En16 văn học anh mỹ bài 18

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 UNIVERSITYMID -TERM TEST ON ENGLISH AND AMERICANLITERATURE

FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH (No 2)Subject Code: EN16

Full name: Date of birth: Group:

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)

- Saxon was spoken by common people Old English language or Saxon is the earliest recorded form of the English language When the Anglo-Saxons firstcame to England from northern Germany (Saxony) in the fifth and sixth centuries, theybrought their language with them It is a Germanic language and has some fundamentalsimilarities to Modern German.The English language developed from the West Germanicdialects spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and other Teutonic tribes who participated in theinvasion and occupation of England in the fifth and sixth centuries.

Anglo Latin was spoken by churchmen The Church used Latin for centuries because itwas born in the Roman Empire and when that empire fell, it kept it as a way to unifyCatholics around the entire world

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

- Romance told of love and adventure and expresses the ideals of knighthood infeudal society In the strictest academic terms, a romance is a narrative genre in literaturethatinvolves a mysterious, adventurous, or spiritual story line where the focus is on aquestthat involves bravery and strong values, not always a love interest However,moderndefinitions of romance also include stories that have a relationship issue as themainfocus.- In the academic sense, an example of a romance is a story in which themaincharacter is a hero who must conquer various challenges as part of a quest.Eachchallenge could be its own story and can be taken out of the overall storywithoutharming the plot.Romance is associated with languages That use was sealed a bitearlier, back when the noun referred to Old French; the term Romance language nowrefers to a number of languages that developed from Latin, including French, Italian, andSpanish.

- Fabliaux told funny stories about town-people A fablia is often anonymous talewritten by jongleurs in northeast France between ca 1150 and 1400 The standard form ofthe fabliau is that of Medieval French literature in general Some 150 French fabliaux areextant, the number depending on how narrowly fabliau is defined According to R.Howard Bloch, fabliaux are the first expression of literary realism in Europe Fabliauxoriginally come from the Orient and were brought to the West by returning crusaders;from fabliaux comes the French drama Fabliaux was written in French language.

- Bestiaries told stories in which characters were animals Originating inthe ancientworld, bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumesthatdescribed various animals and even rocks The natural history and illustration ofeachbeast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson This reflected the belief that theworlditself was the Word of God and that every living thing had its own special meaning.Forexample, the pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young tolifewith its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus Thus the bestiary is alsoareference to the symbolic language of animals in Western Christian art and literature.-Medieval bestiaries contained detailed descriptions and illustrations of speciesnative toWestern Europe, exotic animals and what in modern times are considered to beimaginary

animals Descriptions of the animals included the physical characteristicsassociated withthe creature, although these were often physiologically incorrect, alongwith the Christianmorals that the animal represented The description was then oftenaccompanied by anartistic illustration of the animal as described in the bestiary A large number of bestiarymanuscripts are written in Latin, in the Middle Ages the common language of scholarsand clerics, with many more written in vernacular languages, mostly French The Latinbestiary was primarily a product of England, though a few were produced elsewhere,particularly in France.

II Comments (50 points )

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

Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – October 25, 1400) was an English author, poet,philosopher, bureaucrat (courtier), and diplomat, who is best known as the author of TheCanterbury Tales As an author, he is considered not only the father of English literature,but also, often of the English language itself Chaucer's writings validated English as alanguage capable of poetic greatness, and in the process instituted many of the traditionsof English poesy that have continued to this day He was also, for a writer of his times,capable of powerful psychological insight No other author of the Middle English perioddemonstrates the realism, nuance, and characterization found in Chaucer Ezra Poundfamously wrote that, although Shakespeare is often considered the great "psychologist" ofEnglish verse, "Don Geoffrey taught him everything he knew."

The life of Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer was born around 1343 His father and grandfather were both London winemerchants and before that, for several generations, the family had been merchants inIpswich Although the Chaucers were not of noble birth, they were extremely well-to-do.

The young Chaucer began his career by becoming a page to Elizabeth de Burgh,fourth Countess of Ulster In 1359, Chaucer traveled with Lionel of Antwerp, Elizabeth'shusband, as part of the English army in the Hundred Years' War After his tour of duty,Chaucer traveled in France, Spain and Flanders, possibly as a messenger and perhaps as areligious pilgrim In 1367, Chaucer became a valet to the royal family, a position whichallowed him to travel with the king performing a variety of odd jobs.

On one such trip to Italy in 1373, Chaucer came into contact with medieval Italianpoetry, the forms and stories of which he would use later While he may have beenexposed to manuscripts of these works the trips were not usually long enough to learn

sufficient Italian; hence, it is speculated that Chaucher had learned Italian due to hisupbringing among the merchants and immigrants in the docklands of London.

In 1374, Chaucer became Comptroller of the Customs for the port of London forRichard II While working as comptroller Chaucer moved to Kent and became a Memberof Parliament in 1386, later assuming the title of clerk of the king's works, a sort offoreman organizing most of the king's building projects In this capacity he oversawrepairs upon Westminster Palace and St George's Chapel.

Soon after the overthrow of his patron Richard II, Chaucer vanished from thehistorical record He is believed to have died on October 25, 1400, of unknown causes,but there is no firm evidence for this date It derives from the engraving on his tomb, builtover one hundred years after his death There is some speculation—most recently in TerryJones' book Who Murdered Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery— that he was murdered byenemies of Richard II or even on the orders of Richard's successor, Henry IV.

The works of Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer's first major work, The Book of the Duchess, was an elegy for Blanche ofLancaster, but reflects some of the signature techniques that Chaucer would deploy moredeftly in his later works It would not be long, however, before Chaucer would produceone of his most acclaimed masterpieces, Troilus and Criseyde Like many other works ofhis early period (sometimes called his French and Italian period) Troilus and Criseydeborrows its poetic structure from contemporary French and Italian poets and its subjectmatter from classical sources.

Troilus and Criseyde

Troilus and Criseyde is the love story of Troilus, a Trojan prince, and Criseyde.Many Chaucer scholars regard the poem as his best for its vivid realism and (incomparison with later works) overall completeness as a story.

Troilus is commanding an army battling the Greeks at the height of the Trojan Warwhen he falls in love with Criseyde, a Greek woman captured and enslaved by hiscountrymen Criseyde pledges her love to him, but when she is returned to the Greeks in ahostage exchange, she goes to live with the Greek hero, Diomedes Troilus is infuriated,but can do nothing about it due to the siege of Troy.

Meanwhile, an oracle prophesies that Troy will not be defeated as long as Troilusreaches the age of twenty alive Shortly thereafter the Greek hero Achilles sees Troiluslead his horses to a fountain and falls in love with him Achilles ambushes Troilus and his

sister, Polyxena, who escapes Troilus, however, rejects Achilles' advances, and takesrefuge inside the temple of Apollo Timbraeus.

Achilles, enraged at this rejection, slays Troilus on the altar The Trojan heroesride to the rescue too late, as Achilles whirls Troilus' head by the hair and hurls it at them.This affront to the god—killing his son and desecrating the temple—has been conjecturedas the cause of Apollo's enmity towards Achilles, and, in Chaucer's poem, is used totragically contrast Troilus' innocence and good-faith with Achilles' arrogance andcapriciousness.

Chaucer's main source for the poem was Boccaccio, who wrote the story in his IlFilostrato, itself a re-working of Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, which was inturn an expansion of a passage from Homer.

The Canterbury Tales

Troilus and Criseyde notwithstanding, Chaucer is almost certainly best known forhis long poem, The Canterbury Tales The poem consists of a collection of fourteenstories, two in prose and the rest in verse The tales, some of which are original, arecontained inside a frame tale told by a group of pilgrims on their way from Southwark toCanterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket's at Canterbury Cathedral.

The poem is in stark contrast to other literature of the period in the naturalism of itsnarrative and the variety of the pilgrims and the stories they tell, setting it apart fromalmost anything else written during this period The poem is concerned not with kingsand gods, but with the lives and thoughts of everyday persons Many of the storiesnarrated by the pilgrims seem to fit their individual characters and social standing,although some of the stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, probably representing theincomplete state of the work.

Chaucer's experience in medieval society as page, soldier, messenger, valet,bureaucrat, foreman, and administrator undoubtedly exposed him to many of the types ofpeople he depicted in the Tales He was able to mimic their speech, satirize their manners,and use their idioms as a means for making art.

The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as courtly love, treachery,and avarice The genres also vary, and include romance, Breton lai, sermon, and fabliau.The characters, introduced in the General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great culturalrelevance, and are among the most vivid accounts of medieval life available today.Chaucer provides a "slice-of-life," creating a picture of the times in which he lived by

letting us hear the voices and see the viewpoints of people from all different backgroundsand social classes.

Some of the tales are serious and others humorous; however, all are very precise indescribing the traits and faults of human nature Chaucer, like virtually all other authorsof his period, was very interested in presenting a moral to his story Religious malpracticeis a major theme, appropriate for a work written on the eve of The Reformation Most ofthe tales are linked by similar themes and some are told in reprisal for other tales in theform of an argument The work is incomplete, as it was originally intended that eachcharacter would tell four tales, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the returnjourney This would have meant a possible one hundred and twenty tales which wouldhave dwarfed the twenty-six tales actually completed.

It is sometimes argued that the greatest contribution that The Canterbury Talesmade to English literature was in popularizing the literary use of the vernacular language,English, as opposed to the French or Latin then spoken by the noble classes However,several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, and the Pearl Poet—also wrote major literary works in English, and Chaucer's appellation as the "Father ofEnglish Literature," though partially true, is an overstatement.

Much more important than standardization of dialect was the introduction, throughThe Canterbury Tales, of numerous poetic techniques that would become standards forEnglish poesy The poem's use of accentual-syllabic meter, which had been invented acentury earlier by the French and Italians, was revolutionary for English poesy AfterChaucer, the alliterative meter of Old English poetry would become completely extinct.The poem also deploys, masterfully, iambic pentameter, which would become the defacto measure for the English poetic line (Five hundred years later, Robert Frost wouldfamously write that there were two meters in the English language, "strict iambic andloose iambic.") Chaucer was the first author to write in English in pentameter, and TheCanterbury Tales is his masterpiece of the technique The poem is also one of the first inthe language to use rhymed couplets in conjunction with a five-stress line, a form ofrhyme that would become extremely popular in all varieties of English verse thereafter.