Norman Conquest and beyond.
English chivalric literature and Arthurian romances.
Courtly love (amour courtois / fin amour) and courtly poetry.
1. What happened to Anglo-Saxon England?
a. The times of crisis during the reign of King Ethelred the Unready (978-1016)
– Viking invasions.
b. The era of Scandinavian kings of England – Canute the Great (1016-1035),
king of Denmark, England and Norway, Harold Harefoot and Harthacanute.
c. Ethelred’s son, Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) returns from exile in
Normandy, in 1066 briefly followed by Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-
Saxon king of England.
2. The Norman Conquest of 1066 and its socio-historic background.
a. Guillame (William the Conqueror) of Normandy and 11th c. Normandy.
b. The struggle for England – King Harold (of England), King Harald (of
Norway) and Duke Guillame (of Normandy).
c. Changes in social structures in England after the Conquest.
d. The development of the feudal system.
e. The so-called Doomsday Book (1086) as a symbol of the Conquest.
f. England after the Norman Conquest – close ties with the domains under the
suzerainty of French kings (Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine): Henry II (1154-
1189) as a ruler of Anglo-French lands.
3. The Norman Conquest and its cultural aftermath.
a. English language disappears as the language of the upper classes – the changes
in English.
b. Norman French (later Anglo-Norman) and Latin as the languages of the upper
classes and the languages of literature.
c. French dominant among the upper classes until mid-14th c.
d. Changes and development of English architecture – the era of castles and
cathedrals built in Norman (i.e. Romanesque) style.
4. England under the Plantagenet kings – feudalism and prosperity.
a. Court of Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine – centre of chivalric
and courtly culture.
b. later Plantagenet kings – a crusading image of Richard the Lionheart (1189-
1199) // baronial rebellions under John Lackland (1199-1216, Magna Charta
granting rights to nobility) and Henry III (1216-1272, the rebellion of Simon
de Montfort and first English parliaments) // effective rule of Edward I (1272-
1307, conquest of Wales and attempts to conquer Scotland).
c. English prosperity – wool exports.
5. Chivalric romances and the so-called Gesta (chanson de geste – songs about deeds):
three main cycles of romances (matiers, matters)
a. the matter of Rome (antiquity, Troy, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar),
b. the matter of Britain (King Arthur, Grail, Knights of the Round Table),
c. the matter of France (Charles the Great, i.e. Charlemagne, Roland, ).
6. The feudal culture and the culture of chivalry in literature. The beginnings of the
so-called Middle English literature.
a. Chivalric culture and crusades – the idea of a holy war and the image of
Christ as a perfect knight.
b. The Arthurian myth – in search of a chivalric and monarchic ideal –
mythicization of reality – history turned into legend (e.g. the myth of Arthur;
later romances of Henry II’s son, Richard the Lionheart contrasted with his
incompetent brother John Lackland):
1. re-birth of the myths of origin – the story of Brutus, the grandson of
Aeneas of Troy. Aenaes – legendary founder of Rome, Brutus – of
Britain (the popular, though untrue, origin of the name)
2. the kingdom of England as “a second Troy,” later “second Rome.”
7. Arthurian literature in English and the continent (12th c.):
a. Geoffrey of Monmouth and his Historia Regum Britanniae (1138) – see above
(4b).
b. Wace, an Anglo-Norman poet, and his Roman de Brut (Story of Brut) of ca. 1154
– see above (4b).
c. Elsewhere in late 12th c. Europe:
France: Chrétien de Troyes’s romances with Arthurian knights as central
characters (Lancelot, Perceval and the quest for the Holy Grail, Yvain,
Galahad);
France: Robert de Boron’s poem about Joseph of Arimathea (the Grail
legend) and Merlin.
Germany: Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (the story of the Grail).
d. England: Layamon’s Brut (late 12th/early 13th c.) – English colonization of the
myth of Arthur in the times of weak monarchy (King John Lackland).
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) traces in early Middle English literature –
alliteration.
8. Layamon’s (Lawman’s) Brut (late 12th c./early 13th c.)
a. Based on Wace and Geoffrey of Monmouth.
b. the first work on Arthur in English and one of the first major works in English
after the Conquest.
c. Mythicised presentation of the first rulers of England – incorporation of the myth
of Arthur into the legendary English pantheon (ironic as historical Arthur – if he
ever existed – defended his Christian kingdom from pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders).
d. Layamon’s comments on the body of Arthur (i.e. the myth) as ceaseless inspiration
for poets.
e. The idea of Arthur as a perfect monarch – a possible answer to weaker English
monarchy in late 12th/early 13th c.
The king by the grace of God,
Defending the integrity of kingdom,
Holding to the just laws of his ancestors – the king as the distributor of
justice,
The king as a conqueror – subjugating other lands as a sign of royal power.
f. Traces of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literary technique of alliteration, elements of
Anglo-Saxon visual imagery in Brut.
9. Courtly literature in France and elsewhere.
a. Developing in the culture of the south – Aquitaine, Languedoc (now a French
province, earlier the name for the French dialect of the south).
b. Possible influences of Arabic culture and literature from the Iberian Peninsula
(Al-Andalus, Andalusia).
c. French troubadours (in the south) and trouveurs, (in the north) – those who
find/invent ways of putting ideas and emotions into the language of poetry.
d. The court of Aquitaine as a centre of such culture in France – Count William of
Aquitaine (1071-1126, Guilhem le Troubadour), Eleanor of Aquitaine grandfather,
as a famed poet.
e. Later (2nd half of the 12th c.) the court of Champagne (Countess Marie de
Champagne, daughter of Eleanor) – sponsoring both Chrétien de Troyes and the
culture of courtly love.
f. Influences of such culture in England, Italy and Germany (courtly love poets called
there Minnesänger).
10. Courtly love (amour courtois / fin amour).
a. Aristocratic feudal Europe as based on arranged marriages.
b. Highly idealized and sophisticated literary representation of love as emotional
suffering experienced by two lovers (preferably unmarried).
c. Idealized image of a woman (worshipped by her lover, yet unable to perform any
real action).
d. Church accusations of courtly love as promoting adultery – channeling it into the
cult of Virgin Mary in 12th c. Europe.
e. Essential courtly love manual by Andreas Capellanus (André le Chapelain) – De
amore or De arte honeste amandi (On how to love correctly) – late 12th c., the
court of Marie de Champagne.
f. The quintessential courtly love poem – Le roman de la rose (The romance of the
rose) by Guillame de Lorris (ca. 1230) and later extended by Jean de Meun (ca.
1275)
Allegorical dream vision with virtues, vices, features of character as
characters (for instance Lady Patience).
Representation of love as garden, with the outside world of the everyday –
the lover strives for the rose in the centre of the garden.
A philosophising discussion of love.
g. Enormous popularity but also controversy raised by the poem – numerous later
translations and huge influence of the poem.
11. Anglo-Norman / Anglo-French literature in 12th c. England - Marie de France.
a. An otherwise unknown poetess possibly writing at the court of Henry II of
England.
b. Composed lais (lays, stories), narrative poems in rhymed French, based on Celtic
folklore and legends from Bretagne (Brittany), dedicated to King Henry.
c. Elements of magic and elements of the supernatural world.
d. The culture of chivalry and the culture of courtly love in her lais: fidelity, adultery
e. Also the author of Ysopet fables (fables by Aesop – bajki Ezopa), moralizing
poems with animal characters in human roles.