En16 văn học anh mỹ bài 15

Môn học nhằm cung cấp các khái niệm cơ bản về văn học, và các tác phẩm văn học Anh-Mỹ tiêu biểu. Với phương pháp trích giảng, sinh viên vận dụng các kiến thức về lịch sử xã hội Anh-Mỹ đã học vào việc phân tích và cảm nhận tác phẩm. Trong quá trình học sinh viên có cơ hội thể hiện sự hiểu biết của mình về các tác phẩm và tác giả bằng cách tham gia vào các vở kịch, thảo luận, viết bài luận phân tích.

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY MID -TERM TEST ON ENGLISH AND AMERICAN

LITERATURE

FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH (No 2)

Subject Code: EN16 Full name: ……… ……

Date of birth: ………

Group: ……… ………

No 2

I Answer the following questions: (50 points )

1 What three languages were spoken in England in the 11th - 13th centuries, and whom were they spoken by? Mention some reasons

2 What is a romance, a fabliaux, a bestiaria? In what language were they written?

(The file sent will be named after each student’s name Plagiarism will lead to failure)

1

Three main languages spoken in England in the 11th - 13th centuries: Middle English, Anglo-Norman (or French) and Latin

- Middle English: In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part

of modem Erance), invaded and conquered England The new conquerors (called the Normans) brought with them a kind of Erench, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes For a period there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke Erench In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but with many French words added This language is called Middle English It was the language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340 — 1400), but it would still be difficult for native English speakers to understand today

- Anglo-Norman (or French): Anglo-Norman, also known as Anglo-Norman Erench Anglo-Norman had emerged as a distinct đialect of French after the Norman Conquest in 1066 established a French-speaking aristocracy in English It was spoken in the law courts, schools, and universities and, in due course, in at least some sections of the gentry and the growing bourgeoisie Private and commercial correspondence was carried out in Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Erench though Anglo-Norman and Anglo- French were eventually

eclipsed by modern English, they had been used widely enough to influence English vocabulary permanently

- Latin: English was slow to take over as the language of government, law, and bureaucracy, đespite the fact that by a law passed in 1362 all legal pleadings had to

be in English However, most other types of official documents continued to be written in Latin, such as the manor court roll (MS 66/1) shown on the previous page of this unit It was not until the mid-sixteenth century that English began to appear in manorial records, and even then it was often only used to record

presentments spoken in that language at the meeting of the manor court It was a similar situation in the records of the Nottingham Archdeaconry court In

depositions written in 1610, the words spoken by ordinary people are written in English, as they said them, but the rest of the document explaining the case

is in Latin

- Rentals and accounts from landed estates are rare in English before the

beginning of the sixteenth century Most title deeds were also written in Latin until the sixteenth century and even later

- The Catholic church used Latin in its services, so all liturgical books were written in this language until the Reformation in the sixteenth century The theologian John 'Wycliffe began to translate the Bible into English in the late fourteenth century, but the Lollard movement with which he was associated was persecuted by the authorities, so late medieval Bibles in English are rare

2

Romance :

- In the strictest academic terms, a romance is a narrative genre in literature that involves a mysterious, adventurous, or spiritual story line where the Íocus is on a quest that involves bravery and strong values, not always a love interest However, modern definitions of romance also include stories that have a relationship issue as the main focus

- Types of Romance: Gothic (popular Gothic novels still read by many high school students today are classics such as: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley); historical (The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott); contemporary/Modern (there can be: comedy-romance, tragic-romance, satire-romance, serious romance)

Fabliaux:

- Fabliau (the plural form is fabliaux) is a comical fable told in verse They were all the rage in the 12th and 13th centuries Fabliaux were typically told by jongleurs (professional storytellers/public entertainers in France) The short stories were known for their colorful and comical observations on life, sort of like a cynical and harsh Middle Age version of Jerry Seinfeld The stories took comedic shots at things like religion, the sanctity of marriage, and the treatment

of women

- The fabliau style was simple and straightforward The narratives were always situated in present day and the characters were from the middle or lower

classes Fabliaux made fun of everyday life The plots were often centered on women with large sexual appetites and men who were ignorant fools There was typically some sort of scam or practical joke in the narrative and trickery was usually successful

- There are about 150 surviving fabliaux from various jongleurs from the over

200 or so years that the form was popular in medieval literature However, one

of the most revered fabliaux writers in the history of storytelling was Geoffrey Chaucer

Bestiaria

- Bestiary, a literary genre in the European Middle Ages consisting of a

collection of stories, each based on a description of certain qualities of an animal, pÏant, or even stone The stories presented Christian allegories for moral and religious instruction and admonition

- The numerous manuscripts of medieval bestiaries ultimately are derived from the Greek Physiologus, a text compiled by an unknown author before the

middle of the 2nd century AD It consists of stories based on the “facts” of natural science as accepted by someone called Physiologus (Latin:

“Naturalist”), about whom nothing further is known, and from the compiler”s own religious ideas

- The Physiologus consists of 48 sections, each dealing with one creature, plant,

or stone and each linked to a biblical text The popularity of the Physiologus, which circulated in the early Middle Ages only less widely than the Bible, is clear from the existence of many early translations It was translated into Latin (first in the 4th or 5th century), Ethiopian, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, and

Armenian Early translations from Greek also were made into Georgian and into Slavic languages

- Translations were made from Latin into Anglo-Saxon before 1000 In the 11th

century, an otherwise unknown Thetbaldus made a metrical Latin version of 13 sections of the Physiologus This was translated, with alterations, in the only surviving Middle English Bestiary, dating from the 13th century It, and other lost Middle English and Anglo-Norman versions, influenced the development

of the beast fable Early translations into Elemish and German influenced the satiric beast epic Bestiaries were popular in France and the Low Countries in the 13th century, and a 14th-century French Bestiaire damour applied the allegory to love An Iralian translation of the Physiologus, khown as the

Bestiario Toscano, was made in the 13th century

II Comments (50 points )

Write what you know about the life and works of Geoffrey Chaucer - The founder

of English realism

Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the greatest poets of England He is known to be the father of English poetry This does not mean that there was no poetry, or poets in England before him But before Chaucer, there was no National language There were merely a number of regional languages Chaucer used one of these languages, East

Midland By the force of his genius, he raised it to the level of the national language

of England He was, therefore, both the father of English poetry and the father of the English language He is the first national poet of England Geoffrey Chaucer was the greatest writer of the 14” century He was bom around 1343 in London and đied October 25, 1400, in London, England, and was the first to be buried in Westminster Abbey”s Poet's Corner His father and grandfather were both London wine merchants and before that, for several generations, the family had been merchants in Ipswich Although the Chaucers were not of noble birth, they were extremely well-to-do

While records concerning the lives of his contemporaries William

Langland and the Gawain Poet are practically non-existent, since Chaucer was a public servant his official life is very well documented, with nearly five hundred written items testifying to his career The first of the "Chaucer Life Records" appears

in 1357, in the household accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster, when he became the noblewoman's page through his father's connections, a common medieval form of apprenticeship for boys into knighthood or prestige appointments The countess was married to Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of the king, Edward III, and the position brought the teenage Chaucer into the close court circle, where he was to remain for the rest of his life In 1359, the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, Edward III invaded France and Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, Elizabeth's husband, as part of the English army Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa (de) Roet She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward III's queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford, who later (c. 1396) became the third wife of John of Gaunt It is uncertain how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited His son, Thomas Chaucer, had an illustrious career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy to France, and Speaker of the House of Commons Thomas's daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk Thomas's great-grandson (Geoffrey's great-great-grandson), John

de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to the throne designated by Richard III before

he was deposed Geoffrey's other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun

at Barking Abbey, Agnes, an attendant at Henry IV's coronation; and another son, Lewis Chaucer Chaucer's "Treatise on the Astrolabe" was written for Lewis

Chaucer seems to have respected and admired Christians and to have been one himself, though he also recognised that many people in the church were venal and

corrupt He wrote in Canterbury Tales, "now I beg all those that listen to this little

treatise, or read it, that if there be anything in it that pleases them, they thank our Lord Jesus Christ for it, from whom proceeds all understanding and goodness."

Chaucer's first major work was The Book of the Duchess, an elegy for Blanche

of Lancaster who died in 1368 Two other early works were Anelida and

Arcite and The House of Fame He wrote many of his major works in a prolific period when he held the job of customs comptroller for London (1374 to 1386)

His Parlement of Foules, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde all date from this time It is believed that he started The Canterbury Tales in the 1380s

Chaucer also translated Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance

of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (extended by Jean de Meun) Eustache

Deschamps called himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry" In 1385, Thomas Usk made glowing mention of Chaucer, and John Gower also lauded him

Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe describes the form and use of

the astrolabe in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing

in the English language, and it indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in

addition to his literary talents The equatorie of the planetis is a scientific work similar

to the Treatise and sometimes ascribed to Chaucer because of its language and

handwriting, an identification which scholars no longer deem tenable

Perhaps the chief characteristics of Chaucer’s works are their variety in subject matter, genre, tone, and style and in the complexities presented concerning the human pursuit of a sensible existence Yet his writings also consistently reflect an

all-pervasive humour combined with serious and tolerant consideration of important philosophical questions From his writings Chaucer emerges as poet of love, both earthly and divine, whose presentations range from lustful cuckoldry to spiritual union with God Thereby, they regularly lead the reader to speculation about man’s relation both to his fellows and to his Maker, while simultaneously providing delightfully entertaining views of the frailties and follies, as well as the nobility, of mankind

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