Lesson 24. Epic and romance of the Norman Period
The change in literary sensibility after 1100 is often characterized as a change from epic to romance. William I’s minstrel Taillefer is said to have led the Normans ashore at Hastings declaiming the Chanson de Roland. This chanson de geste (‘song of deeds’) relates the deeds of Roland and Oliver, two of the twelve peers of the emperor Charlemagne, who die resisting a Saracen ambush in the Pyrenees. Roland scorns to summon the aid of Charlemagne until all his foes are dead. Only then does he sound a blast on his ivory horn, the olifans. Primitive romance enters with some emotion-heightening detail: three archangels come to conduct Roland’s soul to heaven; later his intended bride, la bele Aude, appears for a few lines to hear of his death and die of shock. In treating death, Northern epic is reticent where romance is
flamboyant: compared with Roland’s death, the death and funeral of Beowulf are sombre, his soul’s destination not clear.
The first extant Middle English writing to be noted here is Layamon’s Brut (c.1200), a work in the Old English heroic style: this is based on the French Roman de Brut by Wace, a Norman from Jersey who in 1155 dedicated the work to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Wace, a canon of Bayeux, had in turn based his work on the Latin Historia Regum Britanniae (c.1130-6) by Geoffrey of Monmouth(d.1155). In Geoffrey’s wonderful History, the kings of Britain descend from Brutus, the original conqueror of the island of Albion, then infested by giants. This Brutus is the grandson of Aeneas the Trojan, from whom Virgil traced the kings of Rome. Brutus calls Albion ‘Britain’, after his own name; the capital is New Troy, later called London. The Romans conquer Britain, but the Britons, under Lucius, reconquer Rome. They fight bravely under King Arthuragainst the Saxon invader, but Arthur, poised to conquer Europe, has to turn back at the Alps to put down the revolt of his nephew Mordred. Fatally wounded at the battle of Camlann, Arthur is taken to the island of Avalon, whence, according to the wizard Merlin’s prophecies, he shall one day return. Geoffrey stops in the 6th century at King Cadwallader, after whom the degenerate Britons succumbed to the Saxons.
Geoffrey of Monmouth started something. ‘Everything this man wrote about Arthur’, wrote William of Newburgh in c.1190, ‘was made up, partly by himself and partly by others, either from an inordinate love of lying, or for the sake of pleasing the Britons.’ The Britons were pleased, as were the Bretons and their neighbours the Normans. It was in northern France that the legends of Arthur and his Round Table were further improved before they re-crossed the Channel to the northern half of the Norman kingdom. The Normans had conquered southern Scotland, Wales and Ireland, which were now included in the Arthurian story. Geoffrey’s confection was popular history until the Renaissance, and popular legend thereafter. It is in Geoffrey that we first read of Gog-Magog, of Gwendolen, of King Lear and his daughters, of King Cole and of Cymbeline, not to mention Arthur, the Round Table and Merlin, and the moving of Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury Plain.
Geoffrey’s legendary history of the Island of Britain was put into English by Layamon. His 14,000-line Brut makes no distinction between the British and the English, thus allowing the English to regard Arthur, their British enemy, as English.
Layamon was a priest from Worcestershire, an area where old verse traditions lasted. His talent was for narrative, and his battles have a physicality found later in Barbour’s Bruce (1375) and in the alliterative Morte (c.1400). These qualities came
from Old English verse, but Layamon’s metre is rough, employing the old formulas with less economy, mixing an irregular alliteration with internal rhyme. Arthur’s last words are:
‘And Ich wulle varen to Avalun, to vairest alre maidene,
to Argante there quene, alven swithe sceone,
and heo scal mine wunden makien alle isunde,
al hal me makien mid haleweiye drenchen.
And seothe Ich cumen wulle to mine kineriche
and wunien mid Brutten mid muchelere wunne.’
And I shall fare to Avalon, to the fairest of all maidens, to their queen Argante, the very beautiful elf-lady; and she shall heal all my wounds, make me whole with holy infusions. And afterwards I shall come to my kingdom and dwell with the Britons with much rejoicing.
Whereas Beowulf’s body is burnt, and Roland’s soul is escorted to heaven by angels, Arthur’s body is wafted by elf-ladies to Avalon to be healed - and to return. This promise is repeated in Malory’s Morte Darthur (c.1470).
The change during the 11th-13th centuries from Gestes (songs of res gestae, Lat. ‘things done’, ‘doings’) to romances of chivalry is part of the rise of feudalism. A knight’s duty to serve God and the King had a religious orientation and a legal romancea kind of medieval story, originally from stories written in romauns, or vernacular French; ‘romance’ is the adjective for languages deriving from Latin. As a genre term, it means ‘marvellous story’; its adjective is also ‘romance’, to avoid confusion with ‘Romantic’, a late-l8th-century term for writing which imitates medieval romance. (The use of ‘romance’ for ‘love-story’ is modern.)
ArthurIf he was historical, Arthur defeated the pagan Saxons in battle at Mons Badonicus (c.510). The Arthur of literature belongs to the age of chivalry and the Crusades after 1100.
FeudalismThe codification of the roles, land-rights, privileges and duties of the Germanic warrior-class, the French-speaking Normans who ruled Britain and, with the Franks, much of Europe during the period of the Crusades.
CrusadesThe series of expeditions from western Europe to the eastern Mediterranean to recapture Jerusalem, taken by the Turks from the Byzantines in 1071. First Crusade, 1095-1104 (Jerusalem taken in 1099); Second Crusade, 1147-9; Third Crusade, 1189-92 (Jerusalem lost in 1187, recovered in 1229, lost in 1291). The Crusades ended in defeat by the Turks at Nicopolis 396).
KnightThe Old English cniht was simply a boy or youthful warrior, as in Maldon, line 9. ‘Knight’ began to acquire its modern sense only after the success of the mounted warrior.
Chivalry(from Fr. chevalerie, from med. Lat. caballus, ‘horse’) A system of honourable conduct expected of a knight or ‘gentle’ (that is, noble) man, involving military service to Christ and king, protection of the weak, and avoidance of villainy (from Fr. vilain, base; ME villein, a churl).
force; it was not just an honour-code in literature. Chivalrywas historical as well as literary; its cultural prestige was spread through Romance. Romances were tales of adventurous and honourable deeds - deeds of war, at first; but knights also fought to defend ladies, or fought for ladies, introducing a new ethos. Although romance took popular forms, it began as a courtly genre, a leisure pursuit - like feasting, hunting, reading, playing chess, or love itself. The warrior gave way to the knight, and when the knight got off his horse he wooed the lady. In literature the pursuit of love grew ever more refined.
Lesson 25. Test
Test. The Normans.
1. What was the reason why William started a war with England?
2. What was William called before and after he conquered England?
3. Who was the last Anglo-Saxon king?
4. Who promised the English crown to William and why?
5. When did Edward the Confessor die? Who was at his bedside?
6. When did the battle of Hastings begin?
7. Why were the Normans better prepared for the battle?
8. What was “Doomsday Book”?
9. How did Harold die?
10. What did William build and why?
11. When did William die?
12. What happened during the funeral of William I?
Lesson26 - 27.
The rise of the West
At early 1000s nobody could predict the European civilization would become powerful, would support large armies, conquer lands and set up colonies. Those times the most advanced civilizations were in China, India and Middle East. Yet, within 500 years the backward states and principalities of Europe would be transformed into the most influential civilization of the world. The Europeans organized themselves into large political units called nations. Kings and Queens of the nations were able to do things that feudal nobles could not, such as pay for expensive overseas voyages, build great navies and carried their culture around the world.
How did the Europeans become so strong? Times changed. Population grew, cities began to grow rapidly, the separated nobles needed the strong central power to make the people loyal. Trade and commerce needed safer and better ways to move about but rocky, muddy roads were full of bandits who attacked the travelers. The merchants supported the central power with their growing property and this new source of wealth helped kings depend less on their nobles and Church. With more tax money they could pay professional soldiers and officers, keep large army.As kings gained power, they built up the new rules for governing their countries: freed people from many duties for their nobles, protected merchants along the roads, made laws practically the same for everyone. In sum, kings were building bigger, stronger units called nations.
A nation has three important characteristics which help the nation to improve their society and become stronger. First, its central government is strong enough to defend itself against enemies and keep order inside the borders. Second, a nation's people are set off from neighboring groups by language, religion, traditions, ways of life. Third, the people are loyal to and proud of their group. This feeling is called nationalism or patriotism.
The Islamic civilization tried to give unity to the vast Empire spreading the cultural, religious traditions throughout the lands but they were too far from the central government, and the Empire consisted of too mane peoples different in their ideas and lifestyles. Furthermore, the religion of Islam, the governing provided by the caliphs claimed to control the every sphere of human activities, the every stage of personal life, without any freedom for personal development.. Those who had any doubts in contradictory statements were blamed by both friends and officials, and were strictly punished. It should be also mentioned that people of the Islamic Empire enjoyed of many comforts Inaccessible for the Europeans, due to the better climate, rich natural resources, vigorous trade, improvements in agriculture. There is no stagnation in History, there can be only progress or decay. Too many comforts played a bad trick on ancient civilizations.
In Spain and Portugal people fought to get rid of Moors. In 1492 the Christians pushed out the Moors. These countries became independent. Several regions of Northern Europe had become nations by 1500. Under Ivan III and Ivan IV, Russia freed from Mongol rule. However, the German Kings made a mistake in setting up the holy Roman Empire, they could not rule Italy, neither Germany, nor Italy gained political unity.
England became one nation, as soon as William the Conqueror began building strong centralized government. England did not become one nation in 1066, and William did not make it one. But William did lay a firm base for a strong monarchy.
Topics to discuss: 1) How William became a king of England 2)Domesday book
The age of Exploration
The age of exploration (1400 -1700)
In the middle ages there was a growth in trade between Europe and East. Italian merchants made the largest profits of all because they had almost complete control over the Mediterranean sea. Merchants in other countries saw that there might be the way to change this. For that England, Portugal, France and Spain were interested in breaking this monopoly; they wanted to trade with the East themselves. Although Columbus failed to reach India by going westward, he made a much more important discovery of the New World. One of the first to realize that the newly discovered lands to the west were not part of Asia was Amerigo Vespucci. He made 4 voyages to the New World between 1497 and 1503. He believed that he was the first to set foot on South American mainland. Some historians have doubts about the claims of Vespucci, but the name has remained.
The New World soon became very important. Spaniards fanned out in search of gold, English, French and Dutch explorers looked for the Northwest Passage. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the British in 1588 and Francis Drake’s voyage around the world, the second such voyage after Magellan’s – the British were encouraged to claim the new territories as their colonies. By 1640 about 60 000 English people had moved to the New World. The English colonies in America grew strong. This was partly because England allowed religious minorities settle there.
The age of exploration led to a great leap in different sciences. World ecology changed as new plants and animals were introduced. Europeans learned to eat potaoes, oranges, lemons, strawberries, pineapples, bananas and peanuts. The growing popularity of coffee led to the development of coffee houses which became centres of literary and political discussions. But the greatest change took place in the New World. The Europeans brought wheat, rye, oats, rice. They brought the horse, donkey and the mule to carry heavy loads. They brought cattle for milk, the ox to pull the plow, as the pig, the goat, wool-bearing sheep and barnyard chickens. At the age the Europeans started the revolutionary changes which are still with us.
The period between the 16th and 18th centuries is commonly called as mercantilism. This period was associated with geographic discoveries by merchant overseas traders; the European colonization of the Americas, and the rapid growth of the overseas trade. Mercantilism was a system of trade for profit. He earliest forms of mercantilism date back to the Roman Empire. When the Roman Empire expanded, the mercantilist economy expanded throughout Europe. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, most of the European economy became controlled by the local feudal powers, and mercantilism collapsed there. However mercantilism persisted in Arabia. Due to its proximity to neighbouring countries, the Arabs established trade routes to Egypt, Persia and Byzantine. As Islam spread in the 7th century, mercantilism spread rapidly to Spain, Portugal, Northern Africa and Asia. Mercantilism finally revived in Europe in the 14th century.
By the late 18th century, mercantilism was I crisis: mercantile activity could not produce sufficient wealth to pay for military expenditures of the states that depended on commerce. This crisis intensified with the industrial revolution. In Great Britain, the home of Industrial Revolution, a new group of economic theorists led by David Hume and Adam Smith in the mid 18th century challenged the fundamental mercantilist doctrines as the belief that the amount of the world’s wealth remained constant and that a state could only increase its wealth at the expense of other countries. The concept of capitalism has evolved over time.
Economic system in which wealth and the means of producing wealth are privately owned and controlled is capitalism. In capitalism, the land, labor, investments, distribution, income, pricing, production and supply of goods are primarily determined by private decision in a market economy largely free of government intervention. A distinguishing feature of capitalism is that each person owns his or her own labor and therefore is allowed to sell the use of it to employers.