Old and Middle English: Personal and Religious Voices and Historical Texts
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Personal and Religious Voices
First Fragment of Literature- Caedmon՚s Hymn
- Setting- monastery of Whitby
- Plot- Caedmon was a lay worker in the monastery and finds the voice of god
Doer՚s Lament
- First poem in history about unemployment
- The seafarer and the wanderer: important texts about travelling.
Historical Texts
Venerable Bede՚s Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Written in Latin
The Dream of the Rood
About Christ and His Cross (Rood)
Long Poems
Beowulf
- Setting: Germanic or the Baltic kingdoms
- Generation of heroes, warriors and kings
- Monster- Grendel
- Beowulf՚s companion: Wiglaf
- Rewritten in modern English by scot Edwin Morgan and Seamus Heaney
The Battle of Malden
Documentary of a battle of 991
Layamon՚s Brut
- First national epic in English
- Tells the story of king Arthur and his knights
- Traced the foundation of Britain back to Brutus, the hero of the trojan wars
Love Poems
Le Roman De La Rose (The Romance of the Rose)
- Values of chastity
- Rose symbolizes the lady՚s love: pure and earthy
Lord Randal
- Form: ballad and question answer dialogue
- Ends in lord Randal՚s death
Alliterative Revival
- Great presence of alliteration or alliterative verse
- 1350 to early fifteenth century
- Texts: winner and waster, pearl. Patience (all anonymous)
Winner and Waster
- Debate form
- Criticism of pope and priests
Patience
Biblical story of Jonah and the whale
Pearl
- Dream-vision-narrator sees his dead daughter in a dream
- The daughter now has perfect knowledge which the living doesn՚t
Fantasy
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Sir Gawain is one of the knights of the round table, the followers of king Arthur
- He is saved by his magic belt
Questions
✍ Manishika