1.英国中古时期

The Old and Medieval Periods

英国中古时期

一．Key point

1. The Old English(Anglo-Saxon) period

2. The Middle English(Anglo-Norman) period

3. Beowulf

4. Geoffrey Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales

二．Old English(Anglo-Saxon)

Explain the following terms: P1-4

The early inhabitants---Britons, a tribe of Celts.

700BC,Celtic（凯尔特人） people from north-western Europe, bringing iron-working, Gaelic（盖尔语） language.

“Britain”, the land of Britons

The Roman Occupation (55BC-410):

In 55 B.C., Britain was invaded by Julius Caesar (尤利乌斯·恺撒), the conqueror.

Left behind: laws, architecture, social system, Latin, Christianity, churches.

Anglo-Saxon(盎格鲁-撒克逊) Conquest:

Three tribe from Northern Europe: Angles, Saxon and Jutes

By the 7th century these small kingdoms were combined into a united kingdom called England.

The dialects spoken by them naturally grew into a single language called Anglo-Saxon, which is now called Old English.

The native Britons (Celts) were finally confined to the mountainous region of Wales where the modern form of their language is spoken alongside English to this day.

In defeat, the Britons produced a body of stories revolving a legendary ruler called Arthur（亚瑟王） who had fought heroically against the Anglo-Saxon invaders.

二．The Middle English(Anglo-Norman) period

The Norman Conquest (1066): P7-13

Politically, a feudalist system was established in England;

Religiously, the Rome-backed Catholic Church had a much stronger control over the country;

On language, three languages co-existed in England. French became

the official language used by the king and the Norman lords;Latin became the principal tongue of church affairs and was used by the clergymen and scholars in universities;Anglo-Saxon (old English) was spoken only by the common English people.

The union of French and Anglo-Saxon (English)

the need of communication

the absorption of the French

三．English Literature in old and medieval periods

1. Old English Period

Beowulf《贝奥武夫》

Beowul f is the first great English literary work and is regarded today as the national epic of Anglo- Saxons. P4-6 Story: Beginning and ending with the funeral of a great king, and set against a background of impending disaster, Beowulf describes the exploits of a Scandinavian hero, in fighting against the monster Grendel, his revengeful mother, and a fire-breathing dragon. P4 Theme: It is an adventure story about a hero killing monsters to make the world safe for people. It also serves to add testimony to

a universal tradition that the human always manage to get a sense

of control over live with the help of their imaginative powers. P5

2. Anglo-Norman period (1066-1485)

Medieval Romance 浪漫传奇

Romance which uses narrative verse or prose to sing of knightly adventures or other heroic deeds is a popular literary form in the Middle Ages. The importance of romance itself can be seen as a means of showing medieval aristocratic men and women in relation to their idealized view of the world.

Matter of France and Rome

Matter of Britain: the legendary history of Britain.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer was the first preeminent English poet in history and ranks with Shakespeare as the most popular and most widely read of all poets today

Chaucer was the first most significant poet in English literary history to write in Middle English.

He greatly increased the prestige of English as a literary language and extended the range of its poetic vocabulary and meters.

He, for the first time in English literature, presented to us a comprehensive realistic picture of the English society of his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of