The peculiarities of middle english period in literature introduction

Example of Morality Play: The Castle of Perseverance (ca. 1425)
(Required 22 actors)
I. Bad Angel secures the soul of Man in a struggle with Good Angel. The World gives as guides to Man: Pleasure, Folly, Backbiter, and the Seven Deadly Sins. The Good Angel appeals to Confession, Shrift, and Penitence, who lodge Man in the Castle of Perseverance.
II. The forces of Hell can't overwhelm the Castle, which is guarded by the forces of Heaven, but aging Man is enticed outside by Avarice; Death strikes Man down, but he dies repentant.
III. The Four Daughters of God (Mercy, Peace, Truth, and Righteousness) debate the disposal of Man's soul, with Mercy triumphant.

4) Ballads, exemplum, fabliaux, songs.

Anglo-Norman works such as Wace Brut were read by the nobility and inspired Middle English authors. In the history of Vortigern's tower, two battling dragons have repeatedly destroyed the building. The most famous Middle English poet is Geoffrey Chaucer with his Canterbury Tales and other works such as Troilus and The Crisade. Other notable authors and their works: John Gower (The Confessions of Amantis) William Langland (Pierce the Ploughman) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight poet John Lydgate with allegories, fables and verses, for example. B. The Fall of the Princes, the Book of Troy and the History of Thebes. Thomas Hokklev (The Rebirth of the Princes or De Regimine Principum and Numerous Poems) In addition, there are a large number of z. A few excellent but anonymous poems. One of these is "The Owl and the Nightingale", a 1794 poem of eight-syllable paired rhymes. The poet then describes the discussion between the owl and the nightingale that he witnesses on a wide variety of topics such as their appearance, aspects of hygiene, religion, a happy marriage, etc. The two birds use every conceivable rhetorical device. to win to continue the argument, but he does not find a solution and they leave to see the arbiter. Attempts to interpret the two animals as symbols have not produced clear results; interpretations range from animals as a parody of Henry II and Thomas Becket to interpretation of the text as a teaching example for students of rhetoric. Like The Owl and the Nightingale, written in the late 12th or early 13th century, Layamon's Brut is an early work of Middle English poetry. However, at 16,000 lines, that's a lot more; it is loosely based on the Anglo-Norman romance de Brut by Wace and tells the story of the kings of Britain, as their legendary ancestor Brutus took refuge on the island after the fall of Troy, until the last king before the Anglo-Saxons, King Cadwallader. Brutus is the first example of English Arthurian literature; A clear emphasis in the text is placed on the times of this king. Otherwise, the Arthurian epic, which originated in the vicinity of English courts in the 12th century, is written in Anglo-Norman (cf. Marie de France, Wace). - Even before the Canterbury Chaucer had the Book of the Duchess (Book of the Duchess) written an elegy by Blanche Lancaster, also Anelida and Arcite, House of Fame (House of Fama) Bird Parliament (Parliament der Vogel), Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseide. All of these works show Italian or French influence in form and language. In Canterbury Tales, which appeared after 1388, he tells the story of a poet who makes a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury and joins 29 other pilgrims at an inn at Southwark near London. The pilgrims are on their way; To pass the time, they agree that each should tell two stories on the way there and back. The prologues to each story allow the poet to describe each pilgrim, creating a portrait of the society of the time, the "Sondri people" (verse 25), made up of different people, namely representatives of all social strata from knights to nuns to farmers. Accordingly, the stories are also different. Sometimes according to old patterns ("Knight's Tale") or look rude ("Miller's Tale"). Language styles also differ depending on the level of the storyteller. The special attraction lies not only in the quality of the stories themselves and in the unrivaled variety of genres, but also in the comments of the pilgrims, who B. feel offended if a representative of your class is portrayed negatively in the stories of your fellow travelers, and object to this in their own stories. For the means of a frame plot and the content of several stories, Chaucer relied on the Decameron by Boccaccio. The Canterbury Tales was compiled as a monumental work of 120 stories (two stories about thirty travelers each), but Chaucer completed only 22 (two of them in prose, the rest in verse) and left two unfinished. Even as a fragment, however, Chaucer's work is unique in Middle English literature.
On of the rebels. Gower takes the side of the aristocracy but the actions of Richard II are described by "the captain in vain endeavoured to direct the ship’s course". Subsequent books decry the sins of various classes of the social order: priests, friars, knights, peasants, merchants, lawyers. The last two books give advice to King Richard II and express the poet's love for England.^{[5]: xxx–lvii} As Gower admits,^[23] much of Vox Clamantis was borrowed from other authors. Macaulay refers to this as "schoolboy plagiarism"Peter classifies Mirour and Vox as "complaint literature" in the vein of Langland.
Although the outstanding quality of Chaucer's work was recognized early on, he shared his popularity with other poets during his lifetime, such as John Gower. He was known for his ability to express himself in French, Latin and English. The Confessions of Amantis, his most important English work, is a poem, divided into eight books, in which a man complains that his worship of the goddess of love has remained fruitless for too long. Venus asks him to confess to her priest, which is used as the basis for the story of over 100 poems. None of the material in these poems was new at the time—they were based on ancient models or, for example, B. Boccaccio's Decamerons—but publication in English made Gower's work popular. Contemporaries glorified Gower and Chaucer as the founders of English poetry, but it was Chaucer's works that became the model for later poets, which caused Gower's importance to decline over time. Piers Plowman (Peter Plowman) by Langland is an allegorical, alliterative work of verse from the second half of the 14th century. The poet describes a dream vision of a tower on a mountain (an allegory of heaven) and a dungeon in a gloomy valley (an allegory of hell). Between them there is a "fair field full of people", namely the human world. The poet goes in search of an allegorical figure of truth, later - the characters of Dowell, Dobet and Dobest ("succeed", "do better", "do better"); the humble plowman of the title offers himself as a guide in the first part. Piers the Plowman is, on the one hand, an instructive theological allegory that is supposed to lead to a heavenly reward, on the other hand, in his depiction of people as hunters of earthly wealth without conscience and reason, a social satire. There are over 50 different manuscripts of Langland's work, making scholarly discussion difficult. The green knight (lower left) holds his head with the hand that Sir Gawain has just cut off (lower right with an axe). At the top in the center of the picture is King Arthur. From Cotton Nero manuscript A.90b. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a verse novel written around 1400 whose authorship is disputed. It tells the story of Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, who takes on the giant Green Knight's challenge and cuts off his head. However, the victim does not die, but announces to Gawain that he will strike in a year. On the way to this duel, Gawain stops at Oathdesert Castle. When the master of the castle goes hunting, the mistress of the castle offers herself to Gawain, who at first remains chivalrous, but agrees when the lady offers him a belt capable of saving a man from death. In a duel with the Green Knight, he spares him, because Gawain took off his belt for the love of life and did not succumb to his instincts. However, Gawain blames himself for not being chivalrous, but when he returns to Arthur's court, he realizes that he is left alone with his self-criticism. Research has revealed various aspects of Sir Gawain, eg. For example, the Green Knight as an allegory of nature and Gawain as an imperfect human embodiment of Christian values, questioning Christian values and the availability of chivalric ideals, as well as aspects of comedy and a change in point of view. in the story. Sir Gawain's poet approaches Chaucer in virtuoso language and versatility of content. In the same manuscript there are three more poems by the same author, albeit with a stronger emphasis on religious aspects, namely Pearls, Purity, and Patience. John Lydgate was best known for his translations from Latin and French, namely the Book of Troy, The Pilgrimage of a Man's Life, and The Siege of Thebes, all of which are from the early 15th century. His allegories Temple of Glass and The Black Knight's Complaint emulate the works of Chaucer, whose friend and admirer was Lydgate. Next to Lydgate is the Scotsman Thomas Hockleve (also Ockleve), whose Regement of Princes or De Regimine Principum, a moralizing, didactic work he wrote for Henry V, became best known.