Part I. English Literature of the Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066)
1.The Historical Background:
Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, the Celtic tribes lived in what is now
Britain. In the middle of the first century B.C., Roman troops led by Julius Caesar invaded Britain, then Claudius conquered it in A.D. 43 and Britain became a Roman province till the beginning of the fifth century. During their rule the Romans built roads, walls, garrisons, villas, etc., and the Celtic became either slaves or unfree cultivators of the land. Then, in early 5th century, as the Germanic races attacked and overran the Roman Empire, the Roman garrisons in Britain withdraw.
Not long after that, in the mid-5th白菜肉丝 century, the tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes
(later known simply as Anglo-Saxons) migrated to England from the European Continent, or more specifically from western Denmark and the northwest coast of Germany. They ttled
down there and soon ruled over the whole of England, enslaving some of the native Celts while driving the others to the hills north and west, to Wales and Scotland and even Ireland across the a. Thus began the Anglo-Saxon period in English history.
While still on the Continent, the Anglo-Saxons were in the later stages of tribal society. Their common occupation was agriculture, with a small number of them already t apart as professional soldiers or as hereditary military leaders. Some of the leaders gradually became thanes or the nobility and a few of them ro to be chieftains or even kings. Settlement in Britain hastened the disintegration of tribalism as the tribal chieftains and thanes窑湾 had the 简笔画小熊posssion of large tracts of land and grew in wealth and power while the free farmers became more and more dependent economically.
By the 7th century, ven kingdoms of fairly large territories emerged out of more numerous smaller kingdoms and there were wars among them. Of the ven Mercia and then Northumberland in the north flourished particularly in wealth and culture in the 7th and 8th centuries, and Wesx in the south became a more important centre of military a
nd political power and assumed supremacy in culture and learning in the 9th and 19th centuries. Beginning from late 8th century the Danes came to invade England and for more than a century they made intermittent raids on the eastern coast of Britain and occupied for fairly long periods of time large areas of northeastern England. In late 9th century King Alfred the Great (A.D. 840-901？) of the Kingdom of Wesx successfully led the English people in a protracted war against the invading Danes who were threatening to overrun the whole country. The invaders were repuld and gradually all the kingdoms in England were united into one.
In early 11th century the Danes again came to invade England and under Canute they conquered and ruled over all England for a quarter of a century (A.D. 1017-1042). Then, following the expulsion of the Danes the Normans from Normandy in northern France came to invade England in 1066, and under the leadership of William the Duke of Normandy who claimed the succession to the English throne they succeeded in defeating the English troops and conquering the whole of England. The “Norman Conquest” marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.油葫芦怎么养
In late Saxon England feudalism assumed definite shape, with the king at the top, then the earls and the thanes, then the freemen and last the rfs. Agriculture developed and trade expanded. Towns came into existence and wealth became more concentrated. With the Norman Conquest feudalism underwent further development.
The Anglo-Saxons were heathen upon their first arrival in England. In A.D. 597 the first missionaries led by St. Augustine came to England from Rome and converted King Ethelbert of Kent, and within a century all England was Christianized. Churches were built and the monks were among the most learned in the country. The heathen mythology was gradually replaced by the Christian religion, but heathen concepts of nature and the supernatural persisted for a considerable period of time and often were curiously mixed with Christian views and expressions. Th单词学习is phenomenon found its expression not infrequently in literary works of the Anglo-Saxon period.
2.“Beowulf” the National Epic of the Anglo-Saxon:
The earliest poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, like that of many other peoples, originated fro
m the collective efforts of the people, usually while they were working or resting from their labors. Then the stories bad on history or legend or contemporaneous events would be narrated orally and often sung, during festivities and other occasions, chiefly for entertainment. Some of the more interesting of the narratives would pass from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, and as they were told by different singers at different times, additions or deletions were introduced in the successive rehandlings of the oral tradition of each epic.
With the disintegration of tribal society and the appearance of class divisions, professional narrators or singers of the popular stories emerged. They were known as “scops” or “gleemen” among the Anglo-Saxons, the former being poet-singers who sang poetic tales of their own making while the latter mere retellers of epics already in circulation. At first the “scops” and “gleemen小学毕业作文” also rved as priests gibing spells or citing incantations on various solemn occasions but later they became simply wandering minstrels traveling extensively from one chieftain’s court to that of another, providing entertainment with their singing. Two of the earliest Anglo-Saxon lyrics extant, “Widsith” (
probably of the 7th century) and “简爱结局Deor’s Lament” (probably of the 8th century), are good literary specimens that illustrate the life and social position of the later “scops” or “gleemen”五肽.
