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English Literature from the Old English Period Through the Renaissance
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English Literature from the Old English Period Through the Renaissance
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Retaining the thrill and tone of oral storytelling as the written word became increasingly widespread was the charge of early English writing. Beginning in the OldEnglish period and continuing through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare began to elevate the place of literature in society. This volume details the evolution of early English literature and the enduring works that have withstood centuries of linguistic and cultural change.
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CHAPTER 1
THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD
English literature, defined here as the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present day, has sometimes been stigmatized as insular. It can be argued that no single English novel attains the universality of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoyâs War and Peace or the French writer Gustave Flaubertâs Madame Bovary. Yet in the Middle Ages the Old English literature of the subjugated Saxons was leavened by the Latin and Anglo-Norman writings, eminently foreign in origin, in which the churchmen and the Norman conquerors expressed themselves. From this combination emerged a flexible and subtle linguistic instrument exploited by Geoffrey Chaucer and brought to supreme application by William Shakespeare. During the Renaissance the renewed interest in Classical learning and values had an important effect on English literature, as on all the arts. Ideas of Augustan literary propriety in the 18th century and reverence in the 19th century for a less specific, though still selectively viewed, Classical antiquity continued to shape the literature. All three of these impulses derived from a foreign source, namely the Mediterranean basin. The Decadents of the late 19th century and the Modernists of the early 20th looked to continental European individuals and movements for inspiration. Nor was attraction toward European intellectualism dead in the late 20th century, for by the mid-1980s the approach known as structuralism, a phenomenon predominantly French and German in origin, infused the very study of English literature itself in a host of published critical studies and university departments. Additional influence was exercised by deconstructionist analysis, based largely on the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Further, Britainâs past imperial activities around the globe continued to inspire literatureâin some cases wistful, in other cases hostile. Finally, English literature has enjoyed a certain diffusion abroad, not only in predominantly English-speaking countries but also in all those others where English is the first choice of study as a second language.
English literature is therefore not so much insular as detached from the continental European tradition across the Channel. It is strong in all the conventional categories of the booksellerâs list: in Shakespeare it has a dramatist of world renown; in poetry, a genre notoriously resistant to adequate translation and therefore difficult to compare with the poetry of other literatures, it is so peculiarly rich as to merit inclusion in the front rank; English literatureâs humour has been found as hard to convey to foreigners as poetry, if not more soâa fact at any rate permitting bestowal of the label âidiosyncraticâ; English literatureâs remarkable body of travel writings constitutes another counterthrust to the charge of insularity; in autobiography, biography, and historical writing, English literature compares with the best of any culture; and childrenâs literature, fantasy, essays, and journals, which tend to be considered minor genres, are all fields of exceptional achievement as regards English literature. Even in philosophical writings, popularly thought of as hard to combine with literary value, thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell stand comparison for lucidity and grace with the best of the French philosophers and the masters of Classical antiquity.
Some of English literatureâs most distinguished practitioners in the 20th centuryâfrom Joseph Conrad at its beginning to V.S. Naipaul and Tom Stoppard at its endâwere born outside the British Isles. What is more, none of the aforementioned had as much in common with his adoptive country as did, for instance, Doris Lessing and Peter Porter (two other distinguished writer-immigrants to Britain), both having been born into a British family and having been brought up on British Commonwealth soil.
On the other hand, during the same period in the 20th century, many notable practitioners of English literature left the British Isles to live abroad: James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, and Anthony Burgess. In one case, that of Samuel Beckett, this process was carried to the extent of writing works first in French and then translating them into English.
Even English literature considered purely as a product of the British Isles is extraordinarily heterogeneous, however. Literature actually written in those Celtic tongues once prevalent in Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, and Walesâcalled the âCeltic Fringeââis treated separately. Yet Irish, Scots, and Welsh writers have contributed enormously to English literature even when they have written in dialect, as the 18th-century poet Robert Burns and the 20th-century Scots writer Alasdair Gray have done. In the latter half of the 20th century, interest began also to focus on writings in English or English dialect by recent settlers in Britain, such as Afro-Caribbeans and people from Africa proper, the Indian subcontinent, and East Asia.
Even within England, culturally and historically the dominant partner in the union of territories comprising Britain, literature has been as enriched by strongly provincial writers as by metropolitan ones. Another contrast more fruitful than not for English letters has been that between social milieus, however much observers of Britain in their own writings may have deplored the survival of class distinctions. As far back as medieval times, a courtly tradition in literature cross-fertilized with an earthier demotic one. Shakespeareâs frequent juxtaposition of royalty in one scene with plebeians in the next reflects a very British way of looking at society. This awareness of differences between high life and low, a state of affairs fertile in creative tensions, is observable throughout the history of English literature.
POETRY
Virtually all Old English poetry is written in a single metre, a four-stress line with a syntactical break, or caesura, between the second and third stresses, and with alliteration linking the two halves of the line. This pattern is occasionally varied by six-stress lines. The poetry is formulaic, drawing on a common set of stock phrases and phrase patterns, applying standard epithets to various classes of characters, and depicting scenery with such recurring images as the eagle and the wolf, which wait during battles to feast on carrion, and ice and snow, which appear in the landscape to signal sorrow. In the best poems such formulas, far from being tedious, give a strong impression of the richness of the cultural fund from which poets could draw. Other standard devices of this poetry are the kenning, a figurative name for a thing, usually expressed in a compound noun (e.g., swan-road used to name the sea); and variation, the repeating of a single idea in different words, with each repetition adding a new level of meaning. That these verse techniques changed little during 400 years of literary production suggests the extreme conservatism of Anglo-Saxon culture.
PROBLEMS OF DATING
Few poems can be dated as closely as Caedmonâs âHymnâ. King Alfredâs compositions fall into the late 9th century, and Bede composed his âDeath Songâ within 50 days of his death on May 25, 735. Historical poems such as âThe Battle of Brunanburhâ (after 937) and The Battle of Maldon (after 991) are fixed by the dates of the events they commemorate. A translation of one of Aldhelmâs riddles is found not only in the Exeter Book but also in an early 9th-century manuscript at Leiden, Neth. And at least a part of âThe Dream of the Roodâ can be dated by an excerpt carved on the 8th-century Ruthwell Cross (in Dumfriesshire, Scot.). But in the absence of such indications, Old English poems are hard to date, and the scholarly consensus that most were composed in the Midlands and the North in the 8th and 9th centuries gave way to uncertainty during the last two decades of the 20th century. Many now hold that âThe Wanderer,â Beowulf, and other poems once assumed to have been written in the 8th century are of the 9th century or later. For most poems, there is no scholarly consensus beyond the belief that they were written between the 8th and the 11th centuries.
RELIGIOUS VERSE
If few poems can be dated accurately, still fewer can be attributed to particular poets. The most important author from whom a considerable body of work survives is Cynewulf, who wove his runic signature into the epilogues of four poems. Aside from his name, little is known of him. He probably lived in the 9th century in Mercia or Northumbria. His works include The Fates of the Apostles, a short martyrology; The Ascension (also called Christ II), a homily and biblical narrative; Juliana, a saintâs passion set in the reign of the Roman emperor Maximian (late 3rd century CE); and Elene, perhaps the best of his poems, which describes the mission of St. Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, to recover Christâs cross. Cynewulfâs work is lucid and technically elegant. His theme is the continuing evangelical mission from the time of Christ to the triumph of Christianity under Constantine. Several poems not by Cynewulf are associated with him because of their subject matter. These include two lives of St. Guthlac and Andreas. The latter, the apocryphal story of how St. Andrew fell into the hands of the cannibalistic (and presumably mythical) Mermedonians, has stylistic affinities with Beowulf. Also in the âCynewulf groupâ are several poems with Christ as their subject, of which the most important is âThe Dream of the Rood,â in which the cross speaks of itself as Christâs loyal thane and yet the instrument of his death. This tragic paradox echoes a recurring theme of secular poetry and at the same time movingly expresses the religious paradoxes of Christâs triumph in death and humankindâs redemption from sin.
Several poems of the Junius Manuscript are based on the Old Testament narratives Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel. Of these, Exodus is remarkable for its intricate diction and bold imagery. The fragmentary Judith of the Beowulf Manuscript stirringly embellishes the story from the Apocrypha of the heroine who led the Jews to victory over the Assyrians.
ELEGIAC AND HEROIC VERSE
The term elegy is used of Old English poems that lament the loss of worldly goods, glory, or human companionship. âThe Wandererâ is narrated by a man, deprived of lord and kinsmen, whose journeys lead him to the realization that there is stability only in heaven. âThe Seafarerâ is similar, but its journey motif more explicitly symbolizes the speakerâs spiritual yearnings. Several others have similar themes, and three elegiesââThe Husbandâs Message,â âThe Wifeâs Lament,â and âWulf and Eadwacerââdescribe what appears to be a conventional situation: the separation of husband and wife by the husbandâs exile.
âDeorâ bridges the gap between the elegy and the heroic poem, for in it a poet laments the loss of his position at court by alluding to sorrowful stories from Germanic legend. Beowulf itself narrates the battles of Beowulf, a prince of the Geats (a tribe in what is now southern Sweden), against the monstrous Grendel, Grendelâs mother, and a fire-breathing dragon. The account contains some of the best elegiac verse in the language, and, by setting marvelous tales against a historical background in which victory is always temporary and strife is always renewed, the poet gives the whole an elegiac cast. Beowulf also is one of the best religious poems, not only because of its explicitly Christian passages but also because Beowulfâs monstrous foes are depicted as Godâs enemies and Beowulf himself as Godâs champion. Other heroic narratives are fragmentary. Of The Battle of Finnsburh and Waldere only enough remains to indicate that, when whole, they must have been fast-paced and stirring.
Of several poems dealing with English history and preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the most notable is âThe Battle of Brunanburh,â a panegyric on the occasion of King Athelstanâs victory over a coalition of Norsemen and Scots in 937.
But the best historical poem is not from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Battle of Maldon, which describes the defeat of Aldorman Byrhtnoth and much of his army at the hands of Viking invaders in 991, discovers in defeat an occasion to celebrate the heroic ideal, contrasting the determination of many of Byrhtnothâs thanes to avenge his death or die in the attempt with the cowardice of others who left the field. Minor poetic genres include catalogs (two sets of Maxims and Widsith, a list of rulers, tribes, and notables in the heroic age), dialogues, metrical prefaces and epilogues to prose works of the Alfredian period, and liturgical poems associated with the Benedictine Office.
PROSE
The earliest English prose work, the law code of King Aethelberht I of Kent, was written within a few years of the arrival in England (597) of St. Augustine of Canterbury. Other 7th- and 8th-century prose, similarly practical in character, includes more laws, wills, and charters. According to Cuthbert, who was a monk at Jarrow, Bede at the time of his death had just finished a translation of the Gospel of St. John, though this does not survive. Two medical tracts, Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, very likely date from the 8th century.
EARLY TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH
The earliest literary prose dates from the late 9th century, when King Alfred, eager to improve the state of English learning, led a vigorous program to translate into English âcertain books t...
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Introduction:
- Chapter 1: The Old English Period
- Chapter 2: The Middle English Period
- Chapter 3: The Renaissance Period (1550â1660)
- Chapter 4: Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama
- Epilogue
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index