A History of English Literature- 6th of October 2010
From the Old English Period to the Renaissance
Lecturer: Dr Rafał Borysławski
Office hours: Wed. 13.15-14.45 (room 4.1)
[e-mail]
Time Boundaries
Venerable Bede -very first English chronicle writer. He wrote books on Bible and cosmology. VII
Century
Geoffrey Chaucer  English counterpart of Jan Kochanowski. He shaped English Language. He
influenced Shakespeare.
The Lindisfarne Gospels (7th/8th c.) In principio erat verbum// In fruma waes word... 'In the
beginning there was the word...'
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (ca. 1385), The Ellesmere manuscript, showing one of the
pilgrims and the opening of the Prologue
Written test (12th January)
The historical and social context of Old Englsih literature
1. Time span of medieval English literature, culture and language:
a. The Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) period: beginnings to 1066 (Norman conquest)
b. The Middle English period from 1066 to the Renaissance.
2. Historical and cultural background:
a. Early medieval Europe (after the fall of the Roman Empire): migrations of peoples and
migrations of cultures
b. Germanic culture on the continent (Roman historian Tacitus 1st c. A.D.) - the idea of a mead-hall
(court of an early nobleman) as a place for communal feasting and listening to stories recited/sung
by scops (Anglo-Saxon poets)
c. Invasions and violence in early English kingdoms -very little sense of stability (the themes of ubi
sunt qui ante nos fuerunt and sic transit gloria mundi)
d. Early English states (the Heptarchy)  political instability, the concepts of nationality and
nationhood slowly emerging, local communities more important than nationhood, the leader's
responsibility for his people (the idea of comitatus- the retinue of warriors), this leading to early
feudal relations in society.
e. The language: Old English profoundly different from Modern English, multiplicity of regional
dialects of the Old English (The most extant Old English texts are recorded in West Saxon dialect,
spoken in the kingdom of Wessex)