郧阳师专英语系英美文学精品课程(1).ppt
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The abbess St. பைடு நூலகம்ilda believed that Caedmon was divinely inspired and, to test his powers, proposed that he should render into verse a portion of sacred history, which the monks explained. By the following morning he had fulfilled the task.
English Literature
郧阳师专英语系英美文学精品课程
Part I The Anglo-Saxon period (449-1066)
1. Historical background
2. literature
3. Old English Poetry: Beowulf
1. Historical background:
Christian represents the writings developed under teaching of the monks.
the old English poetry can be divided into two groups: the secular and the religious.
First Old English Christian poet, whose fragmentary hymn to the creation remains a symbol of the adaptation of the aristocratic-heroic Anglo-Saxon verse tradition to the expression of Christian themes. His story is known from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which tells how Caedmon, an illiterate herdsman, retired from company one night in shame because he could not comply with the demand made of each guest to sing. Then in a dream a stranger appeared commanding him to sing of “the beginning of things,” and the herdsman found himself uttering “verses which he had never heard.” When Caedmon awoke he related his dream to the farm bailiff under whom he worked and was conducted by him to the monastery at Streaneshalch (now called Whitby).
2. Literature:
The literature of this period falls naturally into two divisions: pagan and Christianity.
Pagan represents the poetry which the Anglo-Saxons probably brought with them in the form of oral sagas—the crude material out of which literature was slowly developed on English soil.
At the request of the abbess he became an inmate of the monastery. Throughout the remainder of his life his more learned brethren expounded Scripture to him, and all that he heard he reproduced in vernacular poetry. All of his poetry was on sacred themes, and its unvarying aim was to turn men from sin to righteousness. In spite of all the poetic renderings that Caedmon supposedly made, however, it is only the original dream hymn of nine historically precious, but poetically uninspired, lines that can be attributed to him with confidence. The hymn—extant in 17 manuscripts, some in the poet's Northumbrian dialect, some in other Old English dialects—set the pattern for almost the whole art of Anglo-Saxon verse.
About 449 a band of Teutons, called Jutes, left Denmark, landed on the Isle of Thanet. Warriors from the tribes of the Angles and the Saxons soon followed, and drove westward the original inhabitants. The Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons were different tribes of Teutons. The Angles, an important Teutonic tribe, furnished the new home, which was called Angle-land afterward shortened into England. The language spoken by these tribes is generally called Anglo-Saxon or Saxon. It is the beginning of old English.
The secular group: Beowulf, The Wife’s Complaints
The religious group: Genesis A and B are two poems based on the Old Testament.
3. Caedmon, the “Father of English Song”
English Literature
郧阳师专英语系英美文学精品课程
Part I The Anglo-Saxon period (449-1066)
1. Historical background
2. literature
3. Old English Poetry: Beowulf
1. Historical background:
Christian represents the writings developed under teaching of the monks.
the old English poetry can be divided into two groups: the secular and the religious.
First Old English Christian poet, whose fragmentary hymn to the creation remains a symbol of the adaptation of the aristocratic-heroic Anglo-Saxon verse tradition to the expression of Christian themes. His story is known from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which tells how Caedmon, an illiterate herdsman, retired from company one night in shame because he could not comply with the demand made of each guest to sing. Then in a dream a stranger appeared commanding him to sing of “the beginning of things,” and the herdsman found himself uttering “verses which he had never heard.” When Caedmon awoke he related his dream to the farm bailiff under whom he worked and was conducted by him to the monastery at Streaneshalch (now called Whitby).
2. Literature:
The literature of this period falls naturally into two divisions: pagan and Christianity.
Pagan represents the poetry which the Anglo-Saxons probably brought with them in the form of oral sagas—the crude material out of which literature was slowly developed on English soil.
At the request of the abbess he became an inmate of the monastery. Throughout the remainder of his life his more learned brethren expounded Scripture to him, and all that he heard he reproduced in vernacular poetry. All of his poetry was on sacred themes, and its unvarying aim was to turn men from sin to righteousness. In spite of all the poetic renderings that Caedmon supposedly made, however, it is only the original dream hymn of nine historically precious, but poetically uninspired, lines that can be attributed to him with confidence. The hymn—extant in 17 manuscripts, some in the poet's Northumbrian dialect, some in other Old English dialects—set the pattern for almost the whole art of Anglo-Saxon verse.
About 449 a band of Teutons, called Jutes, left Denmark, landed on the Isle of Thanet. Warriors from the tribes of the Angles and the Saxons soon followed, and drove westward the original inhabitants. The Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons were different tribes of Teutons. The Angles, an important Teutonic tribe, furnished the new home, which was called Angle-land afterward shortened into England. The language spoken by these tribes is generally called Anglo-Saxon or Saxon. It is the beginning of old English.
The secular group: Beowulf, The Wife’s Complaints
The religious group: Genesis A and B are two poems based on the Old Testament.
3. Caedmon, the “Father of English Song”