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The Middle Ages
William the conqueror was a Norman King who invaded England in the Battle of Hastings (1066). The Bayeux tapestry commemorates this battle.
The social order changed and, at the time, the Black Death was being spread in the whole Europe, especially in low classes. Meanwhile, kings, queens and nobles enjoyed all type of privileges.
This new king imposed feudal system, so high classes became owners of the lands. He demanded the “Domesday book” to control the taxes and belongings. The eldest son was the only one who can inherit the lands and titles. Socially speaking, we can say that what we find in England is a social pyramid:
The Norman Conquest involved a great change in the linguistic situation. Low classes keep on speaking the old-anglosaxon English, but the upper classes adopted French and they considered it the “sophisticated” language. Latin was used, mostly, in religious and official texts.
The coexistence of three languages in had positive and negative effects on the English literature. It’s very simple to give examples about the coexistence of these three languages:
Old English French Latin Ask Question Interrogate House Mansion Domicile From a linguistic point of view, the Norman Conquest was a fact that brought great richness to the English lexicon, although this meant losing
a part of the anglo-saxon culture.
From a literature perspective, the consequences were initially negatives, because we detect how most of the literature was being composed in French and only very simple poems in a vernacular old English.
The control of daily life kept on being matter of the church, but the court became more and more important, so it caused that it started to be a kind of cultural centre, where many women took an active cultural role.
Texts continued to be written in manuscripts and translated by scribes.
King/pope High nobles.
At the beginning, it was impossible to scale in this pyramid, but
peasants
Poetry
We are going to speak about a different type of poems in medieval literature. Beginning with the low classes, we will find at the start of the medieval period only a few poems written in old-popular English. They were may addressed to these classes, considering that they talked about religious topics (the church could had used it to instruct people) or every-day life.
In contrast, we find a different type of literature for the upper classes. Here we find the Courtly love. It had a very complex language, metaphors were more elaborated, formally speaking, poems were most elaborated: authors cared about the rhythm and new stanzas were appeared.
Love was the main topic: it was showed in a high-idealized way and the lady was represented as a goddess: Her eyes were stars, her cheeks and lips were roses, her teardrops were rain, etc. It was always a blonde, light-skinned girl.
The relationship is represented in terms of suffering, with the loyalty of the knight to the lady, even though he is not corresponded.
Other types of poems were the didactic poems. They presented a type of introduction were a judge is introduced. In the poem we find two positions in debate, and, at the end, there isn’t a clear winner. These poems were inspired by classic influences like Platon and Baethius. The most famous poem of this type is The owl and the nightingale.
Allegorical poetry or dream visions: They had a similar structure as in the old English. It was used the alliterative verse, as in the old English period. Critics are still debating how this could be possible: a group of them affirm that this kind of poems had no interruption even though the most part of them have not been preserved until our days. Another group of critics maintain that there was a break, but in the medieval period new compositions emerged and the authors choose alliteration as the “national esthetical form”
We still have to speak about a further kind of poems that became very popular and that we still conserve: the romances. They were written first in verse and then in prose:
ROMANCES
About France: Present French heroes. In Song of Roland, for example,
Combination of a traditional epic poetry with the courtly love
Is also very important The book of the city ladies, wrote by Christine de Pizan. In this book, she claims the access of education for women. She also wrote “The moral poems of Christine”. This is the first book wrote by a women that was printed and published in England.
In addition, courtly love was completely inspired by women, who were the protagonists of the history, like Elenor of Aquitaine or Marie Countess of Champagne.
PREGUNTAS DE EXAMEN:
- Orígenes y tipos de teatro
- (^) Tipos de poesía
- Situación femenina durante el periodo antiguo, anglosajón y medieval
- Situación lingüística del idioma e influencia de esto en la literatura.
