History of english literature

Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and the Renaissance:
An Overview


General Historical Timeline
 Britons
 Roman Conquest (55 B.C. –
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410 A.D.)
Angles, Saxons and Jutes
invade
Danish Invasion (King Alfred
the Great)
Norman Conquest (1066)
Feudal England (Peasants,
Nobility, and Clergy)
Hundred Years’ War (13371453)
War of the Roses (1455-1485):
Lancaster v. York.

 Reformation (Henry VIII v.
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Rome = Church of England)
Counter-Reformation
(Queen Mary
Reign of Queen Elizabeth
(1558-1603)
Defeat of the Spanish
“Armada” (1588)
Renaissance (Rebirth of
Letters) – Started Italy 14th C.,
spread to Europe. Interest in
Classical Literature (Greek
and Roman) and Humanity.
Caxton – Printing Press
(1475)


General Literary Timeline
 Oral Stories
 Beowulf, Dream of the Rood, and
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other A-S poems
Medieval Romances, translated
from French or Latin (Mallory’s

Le Morte D’Arthur)
Langland’s Piers the Plowman
English Ballads (songs/chants):
Robin Hood
Chaucer (Troilus and Crieseyde,
The Canterbury Tales) – First to
bring his own voice to English
literature and incorporate
Heroic Couplet*

 First English Bible (14th C.)
 Thomas More (Utopia)
 Translation, Travel and Lyric
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poems
The Sonnet
Edmund Spenser The Faerie
Queene
Miracle Plays
Christopher Marlowe (Doctor
Faustus)
Shakespeare and His
Contemporaries

Beowulf
 A-S poem
 Taken from Oral History and Stories
 Written down and influenced by Christian Monks
 Alliterative Verse
 Metaphor and idiom
 Understatement
 Meant to be read aloud or sung


Medieval Romances
 Translated from French or Latin
 Focuses on one Romantic “Hero”
 Matters of Britain (King Arthur)
 Matters of France (Charlemagne)
 Matters of Rome (Alexander the Great)
 See: Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight, Havelok the Dane, etc.


Piers the Plowman
 Written by William Langland (c.1330-c.1400)
 Alliterative verse (but in Early Middle English)
 Dream Poem
 Allegory – using symbols to relate truth
 Shows Feudal England
 Exaltation of the oppressed peasant

Ballads
 Peasant’s literature (oral)
 Story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas (abcb

rhyme)
 Oral history, written down much later
 Robin Hood (The Geste of Robin Hood)


Chaucer
 1340-c.1400
 French influence (The Romaunt of the Rose) -

translation
 Italian influence (Troilus and Criseyde) - adaption
 English originality (The Canterbury Tales) – new and
original
 Language: Rhymed Stanza; Heroic Couplet (French) =
Blank Verse + Rhyming Couplet; Iambic Pentameter


Thomas More
 1478-1535
 Middle Class scholar and lawyer
 Executed by Henry VIII because of disagreements
 Utopia – More’s vision of an ideal commonwealth
 Book 1 – picture of contemporary England
 Book 2 – Sketch of More’s ideal

Lyrical Poems
 Renaissance and Elizabethan Era brought about

interest in Classics, Humanism and nationalist feeling
 Translations of Italian and French as well as Latin and
Greek
 Travel Literature
 Lyrical Poems
 Thousands of lyrical poems
 Introduction of the Sonnet


The Sonnet
 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse)
 2 kinds:
 English Sonnet (Shakespearean) has rhyme: abab, cdcd,

efef, gg
 Italian (Petrarchan) has octave (two quatrains) forming
the proposition followed by sestet (two tercets) forming
the resolution. rhyme: abba abba, cde cde (or cdc cdc)

 All lines have 10 syllables
 Also, Occitan, Spenserian, and Modern Sonnets


Edmund Spencer
 1552-1599
 The Faerie Queene – long poem in 12 books (only 6

finished)

 Faerie Queene (Elizabeth I) holds feast of 12 days, each

day a stranger in distress asks for help and a knight is
assigned to help
 Each knight represents a virtue; and war against a vice
 Blend of Modernism, Humanism, and Medievalism
 Spenserian Stanza: 8 iambic pentameter +1 line of 6
iambic feet; rhyme: ababbcbcc