PART ONE: EARLY AND MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE
Chapter 1 The Making of England
1. The early inhabitants in the island now we call England were Britons(primitive people), a tribe of Celts(凯尔特人). From the Britons the island got its name of Britain, the land of Britons.
2. In 55 B.C., Britain was invaded by Julius Caesar, the Roman conqueror.(78A.D--410A.D.)
①The Roman occupation lasted for about 400 years, during which the Romans, for military purpos, built a network of highways, later called the Roman roads.
②Along the roads grew up scores of towns, and London, one of them, became an important trading centre.
③With the Roman conquest the Roman mode of life came across to Britain also. Roman theatres and baths quickly ro in the towns.
④Christianity was introduced to Britain.
3. Three tribes from Northern Europe: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain. By the 7th century, 7 small kingdoms were combined into a united kingdom called England, or, the land of Angles.
The three dialects spoken by them naturally grew into a single language called 先生的英文Anglo-Saxon, or 我要射啦Old English, which is quite different from the English that we know today.
4. The Anglo-Saxon period witnesd a transition from tribal society to feudalism.
Chapter 2 Beowulf
1. English literature began with the Anglo-Saxon ttlement in England. Of Old English literature, five relics are still prerved. All of them are poems, or, songs by the Anglo-Saxon minstrels who sang of the heroic deeds of old time to the chiefs and warriors in the feasting-hall. Four are short fragments of long poems.
One long poem of over 3000 lines is Beowulf, the national epic of the English people.
2. The story of Beowulf
Beowulf is the nephew of Hygelac(赫依拉), King of the Geats(高特), a people in Jutland(日德兰), Denmark.
Hrothgar(赫斯加), King of the Danes
英语qq网名
Grendel(格伦德尔), a terrible monster
①Beowulf sails for Denmark with fourteen companions and offers to fight Grendel.
②Old she-monster comes to avenge Grendel's death. She is also killed.
③Beowulf bids farewell to his houhold and goes to ek the fire dragon with eleven companions. The dragon is killed at last. But Beowulf is hopelessly wounded.
3. Analysis of its content
①Beowulf is a folk legend brought to England by Anglo-Saxon from their continental homes.
mid autumn festival②It was written down in the tenth century.
③It is partly-historical and partly-legendary.
④Its main stories(the fights with monsters)are evidently folk legends of primitive Northern tribes.
Beowulf reflects the features of the tribal society of ancient times.yixun
垫片英文4. Features of Beowulf
①the u of 云翳alliteration: Certain accented words in a line begin with the same consonant sound. There are generally 4 accents in a line, three of which show alliteration, and it is the initial sound of the third accented syllable that normally determines the alliteration.
②the u of metaphors and of understatements
Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Literature:
Anglo-Saxon literature, that is, the Old English literature is at most exclusively a ver literature in oral form. It could be pasd down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Its creator for the most part is unknown. It was only given a written form long after its composition.
Chapter 3 Feudal England
1)The Norman Conquest
blot1. King Alfred the Greatla rochelle(阿尔弗雷德王)
More important as a literary work is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(盎格鲁--撒克逊编年史), written under his encouragement and supervision, which begins with Caesar's conquest and is a monument of Old English pro.
2. The French-speaking Normans under Duke William came in 1066.(Norman Conquest)
He pushed England well on its way to feudalism, and the Norman Conquest marks the establishment of feudalism in England.
3. The scholar wrote in Latin and the courtier in French. There were almost no written literature in English for a time. Chronicles and religious poems were in Latin. Romances, the prominent kind of literature in the Anglo-Norman period, were at first all in French.
By the end of the fourteenth century, Normans and English intermingled. English was once more the dominant speech in the country.
2)Feudal England
在线同义词词典
1. The chief feature of the society was distinct division into class, mainly two class: landlords and peasants.
2. The miries of peasants: Black Death(1348-1349), a Statute of Laborers, war expenditure(the war between England and France for 40 years), a poll-tax
3. The Rising of 1381: Wat Tyler(沃特.泰勒) and John Ball(约翰.保尔)
The peasants' rising had shaken the feudal system in England to the root.
