Old English heroic poetry
Heroes and heroines
The Legends of King Arthur
Damsels in distress. Doomed and forbidden love. Epic battles and quests in pursuit of strange creatures.
He pulled a sword from a stone to become the greatest king that Britain has ever known.
whether or not King Arthur was a real man or entirely a work of fiction.
Evidence for a historical King Arthur is very scant.
the first reference comes in another historical chronicle, written a few hundred years later.
Geoffrey of Monmouth is the first known writer to identify Arthur as a king of Britain, and he is also the first to outline Arthur’s genealogy.
Wace’s Roman de Brut is a poem about King Arthur written in Anglo-Norman.
It`s not known whether or not Arthur was real, but we do know that countless authors have used his legends to explore their own anxieties, fears and hopes.
Myths,monsters and the imagination
Beowulf
one of the most important surviving works of medieval literature
the longest Old English poem and – at just over 3,000 lines – preserves about one tenth of surviving English verse from before the Norman Conquest.
There isn’t a lot we know about who composed it, or why, or even when.
only one surviving copy from the whole of the medieval period – the manuscript now known as British Library Cotton MS Vitellius A XV.
one way of reading Beowulf and the monsters at its centre: the monsters are both physical threats to the poem’s humans, and figurative ones as well (First monster was Grendel)
Victoria Symons puzzles out the meaning of monsters
the story of a heroic man who kills three monsters and then dies
possibility to investigate the boundaries between the real and imaginary in medieval literature
Faith and religion
Dream visions
the dream vision as a form was as popular in the late medieval period as the novel is today.
was a rich and varied form
The flexibility of the rules which govern the world of dreams meant that the form could be used for consolation, advisory literature, religious and philosophical explorations, courtly comedy, social critique, mystical experience or feminist polemic.
The Dream of Scipio
one of the most influential works on medieval dream theory.
writen by Tullius, which is the medieval name for the Roman writer and orator, Cicero
usually narrative and generally written in verse
The anonymous late 14th-century poem
Pearl
uses the dream vision to reflect on the nature of grief and loss
Medieval drama and the mystery plays
They were performed in public spaces by ordinary people, and organised and funded by guilds of craftsmen and merchants.
The York plays
one of the four complete surviving medieval play cycles.
series of short plays
The plays were performed together in a sequence to form a narrative that begins with the story of Adam and Eve and ends with the Last Judgement.
The mistery plays
The mystery plays are sequences of performances, sometimes referred to as ‘cycle plays’ because they make up a cycle of 48 surviving short playlets.
The mystery plays gave guilds the opportunity to advertise and show off their wares.
Holkham Bible Picture Book
The plays were usually performed on separate pageant wagons, with wheels, so that they could be moved.
We don’t know who wrote these plays, and there is evidence of some that existed and were performed
Form and genre
Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge
The anonymous author of The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, the first work of theatre criticism in English, was concerned that religious drama made a mockery of the work of God and the story of the crucifixion of Jesus.
Morality plays are allegorical
usually quite short and were performed by semi-professionals who relied on public support.
Dream visions, heroic poetry, riddles and mystery plays: approach medieval literature through the lens of form and genre.