28-8-2014

Medieval English Literature

VALERIA

NORMA

KARINA

MERCURY

CYNEWULFIAN MAGAZINE

Medieval English Literature

Britain’s first experience of a literate civilization came in 55 B.C. when Julius

Caesar’s military expedition from across the Channel initiated the

Romanization of this part of the known world.

Roman civic organization created an urban civilization on the Roman model

within the conglomeration of small local Celtic tribal units.

The Romans encouraged the chiefs and leading families to adopt their way

of life and to have their sons educated in the Roman manner.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST AND LATER

The Normans brought to England their northern dialect of the French

language, and their social and political dominance imposed this dialect on

the almost exclusively Germanic language of the conquered English as the

norm of educated and aristocratic communication.

One of the most distinctive features of the later Middle Ages in England and

in Europe was the change that came about in institutions of education.

After elementary schooling in cathedral a boy would enter university at the

age of about fourteen, and spend seven years or so equipping himself for

career in the church or the administration of the realm.

Many poems, in the form in which we have them were not written down until

perhaps two and one-half centuries after their composition.

The First Crusade," launched in 1096, was the first in a series of holy wars

that profoundly affected the ideology and culture of Christian Europe.

The selections under "Arthur and Gawain" trace how French writers in the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries transformed the Legendary Histories of

Britain (NAEL 8 , 1.117–128) into the narrative genre that we now call

"romance."