet and a dramatist, he wrote both poems and plays, in verse and prose. He was a man of his time, the Elizabethan age, but like Chaucer he combined technical brilliance with a unique ability to render experience in poetic language. His rare intuitive understanding of the human cycle allowed him to write prose whose validity transcends time. He kept improving on what he and others offered and this until his death.

His career is divided into two periods: 1) Under Elizabeth until 1603 2) Under James until his death, known also as the Jacobean Period

2. E. 1 under Elizabeth

In his early works, Shakespeare follow the contemporary trends, he conforms to the fashions of the Time in terms of both his choice of material and the form and patterns that he uses. 1. His poetry. The sonnet is a fashionable from , conventional during the Elizabethan age. They were addressed to young man rather than cold and distant lady, while others were addressed to a lady but expressed disillusioned passion rather than admiration and praise. He adapts the Petrarchan sonnet and its conventional mood to his own end and to his own personal situation. Moreover, in his sonnets, he uses traditional comparisons and sophisticated images. -> Shakespeare revives old clichés with a view to expressing a profound moral vision, and universal truths about love, life, nature, and the power of art.

Besides the sonnets, he also wrote two long narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece which deal with the kind of classical story .

2. His Elizabethan comedies. Shakespeare comedies can be divided into two categories: the farcical and the romantic. The farces were written in the early 1590s (The Comedy Of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Merry Wives of Windsor) and emphasize the comic situation. They are also full of the realistic laughter. On the other hand, the romantic comedies focus on a character involved in a love intrigue. In The Two Gentleman of Verona his first attempt at a romantic comedy, Shakespeare imitated Robert Greene while in Love’s Labor’s Lost he parodies Lyly’s affectation with regards to manners, style and language. In these comedies individual characters assume greater importance, and largely contribute to determine the direction of the plot, which revolves around a love story.

In the mid-1590s, he wrote A Midsummer Night’s dream (1595-1596), mixture of realism and magic fantasy. It is the most lyrical of all the comedies, here the romantic element is present in the romantic lovers, but the unrealities of the romance are gently rebuked. -> We have a fusion of farcical realism and the idealistic approach to love [typical of the early romantic comedies].

In the late 1590s Shakespeare reaches the top of his achievement with Much ado about nothing (1598-1599), As you like it (1599) and Twelfth Night (1600). Here he achieves a perfect reconciliation of realism and romance, based on a comic situation and of the romantic conception of love. In these comedies, love is relieved by the generosity of laughter and the irresponsibility of laughter by the seriousness of Love. The plays deal with love and the psychology of lovers, and are full of the Wild imbroglios typical of the farce. The most engaging characters are well balanced young people, usually women [as Rosalind in As You like it] who can live in both world of reality or fantasy.

Twelfth Night has been called the perfection of English comedy; the whole play is alive with humor and action. The skill in the changes from bright to dark, from gentle to severe is matched by the arrangement of the verse and prose. The main character, Duke Orsino believes that he is in love with Lady Olivia but he is actually more in love with Love. The play contains several songs such as the clown’s song in Act five:

These comedies of the late 1590s, except one, The Merchant Of Venice are called the Sunny Comedies, in contrast to the Dark Comedies. As to The Merchant Of Venice (1596-1597), it falls outside the categorization. It is a grave comedy performed as a nowadays tragedy.

The story is nonsense: no one believes that living flesh can form part of an agreement at law, but the play is great. It is called a comedy even Shylock is badly treated.

3. His Elizabethan tragedies. His first ambition was to learn, and he was willing to adapt himself to whatever models were in vogue. But Shakespeare was able to go through all kind of materials, techniques and influences that he borrowed, and to give them a deeper and more universal value.

He wrote history plays, because they were the most popular type of drama in the 1590s and the least difficult to construct. Richard III (1593) and Richard II (1595) were among the best, he tried to recapture the harmonies and the eloquence of Marlowe’s blank verse. In Henry IV, He shows a greater mastery and ability to make the characters speak more naturally, and then in Henry V, with its brilliant display of national pride about Henry’s victory over the French at Agincourt in 1415, becoming a regent of France.

It is in these history plays that Shakespeare presents the idea that only loyalty could make the state survive, and that virtue of loyalty must be supremely the attribute of kingship. -> Rebellion is only justified, in the his work, in order to get rid of an evil king. This suggests a budding sense of citizenship and of the responsibility of the ruler towards his people.

Most of his history plays were tragedies, and Shakespeare wrote four more tragedies from 1603, all of these belong to the revenge tragedy, first introduced by Seneca and then popularized by Kyd.

In the The Mirror for Magistrates, there is a notion of the fall of king, which is not due to fate but caused by the character of the hero himself.

Shakespeare explores the relationship between character and destiny, which suggests the idea that one may be responsible for one’s own fate.

Romeo and Juliet (1597) is one of early Shakespeare masterpieces. It has also Seneca affinities with Romeo, one of the main characters, who is animated by a desire of revenge. But here it is not revenge with its bloody and horror aspects; it is focuses more on the sense of pity [evoked by the death of the two young lovers]. The plot is based on a narrative poem by Arthur rooke, itself based on a Italian tale by Bandello [1485-1581]. But here again Shakespeare transforms the original material, he introduces also new characters and altogether modifies the meaning of the traditional story. Thanks to him, loves become a story pure but tragic, and this with the death of Romeo and Juliette. They died because of the enmity separating of their families, yet through their death they bring the reconciliation of the two families and the peace in Verona. -> They did not die in vain

This tragedy is famous for its beautiful poetry and the dramatic excellence of some of its major scenes. Julius Caesar (1599) also has Senecan characteristics, namely the ghost and the revenge motifs.

Hamlet (1600-1601) is the first Shakespeare’s complex tragedies. Here again there are the traditional ingredients: the play of revenge, the ghost, or the use of a play within the play; but the upshot is unexpected. It explores the problem of action and the reflective mind: the keynote of the tragedy may be given by Hamlet as the crisis approaches and he finally avenges the death of his father by killing his uncle (the murder of Hamlet’s father and new husband of his mother). 2. E.2 Under James (1603-1625)

The Jacobean period was characterized by political, economic and religious problems which sharpened tensions and brought contradictions that existed between the two main ideals of the Renaissance. On one hand the Renaissance promoted new ideas of unlimited individual passions and ambitions, but on the other hand it also expressed a wish for ideal harmony and order. The balance between these two was undermined. As a result the Jacobean period was marked by disillusionment, contrasting with the enthusiasm, fantasy and national pride of the Elizabethan period. Shakespeare’s plays will illustrate this turn taken though.

1. The comedies. The moods of social discontent are more noticeable in the Dark Comedies, or problem plays. In these Shakespeare gives an angry portrait of the new age. This criticism appears in: -Troilus and Cressida (1602), in which he gives an analysis of the disintegration of a heroic age

- All’s Well that Ends Well (1603-1604), in which he idealized the elderly characters [appearing to illustrate the disappearing virtues of the Elizabethan Age]

-In Measure for Measure (1604), one of his most sociological plays, he presents an indictment of city government and of the court.

But all these satires and critics were not proper to Shakespeare, he seems [especially in the dark comedies] to have followed the trend of the time.

2. The Tragedies. The first year of James’s reign saw three great productions: Othello (1604), Macbeth (1605-1606) and King Lear (1606). These plays are much different than anything that preceded them. They are different:

1) From The dark comedies. Here there is nothing with the satirist who hates the world and attacks individuals he dislikes.

2) From Hamlet, in that there is a sense of objective evil, not related to the character’s thoughts and feelings.

-> Shakespeare explores man’s complex relationship with evil, and the tragic heroes are embodiments of a spiritual disease.

The three tragedies share the same characteristics:

1) Each portrays is a noble figure, who has to make a choice and then experiences a moral conflict which reveals a weakness, that leads him to his fall. His action depends not only on his own fate, but of an entire nation [except in Othello, which is a more private kind of tragedy]

2) While our attention is directed at some central action, Shakespeare portrays the whole world in which the hero moves.

3) These plays may be complex, they also appeal to different audiences 4) they are non-classical: a) He mixes prose and verse b) he uses comics scenes -> mixture of tones and of genres d) he does not respect the classical rules of the three unities (time, place, action or plot) à this is why he is called a romantic [it points to the liberties taken with the usual classical exigencies and is not referring to a play set in a dream-world, exploration of the nature and value of romantic young love]

In Othello, [often called tragedy of jealousy] Shakespeare explores the paradoxes of good and evil.

Othello is a romantic and noble man of action, loved by his soldiers, kills his wife Desdemona, because he is tortured by the anguish that his innocent wife loves someone else. This is claimed by Iago, one of ‘Othello’s Friends, who is more a cold-blooded realist, succeeds in making Othello believe that her wife’s Guilt. Once Othello figures out that Desdemona was innocent, unfortunately too late, he resigns himself to kill himself. This tragedy voices the contradictory emotions experiences by Othello: his powerful love but also his misery and his fury that his wife might not be was she pretends to be.

King Lear is probably the one where element human urges are most directly exposed to primeval forces in nature. Lear is a scholar, his weakness is his openness to flattery, he gives his kingdom to the two evil daughters who flatter him and nothing to the youngest who tells him the truth but loves him the best.

This play explores the destructive nature of evil. Lear eventually achieves self-knowledge through suffering. He is not redeemed until he finally loses his prides and learns to see through deceptive appearances. The play is full of archetypal images and ideas producing a large and cosmic view of man’s fate. It is a poetic drama that can be read on a grand symbolic level, but also offering sharp insight into ordinary human psychology.

Macbeth deals with the progress of evil within a human personality; it is a study of two ‘good’ characters: Macbeth and his Wife, whose quality [their mutual love] becomes the ruin under the influence of evil ambition. Macbeth wants to become king, and he and his wife plan to eliminate the monarch of Scotland. He is first presented as a sensitive and able man, but his obsession to be the king leads him to do what he knows to be evil. He soon realized that for keeping his secret secured, he has to kill more people than expected -> he is condemned to carry on and to pay the price over and over again, for something that is worthless. The tragedy ends with the death of Macbeth; killed by the nephew of the Monarch of Scotland, [good over evil] the peace is then restored in the kingdom… Magic!

Rem: besides these three masterpieces, Shakespeare also wrote two more Roman Plays (after Julius Caesar: Anthony and Cleopatra (1607) and Coriolanus (1607-1608).

Between 1609-1612 he wrote his last plays [or Romances], among them figure Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. All of them have something in common:

1) The reflection of a new attitude to life and art. They all deal with Evil and innocence, guilt and atonement, uncorrupted youth and innocence the evils committed in the past and starting life afresh.

2) They contain element of mythology, folklore and magic: Shakespeare creates a symbolic world in which innocence can triumph and the gods enable some evil to be undone.

The Tempest handles the theme of forgiveness, early on the play the action removed from the ordinary world and moves to a magic island were Prospero [Kind of god] controls everything with his supernatural power. -> Magical aspects of The Tempest. The island is a sort of Garden of Eden, with Prospero in charge to defend it from Evil. At the end of the play, Miranda, [heroine of the younger generation] is about to leave her paradise for testing her virtue in the wicked world… It seems, for her, necessary to go back to the civilizations in order to eradicate its many imperfections and temptations. Rem there might be a form of glory in the tragic paradoxes of the human condition.

For Shakespeare, language was not only expressive but also cognitive and exploratory. He put his poetic gift at the service of his dramatic gift [both were equal though]. -> He combined the supreme craftsmanship of the man of the theatre, the humane curiosity about man and the human condition, an extraordinary ability to conceive an create character, and an unrivalled mastery of the English language. It is obvious that Shakespeare was considerate as an open man, with a large view in terms of technique. Thanks to him the English poetic drama developed its own form and unity, owning nothing from any external doctrine… Well Done Willy !