Characteristics of English Literature

Literature

Clan = a group of related people with a chief.

From the Pre-Celts to the Normans

The invaders of Britain

• Ca 8000 BC: The Iberians.
• BC: prima di Cristo.
• AD: Anno Domini.
• C. 700 BC–43 AD: The Celts.
• 43–409 AD: The Romans.
• 5th century: The Angles and the Saxons were Germanic tribes.
• 9th century: The Vikings arrived from Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
• 1066: The Normans were the last invaders of the British Isles; they came from France.

Flint = selce

The Iberians

• Land bridge.
• Dark haired.
• Hunter-gatherers and fishermen.
• Neolithic or New Stone Age → flint.
• Huge stone circles → megalithic temples.

The Celts

The Celts: society

• They were brave warriors.
• They lived in extended families called clans.
• Women were almost equal to men.
• They built hill forts on top of hills surrounded by ditches filled with water.

The Celts: economy

• They were famous hunters and fishermen.
• They worked iron.
• They introduced the iron plough.
• They made beautiful jewellery.

The Celts: religion

They worshipped the natural elements.

The sun

The moon trees and rivers

• They held their religious ceremonies in the woods and near water.
• Their priests were called druids.
• The druids were influential figures who administered justice and educated the young.

The Romans

• Invaded and settled in 43–47 AD under Emperor Claudius (41–54 AD);
• Encouraged the growth of towns near their army bases, which became centres of vibrant commercial activity.
• Built over 9,600 km of paved roads in Britain.
• They built Hadrian’s Wall in the north, in 122 AD.
• They built the first bridge on the River Thames in their settlement, Londinium.
• They withdrew their legions in 409 AD to defend Rome.

From the Pre-Celts to the Normans

The Anglo-Saxons

They came from Germany and northern Europe.

• The Germanic tribes collectively called Anglo-Saxons came from the North Sea regions of northern Europe.
• They used a runic alphabet.
• They were deep-sea fishermen and farmers.
• Their language, Old English, is the basis of modern English.

Society

• They were organised in family groups of clans.
• Loyalty to family and lord was the most important value.
• The centre of communal life was the hall = case grandi dove si riunisce il villaggio.
• They formed seven kingdoms known as the Heptarchy.
• The kingdom of Wessex became the most important.

Christianisation

• In 597, Pope Gregory I sent a monk, Augustine, to bring Christianity back to England.
• Canterbury Cathedral was founded in 602. Augustine was the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
• Monasteries became important cultural centres.
• A monk wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

The Vikings

A member of a race of Scandinavian people who attacked and sometimes settled in parts of north-west Europe, including Britain.

Viking is an Old Norse word meaning warrior or raider.

York = capitale dei vichinghi

Alfred

• United the U.K.

Athelstan

• United England → father of the English state.
• Coinage.
• Common law.

900

Danegeld

Conquer and settle.

A Viking king, Canute

Becomes king of England

Edward the Confessor

• Interested in religion.
• Built Westminster Abbey.
• Childless.

1066: Battle of Hastings

Normandy: William

Anglo-Saxon literature

Old English

Second half of the 5th century–1066

• Epic poems.
• Elegies.
• Chronicles.
• Translation of the Bible.
• Stories about the lives of saints.
• Riddles.
• Sermons.
• Anonymous and oral.
• Celebrated the cultural values.
• The scop or bard entertained the noblemen in the hall of the king and sang epics, often accompanied by the harp.

What is a scop?

Scop

• Professional singer who was hired to entertain guests with stories, usually in poetry form, about the heroic adventures of tribal heroes.

Features of Anglo-Saxon literature

Features

• Alliteration: repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words.
• Caesura: a break or pause within a line of poetry indicated by punctuation and used to emphasize meaning.
• Kenning: a way of describing something using clues rather than just saying what it is.

Epic poem

Epic: epos = oral exposition

The art of poetry

Meaning

• Poetry: poiein = to create.
• Born as an oral art.
• The oldest form of literature.
• Most remarkable events.

Basic structural units

• Line (the basic unit) = verso.
• Stanza (a group of lines) = strofa.
• Canto (the main division of a long poem) =

Types of stanzas

• Couplet (two lines).
• Tercet (three lines).
• Quatrain (four lines).
• Sestet (six lines).
• Octave (eight lines).

Kinds of poetry

• Narrative.
• Epic: tells a story in verses, something with a moral.
• Dramatic.
• Lyric = are short and express individual’s feelings or thoughts.

Most important elements

• Sound.
• Visual layout.
• Language.

Sound devices

Vocale

• Assonance: the repetition of the same vowel sound.
• Alliteration: the repetition of the same consonant sound.
• Onomatopoeia: the use of words whose sound illustrates their meaning.
• End-stopped line: the end of a line coincides with a grammatical pause. The most common line.
• Run-on line (enjambement): a line ends in the middle of a phrase.

Beowulf

The epic poem

• It’s a long narrative composition.

It deals with: the recollection of a glorious past in the history of a nation

The brave deeds of heroes

• History is the frame, but supernatural characters, like monsters, are the canvas of the poem.
• An aristocratic military society is described.
• The narrative of the poem is made up of a series of type-scenes: battles, banquets, funerals, voyages.
• The narration is objective.
• The main theme is the nature of heroic life.
• The didactic aim is the celebration of heroic values.
• The language is vivid, and the style is elevated.

Beowulf: a national epic

• The oldest surviving Anglo-Saxon poem, written more than 1,200 years ago.
• The poet is unknown.
• It deals with a time following the initial invasion of England by Germanic tribes over the course of the 5th and 6th centuries.

The plot

It is divided into three sections:

• 1) Beowulf, the war leader of the Scandinavian Geats, fights against Grendel, the monster, and succeeds in killing him in Heorot.
• 2) The hero fights against Grendel’s mother. Beowulf manages to kill her at the bottom of the misty lake with a magic sword.
• 3) After fifty years, the hero kills a fire-breathing dragon in Scandinavia but is mortally wounded.

Characters

• The hero Beowulf, praised for his courage…
• The monsters.
• 1) Grendel.
• 2) Grendel’s mother.
• 3) Dragon.