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Apart from Beowulf, the most important examples of the oldest English poetry are to be found in the works of Caedmon ['kEdmэn](Кэдмон) and Cynewul ['kinэwulf] {Кюневульф ), both of whom belong to the north, and to the period immediately following the conversion of the Anglo - Saxons to Christianity, which began at the end of the sixth century.[5]

Caedmon, who died about 680, was a servant attached to the monastery of Whitby ['witbi] in Yorkshire. According to a pretty tale told by the Venerable Bede [bi:d](достопочтенный Бэда ), the power of verse came to him suddenly as a divine gift. He had never been able to sing to the harp as others did in festive gatherings in the monastery hall, and when his turn came round, he had always been used to retire in humiliation. But one night, having gone to the stables to look after the horses of which he had charge, he fell asleep, and an angel appeared to him in a vision, and told him to sing. Then when he asked, "what shall I sing?" the heavenly visitor replied, "Sing the beginning of created things;" and waking, he found himself, to astonishment, endowed with the faculty of poetry. Three free paraphrases of scripture which have come down to us in a manuscript of the tenth century, have been attributed to him; one dealing with the creation and the fall; the second, with the exodus from Egypt; the third with the history of Daniel; but it is now believed that a considerable portion of these poems, if not the whole of them, is the work not of Caedmon himself but of his imitators. They were first printed about 1650 by an acquaintance of Milton, and it has been thought, though there is no proof of this, that the great poet may have taken hints from the Genesis (Книга Бытия) in writing Paradise Lost (Потерянный Рай).

A miraculous element also enters into the story of Cynewulf's career. Born, it is conjectured between 720 and 730, he was in earlier life, as he himself tells us in his Dream of the Rood, a wandering gleeman and a lover of pleasure, but converted by a vision of the cross, he dedicated himself henceforth to religious themes. His works include a poem called Christ, treating of the Incarnation (Воплощение), the Descent into Hell (Схождение в Ад), the Ascension (Вознесение), and the Last Judgment (Страшный Суд ); Elene, an account of the finding of the true cross, according to the legend, by Helena, the mother of Constantine; and Juliana, a tale of Christian martyrdom.

Anglo - Saxon poetry flourished most in the north; While generally sacred in subject, and profoundly earnest in feeling, Anglo - Saxon poetry is full of a love of adventure and fighting. A fondness for the sea, ingrained in English character, is another striking feature of it.

Prose developed later in the south. In general, while interesting from the linguistic and antiquarian points of view, the prose writings which have come down to us possess but little value as literature. The greatest monument of the Old English prose is the Anglo - Saxon Chronicle, which King Alfred ( 849 - 901) transformed into a national history, and which was so continued till 1154, when it closed with the record of the death of King Stephen [sti:vn]. Among the works rendered by King Alfred into " the language which we all understand" (to adopt his own phrase) was the Latin Ecclesiastical History (Церковная история английского народа) of the Venerable Bede, or Baeda (673 - 735). The Venerable Bede was an Anglo -Saxon monk. At the age of nine he moved to one of the monasteries in England where he studied and tought for the rest of his life. His books on a wide variety of subjects were a great source of knowledge of early English History. The most famouse one is Ecclesiastical History of the English People (finished in 731). After Bede died in 735, his disciple Cuthbert wrote a letter that the dying man sang the verse of St. Paul the Apostole telling of the fearfulness of falling into hands of the God. Here is an extract from Bede's death song:

Fore thaem neidfaerae naenig uuirthit

thoncsnotturra, than him tharf sie

to ymbhycggannae aer his hiniongae

hwaet his gastae godaes aeththae yflaes

aefter deothdaege doemid uueorthae

A literal prose version of this might be:

"Before that sudden journey no one is wiser in thought than he needs to be, in considering, before his depature, what will be adjudged to his soul, of good or evil, after his death - day".

LECTURE 2

Anglo - Norman Period between 1100 - 1350

In Europe this was the age of the great crusades [ kru:seids] and the period of the dominance of French literature. In England feudalism was established, Parlament came into into being, Oxford and Cambridge rose as strong universities.

In 1066 William, the Duke of Normandy, began to gather an army to invade Britain. William also asked the Roman Pope for support. He promised to strengthen the Pope's power over the British Church. And the Roman Pope blessed his campaign and called it a holy war. The Normans, who lived in the northern part of France, were a people of Scandinavian origin (hence the word Norman, i. e. Man of the North) but they had acquired French language, customs and culture. The pretext for the invasion was William' s claims to the English throne. He was related to the king who died in 1066. The king who died in 1066 had no children and Duke William cherished the hope that he would succeed to the English throne. But another relative of the deceassed king, the Anglo - Saxon Earl, Harold, was chosen. William of Normandy claimed that England belonged to him and he began preparations for a war to fight for the Crown. William sent messengers far and wide to invite the fighting men of Western Europe to join his forces. No pay was offered, but William promised land to all who would support him. William mustered a numerous army which consisted not only of the Norman barons and knights but of the knights from other parts of France. Many big sailing - boats were built to carry the army across the Channel.

William landed in the south of England and the battle between the Normans and the Anglo- Saxons took place on the 14th of October 1066 at a little village in the neighbourhood of the town now called Hastings.

The Normans outnumbered the Anglo - Saxon forces, they were all men for whom fighting was the main occupation in life. The battle went on all day. The Anglo - Saxons were encircled, a great many of them were killed, and horses trampled down their dead bodies.

The victory at Hastings was only the beginning of the Conquest. It took several years for William to subdue the whole of England. Soon after the victory at Hastings the Normans encircled London and the Witenagemot had to acknowledge William as the lawful king of England. Thus the Norman duke became king of England - William I or, as he was generally known, William the Conqueror. He ruled England for 21 years (1066 - 1087). During the first five years of his reign the Normans had put down many rebellions in different parts of the country. The largest rebellions took place in 1069 and 1071 in the North - East where the free peasantry was more numerous than in other regions of the country. After several uprisings in the North, William who was a fierce and ruthless, determined to give the Anglo - Saxons a terrible lesson. The lands of Northumbria were laid waste. With lessons of such severe punishment the conquerors meant to keep the people in obedience, to intimidate (запугать) them, so that they should not dare to rise against Norman rule. A monk wrote in the Anglo - Saxon Chronicle: " The King William was severe beyond all measure to those people who resisted his will. The earls who resisted him were kept in chains. He deprived bishops of their power and lands, and abbats of their abbacies, and cast earls into prison <<...>>".

The victorious Normans made up the new aristocracy, who spoke a Norman dialect of French, a tongue of Latin origin. Norman - French became the official language of the state. It was the language of the ruling class spoken at court; it was the language of the lawyers, and all the official documents were written in French or in Latin. The richer Anglo - Saxons found it convenient to learn to speak the language of the rulers. But the peasants and townspeople spoke English. Latin was used for learned works, French for courtly literature, and English chiefly for popular works - religious Plays, metrical romances, and popular ballads.

Writings in native English were few. The last entry in the Anglo -Saxon Chronicles was made at Peterborough in 1154. About 1170 a long didactic poem, the Poema Morale, appeard. The Drama made its first major forward leap in this period. The first recorded MIRACLE PLAY in England, the Play of St. Catherine, was performed about 1100. By 1300 the MISTERY PLAYS were moving outside (за пределы) the churches and into the hands of the town guilds. The establishment of the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1311 led to the extension of the Cyclic Dramas and to the use of movable stages or PAGEANTS.

Native English poetry, both in the older alliterative tradition and in the newer French forms, continued to develop. About 1250 came " The Owl and the Nightingale ", a debat poem; about 1300 came the heavily didactic Cursor Mundi, and around 1340 the popular The Pticke of Conscience (Пробудитель совести), describing the misery of earth and glory of heaven.

From the Norman Conquest to the beginning of the thirteenth century English language had a severe struggle to maintain itself as a written language, and as a consequence, English literature almost ceased to exist.

During the years of the Norman rule, the English language borrowed very many words from French and thus greatly enriched itself. Thus the vocabulary of the English language was enlarged due to such Norman - French words dealing with feudal relations as manor, noble, baron, serve, command, obey; or words relating to administration and law, such as charter, council, accuse, court, crime; or such military terms as arms, troops, guard, navy, battle, victory and other words characterizing the way of life and customs of the Norman aristocracy. It is at this time that the English language lost most of the flexions inherited by the Old English from Anglo - Saxon and develop new form and constructions.

A rapid consolidation of the English language and culture begins at the middle of the 14th century with the commencement of the Hundred Year's War against France. This war is called the Hundred Year's War because it lasted over a hundred years. Edward III, the king of England, wished to make himself king of France as well. Wishing to make his people believe that he defended English trade, the king made war with France in 1337.

Prof. W. H. Gudson in his book An Outline on English Literature remarks: "The period between the Conquest and Chaucer is, however, much more important from the point of view of our language than from that of our literature. During these three hundred years, while little was being produced in prose or verse of any intrinsic value, modern English was gradually evolving out of the conflict of opposing tongues, and assuming national rank as speech of the whole people" (p. 14). Norman French long continued, endeed, to be the only recognised official language and to a large extent, the language of fashion. But by the beginning of the fourteenth century it had entirely lost its hold upon English life at large, and the complete triumph of English was signalised by a statute of 1362, which proclaimed that henceforth all proceedings in the law courts should be in that language instead of French. To trace the stages of the language evolution does not, of course, fall within the scope of a primer of literary history. It is enough for us to note that thus while French was disappearing, there was as yet no standarted form of the new English tongue to take its place. English was broken up into dialets. There was a Northern English, a Midland English, and a Southern English, which differed fundamentally from one another, and which were yet subdivided within themselves into numerous minor varieties. In this confusion, little by little, East Midland English tended to gain ascendancy, because it was the speech of the capital and of the two centres of learning, Oxford and Cambridge. Then when Chaucer began to write, he chose this as his vehicle, and it was largely on account of his influence that what had hitherto (до сих пор) been only one of several provincial dialects attained the dignity of the national language.

Similar to the facts we observe in the history of the language, are the facts of the of the history of literature. The Anglo - Norman period was a period of the flourishing of feudal culture. Feudality introduced into the history of European literature a new genre - the so - called romances. The term itself implies that this genre originated among the peoples who spoke Romanic languages. As a matter of fact, romances were brought to England by the medieval poets called trouvers ("finders") who came from France with the Norman conquerors. Later in England such poets were called minstrels and their art of composing romances and ballads and singing them to the accompaniment of a lute - the art of minstrelsy.

The early English romances were, as a rule, composed in rhymed verse, and the language used for them was the Norman - French. At the beginning of the 13th century there appear chroniclers and minstrels who write romances in Old English.

The subject matter of the romances are the adventures of knights, or of legendary heroes of the ancient times, whose characters and feats are described, nevertheless, in the true manner of the middle ages. The heroism and courage of knights as well as their virtuousness and uprightness of dealing are celebrated in these poems.

In attempt to justify their claims to England, the Norman feudal lords maintained that they were the lawful heirs of the ancient Britons who had left Britain under the onset of the Anglo - saxon invaders in the 5th century. The Anglo- Norman minstrels wrote many romances based on Celtic legenda, especially on those concerning King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

King Arthur was a historical character and the national hero of the Celts, became in the romances an ideal feudal king, surrounded by his faithful vassals - knights "without fear and reproach".

The cycle of tales about King Arthur are the most typical of feudal - aristocratic verse for entertainment. Here the knightly class found the mirror in which it liked to believe its best traits were reflected: personal loyalty, idealisation of women beloning to the same class, bravery indefense of the week. The less admirable traits also appear from time to time: brutality, glorification of bloodshed, contempt for women not noble or fair; contempt for the lower classes; contempt and hatred of non- Christians, and above all an unceasing rivalry for the possession of landed estates;

While romantic literature was proliferating in the domain of entertainent, works of religious instruction were also multiplying in the vernacular. Collections of homilies and saints' lives became popular among population. The South English Legendary (late 13th century) is one of the large collections of this sort, containing stories of the saints and events. Ormulum, a series of metrical homilies, in short lines without either rime or alliteration, by a Lincolnshire priest named Orm; and a prose treatise, the Ancren Riwle (about 1225) or Rule of Anchoresses, prepared by some unknown writer for the guidance of three ladies entering the religious life. A charming dialogue poem, The Owl and the Nightingale (about 1220), in which the two birds discuss their respective merits, is historically interesting, because it discards alliteration and adopts French end - rimes. This is the only other piece of thirteenth century literature which calls mention.

We thus come round to Chaucer, the first of really national English poets.

The list of literature used

1.Аникст А. История английской литературы. -М. 1956. - С. 5 - 14.

2. Gilinsky J., Khvostenko L., Weise A. Studies In English and American Literature and Style. - Leningrad, 1956. P. 9 - 14.

3. Zaitseva S. Early Britain. - M.: Prosveshcheniye, 1975. P. 14 - 79.

4. Hudson W. H. An Outline History of English Literature. Bombay.: B. I. Publications, 1964. P. 1 -13.

5.C. Hugh Holman, W. Harmon. A handbook to literature by. 6th edition. New York, London;

Activities

Look at three lines from BEOWULF which are written in Old English. Can you find any words which seem familiar ti you? Then read a modern English verse translation.

Hwet, we Gar – Dena in geardagum

pe odcyninga prym gefru non

nu pa Epelingas ellen fremedon

Translation

Hear! We have herd tell of the glory of the

Danish kings in days of your, and of how

those princes performed deeds of bravery!

№ п/п	Ф.И.О. полностью	Какое образова- тельное учреждение профессионального образования закончил (ла), специальность по диплому	Ученая степень, ученое звание	Стаж научно-педагогической рабо- ты, годы	Основное место рабо­ты, долж­ность	Условия при- влечения в РГЭУ «РИНХ» (штатный, внутренний совместитель, внешний со­вместитель, почасовик)	Повышение
квалификации
Всего	В т.ч.
Педагоги- ческий	По дисцип- лине
	Корнейчук Светлана Петровна	РГПИ (1986) Учитель русского языка и литературы с доп. Специальностью учитель английского языка Асп. РГУ (2007) К. филол. н.	К. филолг. н.				РГЭУ (РИНХ) ФлиЖ, кафедра ЛиМКК	Штатный сотрудник

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