Lecture 2 Middle English Literature. Pre-Renaissance Period 213

The Medieval Romance

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  “Romance” – a long narrative in verse or prose telling of the adventures of a hero.
  
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  These stories of adventure usually include knights, ladies in distress, kings, and villains.
  
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  The stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table – at the center.
  
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  This subject matter is sometimes called the “Matter of Britain”.
  

Fable and Fabliaux

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  Fable is a short tale or prolonged personification with animal characters intended to convey a moral truth; it’s a myth, a fiction, a falsehood.
  
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  Fabliaux are funny metrical short stories about cunning humbugs and the unfaithful wives of rich merchants.
  
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Pre-Renaissance Period in English Literature

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  Hundred Year’s War by king Edward against France.
  
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  Poor priests against rich foreign bishops of the Catholic Church
  
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  William Langland denounced the rich churchmen and said that everybody was obliged to work.
  
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  Was most famous for his poem “The Visions of William Concerning Piers the Ploughman”. Nowadays the poem is called “Piers Plowman”.
  
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  “Piers Plowman” is an allegorical poem. Truth is a young maiden, Greed is an old witch.
  
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  In his dream the poet sees Piers the Ploughman, a peasant. Piers tells him about the hard life of the people.
  

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 - 1400)

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  He was the last English writer of the Middle Ages and the first of the Renaissance.
  
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  “The Canterbury Tales”
  
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  The framework, which serves to connect twenty-four stories, told in verse, is a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury.
  
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  Chaucer planned to include 120 stories, but he managed only twenty-four, some of them were not completed.
  
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  The individual stories are of many kinds: religious stories, legends, fables, fairy tales, sermons, and courtly romances.
  
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  In “Canterbury Tales” Chaucer introduced a rhythmic pattern called iambic pentameter into English poetry. This pattern, or meter, consists of 10 syllables alternately unaccented and accented in each line. The lines may or may not rhyme.