21st Lit 1st Summative

• European literature is as diverse as the European languages. European literature is from a common heritage of different countries such as Greece, Rome, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Scandinavia, Norway, and Spain.
• Like any other kind of literature, European literature is divided into literary periods that are influenced by the events and people of a specific time.
• Literature during the Ancient and Middle Ages is considered the foundation of the disciplines and philosophy of the modern world. The cultural influences of different European nations shaped the form and development of literature.

  
• Literature created in the ancient period (800 BC–500 AD) was mostly influenced by Greco-Roman culture, which became the basis for the Western literature that we know today. The intellectual and philosophical studies made by the Greeks and the Romans are the foundation of European literature.

  
• Major kinds of literature introduced by the Greeks


  • Tragedy
  • Comedy
  • Epic
  • History
  • Biography
  • Prose narrative
  • Lyric
  • Satire
• Kleos


  Renown or glory
• Major Greek writers during the ancient period


  • Homer
  • Aesop
  • Sappho
  • Aristophanes
  • Euripides
  • Sophocles
• Major Roman writers during the ancient period


  • Horace
  • Virgil
  • Ovid
• Medieval literature refers to works produced during the Middle Ages (500 AD–1500). This period marked the emergence of three dominant cultures: Christianity, Islam, and the Germanic invaders.

  
• Literary forms dominant in the medieval period


  • Hymns
  • Epic poems
  • Elegies
  • Ballads
  • Narrative poems
• Characteristics of medieval literature


  • Focused on different religious beliefs
  • Concerned with the lives of the commoners in comparison to their feuding lords
  • Shows the lives of aristocracy
  • Shows the inconsistencies of chivalry, problematizing personal bravery versus group needs, and the individual working out his or her destiny

  
• Beowulf


  An epic poem set in Denmark and Sweden, featuring a hero with superhuman strength who slays monsters
• La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland)


  An Old French epic poem considered the earliest and greatest chanson de geste or French heroic poem
• Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs)


  A German epic poem with themes of murder and revenge, divided into two parts about the life and death of Prince Siegfried and the revenge of Kriemhild
• From the age of war, famine, and ignorance emerged the light of the Renaissance period. The emergence of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment became the foundation of seeing literature in an intellectual perspective.

  
• Warm-up! Tableau-Charades Activity


  Form a group and create a tableau based on a Shakespeare play, then have other groups guess the play and ask for a famous line
• The Renaissance period (1300–1600) was marked by the rebirth of the Greco-Roman literary tradition. Classical scholars, known as humanists, revived and translated ancient texts.

  
• Humanism, a philosophical movement that placed a renewed focus on the human and his or her potential, was prevalent among the intellectuals during the Renaissance.
• The printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, is the greatest innovation of the Renaissance era, which resulted in a more cost- and time-efficient production of literature and a higher percentage of literacy among the masses.
• The Age of Enlightenment (1600–1800) was a byproduct of the Renaissance that birthed humanism. This period could be summed up as the celebration of different ideas, with cafés serving as the unofficial center of this new movement.
• The Enlightenment was also the birthplace of many great thinkers who put their ideas into writing and made their thoughts available to historians of this century.
• Upheavals such as the French Revolution were results of the people's idea that collectively the public can create change, which eventually led to the end of the Enlightenment period.
• Much Ado about Nothing


  One of Shakespeare's best comedies, infusing humor in serious topics like honor, shame, and court politics
• William Shakespeare: 'Excerpt from Much Ado about Nothing'
• CONRADE: 'What the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?'
• DON JOHN: 'There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore the sadness is without limit.'
• CONRADE: 'You should hear reason.'
• DON JOHN: 'And when I have heard it, what blessings brings it?'
• CONRADE: 'If not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance.'
• DON JOHN: 'I wonder that thou, being, -as thou say'st thou art,—born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man's jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man's leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man's business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humour.'
• CONRADE: 'Yea; but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.'
• DON JOHN: 'I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace; and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.'
• CONRADE: 'Can you make no use of your discontent?'
• DON JOHN: 'I make all use of it, for I use it only. Who comes here?'
• BORACHIO: 'I came yonder from a great supper: the prince your brother is royally entertained by Leonato; and I can give you intelligence of an intended marriage.'
• DON JOHN: 'Will it serve for any model to build mischief on? What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?'
• BORACHIO: 'Marry, it is your brother's right hand.'
• DON JOHN: 'Who? the most exquisite Claudio?'
• BORACHIO: 'Even he.'
• DON JOHN: 'A proper squire! And who, and who? which way looks he?'