Riassunto esame Letteratura Inglese, Prof. Cavone, libro consigliato Inglese Manuale per prove scritte e orali, Edises; English Literature: from the beginning to contemporary literature

English literature

Chapter one: From the origins to the Middle Ages

In the Neolithic period, Britain was settled by pre-Celtic tribes, known as the Iberians, who were dark-haired. They built stone monuments, and the most important one was Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, a great feat of engineering work made up of huge stones placed in circles. It was probably used as a religious site to worship ancient gods. They displayed their art on decorated or carved stones and metalwork marked by curves.

Around 700 BC, the Celts, who had blue eyes, invaded Britain. The first wave was that of the Gaels, while the second wave was called Britons. The most important features of the Celts were:

• They were artisans, farmers, fishers, and excellent warriors.
• They were pagans; in fact, they worshipped the natural elements, in particular water, practiced rituals and sacrifices, and believed in the immortality of the soul and its immigration.
• They were organized according to a social system based on chieftains, warrior aristocracy, and freemen farmers. The most important caste was represented by the Druids, who were Celtic priests who also acted as judges and doctors.
• Their culture was based on a strong oral tradition transmitted by the Druids, who acted as scholars and used the runes, a system of symbols, for writing and for magical and divination rites.

In 55 BC, Britain was invaded by the Romans under Julius Caesar:

• They introduced the Latin alphabet, substituting the Celtic runes.
• They reorganized the country by building roads and towns.
• They adopted their administrative and legal systems and the official Roman cults, so the Druid class disappeared.

In 410 AD, the Romans were forced to leave the country to defend Rome against the Barbarian invasions. It was in this period that Britain was invaded by German tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. The Anglo-Saxons took control of eastern Britain, now called England, which is the land of the Angles. The Anglo-Saxons brought their own culture and social habits. They:

• Abandoned the Roman towns to live in the forests, which were transformed into cultivable lands thanks to their improved ploughing methods.
• Were organized according to a pyramid-like social system: there was the king or ruler, followed by hereditary aristocracy and high-rank warriors who fought in battles but also collected taxes and administered justice.
• Divided the kingdom into seven kingdoms, the so-called heptarchy, each ruled by a king elected by the Witan.
• Re-established stronger pagan values by exalting courage, physical strength, and loyalty to the kindred.
• Brought with them a new language: the Anglo-Saxon or Old English, which consisted of different dialects. The beginning of English literature is associated with the Anglo-Saxons.

Their literature flourished from the second half of the 5th century to the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066. The most important features of their literature are that it was oral and anonymous, it was formed through a long process of collective memorization up to the time it was written down by the church clerks, it included different genres such as epic and elegiac poetry, Bible translations, and so on; finally, Anglo-Saxon poetry was based on alliteration and stress, whose most important manuscripts are Beowulf, Nowell Manuscript, the Exeter Book, the Junius Manuscript, and the Vercelli Book.

Beowulf: it is a long narrative poem (3182 lines) composed by an unknown Anglo-Saxon poet around 700 A.D. It can be divided into two parts. In the first part, Beowulf, a warrior, succeeds in defeating Grendel even if he is unarmed. Later, he fights and defeats Grendel’s mother, who seeks revenge for her son’s death. In the second part of the poem, Beowulf, now an old man, fights against a fire-breathing dragon guarding a horde of treasure in a hidden mound. Beowulf manages to kill the monster but is mortally wounded in return. The most important themes of Beowulf are that the character embodies the manners and values of the Germanic hero: bravery, loyalty, courtesy, pride, honour, and the importance of kinship bonds; moreover, the work portrays an aristocratic society based on hierarchy and depicts the splendour of its warrior class; furthermore, it includes Christian elements such as allusions to the Old Testament and it gives prominence to nature.

In the late 8th century, the Vikings or Danes from Scandinavia began their raids. At the end of the 10th century, the Vikings attacked England again, but then they were succeeded by the Anglo-Saxons again, whose king was Edward the Confessor (who built Westminster Abbey).

The Middle Ages

In 1066, Duke William of Normandy conquered Britain, and with this domination, there was the beginning of the Middle Ages. He:

• Introduced the feudal system in England with their knights, villains, and freemen (who had some land of their own and had some legal rights, and the serfs who were real slaves bound to the land).
• Made a survey of his pieces of land, including the number of houses, people, cattle, and their production.

His successors were William II, Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II, the first Plantagenet king. Henry II:

• Changed the feudal system and reduced the power of the barons.
• Created a stronger system of justice by introducing the Common Law and the trial by jury.
• Opposed the separation between ecclesiastical and civil justice. With the Constitutions of Clarendon, it was established that the king could appoint bishops and that crimes committed by the clergy had to be judged first in the civil and then in the ecclesiastical court. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, refused the bill, and this is why he was assassinated.

Henry II was succeeded by his sons:

1. Richard I, known as the Lion-Heart.
2. John, known as Lackland, who was a tyrannical king who levied higher taxes to finance his disastrous military campaigns in France, which led to the loss of Normandy. He was forced to sign the Magna Charta Libertatum, according to which the king could no longer levy taxes without the barons’ consent and no free man could be dispossessed of his properties without a fair trial.

The following years also saw the foundation of Parliament, in fact, Edward I summoned the so-called Model Parliament to taxes for his wars. He included representatives of the barons and the clergy, two knights and two citizens from each city. In this way, he anticipated the two Houses of Parliament: the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Edward’s reign was also marked by his conquest of Wales.

The next king was Edward III whose reign was marked by:

• The first phase of The Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), which broke out because Edward III claimed the vacant throne of France as his mother was the French king’s sister.
• The bubonic plague, also known as Black Death, which spread all over the country in 1348 and killed a third of England’s population, causing also social changes: the lack of labourers, in fact, caused a rise in prices and a demand for higher wages. Furthermore, there was the decline of the feudal society and the rise of a rural and urban middle class.
• The rise of the religious reformist movement known as Lollardy, a movement founded by the English poet priest John Wycliffe, who attacked the Church for its wealth and corruption and the Christian doctrine itself. He believed that the church’s wealth should be used for more charitable purposes.

Edward III was succeeded by Richard II, the last Plantagenet king, whose reign was marked by the Peasants’ Revolt and internal struggles and rivalries. He was succeeded by Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, with whom the war of the Hundred Years’ War continued, whose main character was Joan of Arc, a poor peasant girl who was given the leadership of the army. Finally, she was sold to the English and burned as a witch. By 1453, when the war ended, the English had lost their possessions. Henry VI was a mentally unstable king dominated by unpopular regents. This led to a civil war known as the War of the Roses between the members of the two noble houses of York and Lancaster, whose symbols were a red rose and a white rose.

This period was also marked by:

• The pervading role of religion and church, in fact, churches and monasteries were the main centres of culture and education and dominated everybody’s life and played a fundamental role in spreading religious ideas;
• The spread of chivalry;
• The foundation of a national spirit;
• The evolution of the English language;
• The birth of printing;

While from a literary point of view, the Middle Ages was marked by:

• The beginning of the age of the writer;
• The massive presence of religious and didactic works;
• The introduction and familiarisation with French literary material and forms;
• The persuasive use of allegory, symbols, and abstract personifications;
• The foundation of a uniquely English literature (Bible and Chaucer’s works).

Medieval literature

Verse romances were the most popular form of secular literature in the Middle Ages. Romances were the typical expression of chivalry, in fact, they dealt with the heroic or marvellous adventures of warlike and courtly knights, mainly focussing on their adventures against robbers, giants, and Saracens, or other circumstances such as unreciprocated love.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400): Geoffrey Chaucer is considered second only to Shakespeare as England’s greatest poet, but in particular, he is considered the father of English literature because his language, the dialect of his native London, gradually became standard English, becoming the basis of Modern English. He is considered the father of English literature also because he was the first poet to write all works in the dialect of his native London, destined to become the national language, and he introduced continental accentual-syllabic metre as an alternative to the alternative Anglo-Saxon metre. He went also to Italy, where he became interested in Dante and Boccaccio. He was born around 1343. His career started with the re-elaboration of French models. Modern scholars divide Chaucer’s literary career into three periods:

1. The French Period (1359 – 1372) (The Romaunt of the Rose, the Book of Duchess): it includes the poems written in imitation of French models, although Chaucer’s works were not actually imitation because he penetrated into the spirit of French culture.
2. The Italian Period (1372-1386): the poems of this period are marked by greater maturity.
3. The English Period (1386-1400): He is remembered for his masterpiece Canterbury Tales belonging to the third period of his literary production: thirty people, all belonging to different social classes and including Chaucer himself, are going on a pilgrimage to Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury. Every pilgrim is expected to tell two stories while going to Canterbury and two coming back. All the pilgrims are introduced in the General Prologue, and they represent a portrait of English society, in particular the middle class. The pilgrim who tells the best story will receive a free supper. Chaucer left the work unfinished. Realism is the most distinctive feature of the work, and the pilgrimage is the key metaphor for life from the religious sphere, in the sense that we are all pilgrims on the way to the heavenly city, and every journey reflects the basic pattern of existence. In fact, in the very end, Chaucer gives all credit to Jesus Christ. The most important features of the Canterbury Tales are:

• It offers a realistic portrait of Medieval society and its individuals, which are, at the same time, literary types. The pilgrims’ descriptions are dynamic, but they are also drawn from popular and literary tradition. They come from different social classes: the military (such as the knight), the clergy (such as the Monk), or the middle classes (the Merchant).
• Chaucer’s descriptions are gently humorous and ironical because his intention was also to satirise the corruption of the classes he represented.
• It covers a wide range of medieval narrative poems and themes such as love, marriage, and corruption.
• The work has a metaphorical meaning: from a worldly pleasure to a sacred destination.

The medieval ballad: medieval ballads are oral narrative poems intended for common people, which were originally accompanied by music and dances. They began to decline with the introduction of printing, which marked the transition from an oral to a typographical culture. Medieval ballads, mostly anonymous, are classified into:

• Border ballads about the rivalry between the English and Scottish people;
• Ballads of supernatural events about fairies, witches, and ghosts;
• Ballads of crime, which include outlaw ballads celebrating the lives and actions of criminals;
• Ballads of love and domestic tragedy;
• Religious ballads;
• Historical and legendary ballads.

Medieval prose writing: For more than a century after the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Saxon prose texts were still copied, especially King Alfred’s translations. The greatest prose work of early Middle Ages was written in Latin by an archdeacon of Welsh descent: Geoffrey of Monmouth (ca. 1100-1155). The work – Historia Regum Britanniae, relates Britain’s history from its first settlements by Brutus (Britain’s mythical founder, descendant of Aeneas) to the death of Welsh King Cadwallader in the 7th century. Unlike previous centuries, the late 14th and the 15th centuries include relevant prose writers such John Wycliffe and Thomas Malory, apart from travel and mystical writers.

John Wycliffe (1330-1384): Born in 1330 in Yorkshire, he received his education at Oxford, where he studied theology and philosophy. His prose production includes writings in Latin in which he expressed that the church should not have any concern with temporal matters, and the clergy should not have property and the superiority and sufficiency of the Bible over the Church authority.

Thomas Malory (1416-1471): He is the author of the greatest achievement of later Medieval prose writing: a cycle of Arthurian tales published as Le Morte D’Arthur by William Caxton in 1485. About his identity, there are a lot of doubts. Scholars think he wrote at least part of Le Morte D’Arthur while in prison. The most important features of the work are: the emphasis Malory gives to the brotherhood of the knights and the conflicts of loyalty provoked by the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere and the use of an impressive language matching the nobility of both the character and the theme discussed.

The origins of English drama

The origins of English Drama are to be found in the religious celebrations of great Christian festivals. At the beginning, the most relevant episodes of the Old and New Testament were represented in the form of dialogues, then they were performed in some parts of the city. When the performances moved outside the church, Latin was replaced by English, comic characters were introduced even if they didn’t exist in the Bible, and scenic effects were added. This is why Mystery and Miracle Plays were created in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries.

Mystery Plays dealt with Biblical stories, from the creation to the Day of Judgment, while Miracle Plays were concerned with the lives of Saints. They both:

• Were performed on decorated, movable stage wagons called pageants;
• Were staged by trade guilds;
• Were mainly performed during the Feast of Corpus Christi because at that time of the year, the weather was fine;
• Were performed by amateur actors who were members of the guilds and were paid.

Miracle Plays were grouped into four cycles: Chester, York, Coventry, and Wakefield. During the Middle Ages, there was the development of another kind of plays: Morality Play. They did not focus on Biblical events but on the struggle between good and evil; used invented plots because their aim was to improve people’s moral behaviour, while the characters were personifications of human vices and virtues; they were performed by actors grouped under associations.

The greatest morality play is Everyman. The main character is informed by Death that he must die. So he asks all his friends (who have got allegorical names Fellowship, Kindred, Beauty, Strength and Knowledge) to accompany him in his last journey. He dies at the end but his soul is saved. Everyman shows the main purpose of the play, that is to say that earthly things are not useful to man in the moment of his death, except for the good deeds he did in life which can save him from perdition. Moreover, the play stages allegorical personifications of vices and virtues. Morality plays continued to be performed during most of the 15th century, but they were gradually replaced by Interludes, shorter and more realistic theatrical pieces which bridge Medieval Drama and Elizabethan Theatre.

Chapter two: The Renaissance: The Elizabethan Age

Henry VII, who came to the English throne in 1485 when the Wars of the Roses ended, was the first king of the Tudor dynasty. During his reign, he made monarchy supreme and turned English into a strong modern state. Henry’s foreign policy aimed at making England’s trading position stronger, in fact, he made laws which improved and protected domestic industry and opened new markets for the commerce of English wool, and he improved the royal navy to protect English commerce from pirates.

The Reformation

Henry VIII (who embodied the ideal Renaissance monarch, as he was not only a good governor but also a very cultured man) succeeded his father: the main event during his reign (1508-1547) was the Reformation. The religious revolution arose from Henry’s quarrel with the Pope. As a young man, Henry had been married to Catherine of Aragon, who gave him a daughter, Mary. He asked the Pope for a divorce because he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn. When it was clear that the Pope would not declare his first marriage invalid, Henry broke with Rome and declared himself through the Act of Supremacy (1534) “Supreme Head of the Church in England”. In so doing, the king dissolved the monasteries between 1536 and 1539. As a consequence, Ireland remained a Catholic country, and this marked the beginning of the Irish question. In 1536, Anne Boleyn, who had given Henry VIII a daughter, Eli