ANGLOSPHERE union-jack

DEFINITION


  • A set of people who share the same language, traditions, culture, history.

COUNTRIES:
UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, USA

3 Types of English:


Literary works:

  • Beowulf
  • The Canterbury tales
  • Hamlet

HISTORY

  • Celts (?)
  • Romans (43 CE)
  • Anglos/Saxons/Jutes (450 CE)
  • Vikings
  • Normans (1066 CE)

Modern English
(Early modern English
and Late Modern English)

Celts: tribes of farmers and hunters, they communicated with runes, and they built large stone constructions (including Stonehenge). Druids (priests) they were in charge of the trasmission of culture. stonehenge

Romans: They built roads and buildings and conquered most of the territory, except the Northern area: they built the Adrian's wall to protect their territory from the North. hadrians-wall-1

Anglo-Saxons: Germanic tribes of warriors. They settled in England and pushed the Celts in the Northern parts of the territory (Ireland, Scotland and Wales). They spoke Old English, the language of Beowulf. M140-Anglo-Saxon-Fyrd-extra-big-5923-888

Vikings: they brought Old Norse

Normans: they spoke French and Latin and made them become the languages of the ruling classes (the court, noblemen, church) and English became the language of the lower classes. They brought the feudal system. In the picture: William the Conqueror, the first Norman king. portrait-of-william-the-conqueror-cropped-3

The Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer)

  • collection of poems written in Middle English
  • Despite the main languages for literature were Latin and French, Chaucer chose the dialects of Cambridge, Oxford and London and he made them become the national language.
  • By choosing English, he makes 2 important social operations: on the one hand, he shows people that high literary content can be expressed in English; on the other hand, he makes literature accessible to everyone.
  • Chaucer makes a very accurate portrait of the medieval society, representing various social classes.
    Plot ❗ A group of pilgrims meets in an Inn (The Tabard Inn) in London. They decide to begin their pilgrimage to Thomas Becket's shrine the day after and they also decide that they will tell 2 stories each: one on their way to Canterbury, one on their way back. The best storyteller will win a free dinner. (very similar to Boccaccio's Decameron plot).
  • Themes: ⭐
  • the pilgrimage can be compared to today's tourism: it was an occasion to meet all kinds of people, socialize, and visit new places. Cities actually made preparations to take in the pilgrims, so it was also important for their economy.
  • religion: he had a critical view towards all social classes, especially the ruling classes and religion: he considered the Church to be corrupted and peopled by hypocrites. (Because of the contrast between the richness of the cathedrals and the poverty of common people). For this reason he can be considered a forerunner of Protestantism.
  • the role of women: they were represented as modern and independent. geoffrey-chaucer-biography_3

Middle Ages literature: The Normans brought Romances and with them a taste for chivalry and themes such as love, heroism, the supernatural element, adventure with knights as their protagonists. Examples: King Arthur. download (1) Another genre brought by the Normans was the ballad, about the gestures of great heroes and local events. Features: presence of refrains, repetitions and simple language, rhymes. Example: Robin Hood. Robin_Hood_(film_Disney)

Anglo-Saxon literature:
Themes ⭐= war, battles, fights, mythological stories and creatures/monsters (the supernatural), the fight between good and evil, the heroes and their qualities/values: courage/bravery, kindness, intelligence/cleverness, making sacrifices, strenght, loyalty, wisdom, hopefulness, selflessness, noblety, humility.
Genres: 🔥 = epic poems, elegy (poems filled with feelings of sadness, melancholy and themes like loneliness, mysery, pain, passing of time, death)
Style 💥 = alliteration, caesura, kenning (compound metaphors)
examples of kennings:
body = bone-house
sword = battle-light
ship = wave-floater
sea = whale-road

Beowulf: first epic poem in Old English. Scandinavia-Map-Region-Northern-Europe-The-Nordics-Scandinavia-Standard-Minimalist-Map-Large-FINAL-scaled-1 Plot: ❗ He's a Scandinavian hero (Scandinavia = Denmark, Norway, Sweden. Scandinavian people are the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons). The story can be divided into 2 parts: in the first part Beowulf fights against a dragon called Grendel and he defeats it; he becomes king for 50 years and then, in the second part, at the end of the poem he fights another dragon; this time he dies (he's old) but he manages to kill the dragon.
Authorship: the poem is anonymous, because it belongs to the oral tradition. It was probably the result of a collective work. There are many Christian elements (like the presence of a God and the afterlife that resembles the realms of heaven and hell).
The main character: he is the embodiment of the qualities of a perfect hero; despite this he's not a flat character, he develops: as he grows older, he becomes more reflective and learns to make sacrifices. beowulf

The Wife of Bath file One of the pilgrims. She is a modern woman because she's independent, she travels a lot, she had 5 husbands and she dressed differently than other women on that period. People respected her because she was important and had a strong personality/authority and she was attractive and wise (in fact she can give advice about love based on her past experience). She liked to laugh and chat and had many friends (she wasn’t confined in her home), and she was talented (she made her own clothes). 1st part: we learn something about her personality. She was better at making clothes than everyone else and noone dared to walk in front of her in the Church. She was strong, independent, friendly, she liked to laugh and travel, she was wise. 2nd part: her clothes are described: a hose, shoes and heels, a big and heavy hat, a long mantel. Her clothes are of good quality, new, soft and red (a bold color: she wanted to be noticed and she was passionate). 3rd part: we learn about her past experiences. She had many lovers in her youth and she was a skilled traveler. 4th part: we learn that she was attractive (gap-teeth and large hips were considered beautiful and a symbol of fertility). Style 💥 : it's written in verses and there are some enjambements (for example, in verse 3 the sentence continues in verse 4). There are rhymes AA-BB and hyperbole (on verse 10). There is the use of irony and some comments by the author (line 24, 18, 12, 10) and of anaphors (in, a worthy, and, she, as).

Hamlet

  • a tragedy play written by Shakespeare in Early Modern English.
  • it was written during the Elizabethan age, which was the age of drama and from a literary point of view, coincides with the Renaissance period.
    Plot ❗ Hamlet is the son of the king of Denmark. His father is killed by Claudius, Hamlet's uncle; Claudius also marries Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. Hamlet suspicions are confirmed by the ghost of his father, who reveals to Hamlet that he was indeed assassinated by his brother Claudius. Hamlet doesn't act immediately: he begins to act strangely and pretends to be mad. He takes advantage of a group of actors who visit the palace and asks them to perform a play which includes scenes that mimic the murder of his father. At the performance, he watches his uncle's reactions closely and he realises that he was right. Now that Claudius knows that Hamlet knows, he decides to send him to England to have him killed. Before leaving, Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, the royal attendant, who was spying on him behind the tapestry. Ophelia, Polonius' daughter, is in love with Hamlet; desperate because of the loss of her father and because of Hamlet rejecting her, she becomes mad and drowns herself. Hamlet finds out about his uncle's ploy and comes back to Denmark. An angry Laertes (Ophelia's brother) decides to side with Claudius and to kill Hamlet to avenge the death of his father and sister. He challenges Hamlet to a duel and he uses a poisoned sword to cut him to death; however, he ends up being killed by his own sword. In the meantime, Gertrude drinks from a poisoned cup of wine meant for Hamlet and dies; finally, Hamlet kills the king and then dies in turn, poisoned by Laerte's sword.
    Themes: ⭐
  • Hesitation. Hamlet is a philosopher, an overthinker. He reflects rather than acting and as a consequence, the murder of his uncle is delayed. He is also a typical Renaissance man because he possesses intellectual abilities, artistic (he writes and puts on a play); and spiritual ones (he can see ghosts and reflects around the meaning of life and death).
  • Regicide and vengeance. The assassination of a king was a terrible sin that required vengeance and it was considered like the rupture of a natural ordered that needed to be restored.
  • Madness. Both Hamlet and Ophelia become mad; the former pretends his madness to deceive Claudius, the latter becomes mad because of his sufferings.
  • Life and death. These are the main themes of his soliluquy "to be or not to be", which can be considered a timeless and universal reflection about the condition of the human being. hamlet

The Elizabethan age: Queen Elizabeth I became queen in 1558. She was important because she was the first woman queen who reigned for a long period of time (50 years). She made Anglicanism, Catholicism and Protestantism coexist (she created a policy of tolerance called "the middle way") and her reign was peaceful and she never got married so she could avoid to submit her country to foreign domination (she was called "the virgin queen), colonial expansion happened during her kingdom and she's also remember for the victory against the Spanish Invincible Armada, during a naval battle. Elizabeth-I

Old English

Middle English

The Renaissance "Renaissance" literally means "rebirth" and it refers to the fascination for Roman and Greek ancient values and classical themes. It takes inspiration from the Italian corresponding movement, "Rinascimento", but, if the latter involves all arts, the English Renaissance only involves literature. It is deeply linked to Humanism, a movement characterized by the tendency to place the human being at the center of intellectual reflection, in particular:

  • his intelligence
  • his artistic capabilities
  • his scientific abilities
  • his spiritual activity

To Be or Not to Be Hamlet's famous soliloquy (different from a monologue because in the soliloquy an actor talks to himself, while in a monologue he addresses the audience or other actors). Hamlet asks himself whether it is better to live or to die and compares life to an archer who constantly throws arrows at you, causing terrible pain, whereas death is seen as a way to fight against all the sufferings of life. Death is also compared to sleep, and sleeping means dreaming. However, when we dream, we have no control and we don't know what dreams we are going to see. This also means that when we die, we don't know what comes after. Death is like an undiscovered country: people travel there but noone ever comes back from it. So, Hamlet contemplates the possibility of committing suicide to end all of our pain but he concludes that we are all cowards, because since we don't know what comes after death, we don't have the courage to take our own life.
Shakespeare's style 💥 Shakespeare's contribution to the English language was fundamental. He added approximately 2000 words and expressions that are still used today. Some characteristics of his language: use of "thou", "thee", "thine", "thy", the "t" ending after the verb to be ("art", "wert"), the use of words like "wherefore" as "why" and "afear'd" as "afraid"...) william-shakespeare-1

All languages are alive and undergo several changes in the course of their history, due to: the contact with other countries, the introduction of new terms (because of the industrial revolution and the technological innovation, for example)