HLA

• Heroism


  Glorification of heroism or thematization thereof
• Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon narrative poetry (Beowulf)

  • Great courtesy with which men of rank are received and taken leave of
  • Generosity of a ruler, who rewards with presents the value and courage of his men
  • Thirst for fame gained through the achievement of great deeds of courage and endurance
  • Solemn boasting of warriors before and after the battle
  • Interest in genealogies and the pride on a noble heredity
• Heroic poetry was a reflection of the age, which was an age of conquests and migrations in which one had to be a warrior in order to survive
• Even the most courageous hero was liable to lose if his enemy turned out to be stronger, the importance of fate in their world-view was consequently enormous
• Romance in the Middle English period


  Exploitation of the conventions of courtly love
• The change from heroic poetry to the romance verse marks a change in taste that reflects the change in the society that occurred from the heroic society to a feudal one with its refined manners and morals
• Romance


  • Alliterative verse gives way to rhyme, poems are written in short couplets
  • Romancers simplified and modified the French romance by removing a lot the courtly love aspect to focus on action and adventure
• Romances


  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • Havelok the Dane
• Tragedy in the Renaissance


  Tragic hero is sometimes defined in terms of some excess (of ambition, of jealousy, etc) rather than as an embodiment of virtue
• Tragic works


  • The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
  • Tumberlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe
  • Othello by Shakespeare
• The Spanish Tragedy


  • Shows elements of heroism, a ghost, and the will to revenge
• Tumberlaine the Great


  • Themes are ambition, lust for power, and the glory of conquest
  • Tamburlaine defies God and men, for he believes, only glory on earth is valid
  • Death is his only real enemy
• Othello


  • Evil can be born out of innocence
  • Othello, a noble man of action, kills his wife Desdemona after being manipulated and told that his wife was unfaithful
  • Iago wants to destroy the innocence embodied by Othello and his wife
  • After Othello discovers the truth, he kills himself
• Representations of love


  Major theme in English literature, different approaches manifest in the Middle English period
• Courtly love


  Conventions where an aristocratic character responds to an ideal of nobility governing his behaviour, the love of a lady can be expected to reward the knight hero if his conduct proves faultless
• Courtly love, a translation from the French amour courtois, is at the heart of the moral universe deployed in the Middle English romance
• Due to the influence of Petrarch, courtly love reappears at the time of the Renaissance as the conventional theme of the sonnet
• Fabliau


  Satirical vision in which love is reduced to its physical dimension (sex)
• With the economic growth, the middle class merchant gained importance, which replaced the idea of feudalism and courtly love
• The middle class being more realistic people were proud of seeing life "as it is" and so didn't like the idealisation given by heroism and romance
• English love song


  Celebrates an ideal view of love seen as a natural feeling binding two young lovers
• In the Renaissance, with its more individualist world-view, love becomes an even more common theme, as for example in the comedies of Robert Greene and William Shakespeare
• Pastoral theme


  Provides another idealised representation of love enjoyed with no obstacles
• Euphuistic romances


  Manners and sophisticated conversations do not lead to sensuality but to moral reflection, which is typical of the Renaissance and the Reformation
• Shakespeare wrote some Petrarchan sonnets where the lady is distant and romantic comedies where the realistic farcical and the idealisation of love are mixed together
• Courtly love


  At the heart of the moral universe deployed in the Middle English romance
• Aristocratic literature


  Produced for and by the ruling classes, the only people in medieval society who had both leisure and literacy
• The heroic tradition of narrative poetry among the first Anglo-Saxons reflects the idealising manner in which these rulers wished to be seen
• Old English riddles were amusement for aristocrats, and they give us an insight on the life of the people and what they believe
• Middle English fables are narrative poems where animals behave like human and the story illustrates a secular moral, their satirical tone made them unpopular with the clergy
• Sonnet


  Fashionable exercise (or game) played by courtiers eager to demonstrate their ingenuity, covering the theme of courtly love
• Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English lyrical poetry through the work of the Italian humanist Petrarch
• Surrey created the blank verse, a decasyllabic verse with no rhyme, and other poets like Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare also practiced the sonnet
• Non-aristocratic literature


  English literature would only gradually become more 'democratic'
• Gnomic verse is the only group of Anglo-Saxon poems that doesn't emerge from aristocratic literature, it contains maxims of popular wisdom
• The fabliau encodes the sense of realism and the pragmatic world-view of an emerging class of merchants
• Religious writing, even in the Middle Ages, aimed to influence as much of the public as could be reached, including beyond aristocratic circles
• Drama from the moment of its inception in the 12th century always proved appealing to people from all walks of life, starting with religious Christian plays played at ceremonies
• The invention of the printing press, introduced in England by Caxton in the 15th century, facilitated the wholesale dissemination of literary texts, culminating in the valorisation of intellectual life that would characterize the Renaissance
• French influence


  Massive influence on the production of literature all through the Middle English period, due to the fact that a French-speaking ruling class had seized most positions of power after the Norman Conquest