Gradually, the concept of a ‘humanistic’ curriculum began to solidify: focussing not on Christian theological texts, which had been pored over in medieval seats of learning, but on classical ‘humanities’ subjects such as philosophy, history, drama and poetry. E ducation was a driving force, encouraged by the increase in the number of universities and schools – another movement that began in Italy. Usually used to describe the rediscovery of classical Roman and Greek culture in the late 1300s and 1400s and the great pan-European flowering in art, architecture, literature, science, music, philosophy and politics that this inspired, it has been interpreted as the epoch that made the modern world truly modern. 1470).įrom CREDO English Literature: Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide.įew historical concepts have such powerful resonance as the Renaissance. Prose reached new heights in the 15th century with Thomas Malory's retelling of the Arthurian legends in Le Morte d'Arthur (c. Drama flourished in the form of mystery plays and morality plays. Many stories were carried by travelling minstrels. More successful were the anonymous authors of songs and carols, and of the ballads, which often formed a complete cycle, such as those concerned with the outlaw Robin Hood. Chaucer remained unmatched in the period, although the poet John Skelton was one of Chaucer's more original successors the first secular morality play in English, Magnyfycence (1516), was written by Skelton. Of purely native inspiration was the medieval alliterative poem Piers Plowman (1367–86) by William Langland, and the anonymous Pearl, Patience, and Gawayne and the Grene Knight. 1387), whose early work reflected the formality of the predominant French influence, but later the realism of Renaissance Italy. 700 BC).įirst of the great English poets was Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales (c. Prose was concerned chiefly with popular devotional use, but verse emerged typically in the metrical chronicles, such as Layamon's Brut, and the numerous romances based on the stories of Charlemagne, the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, and the classical episodes of Troy, derived from Homer's Iliad (c. These, together with a growing number of financial and legal records, sermons, chronicles, poems, and charters, form the basis of modern historical knowledge of the period.Īlthough the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued to be written until 1154, with the arrival of a Norman ruling class at the end of the 11th century, the ascendancy of Norman-French in cultural life began, and it was not until the 13th century that English literature regained its strength. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, more lay people were literate, and the Paston Letters form one of the first records of one family's ordinary lives. In medieval England (12th–15th century), the ascendancy of Norman-French culture in the post-Conquest era, followed by the re-emergence of native English works – by such authors as Chaucer, Langland, and Malory, and numerous anonymous authors, – marked the Middle English period of English literature.
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