山东农业大学精品课程《英美文学史》课件：unit 1.pptVIP

英美文学史 使用教材： 1 ?英国文学史及选读? 二册，吴伟仁 编 2 ?美国文学史及选读? 二册，吴伟仁 编 主讲人：代奎华  Unit 1 The Anglo-Saxon Period ? Development of Literature 1 Three stages of English language development: i. Old English /Anglo-Saxon (OE. As the language up to 1066 is usu. called) ??The old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest form of English. It is difficult? to give exact? dates for the rise and development of a language, because it does not change suddenly; but? perhaps it is true to say that Old English was spoken from about AD. 600 to about 1100. ii. Middle English (about 1100-1500) iii. Modern English (about 1500-present) 2.???? Two divisions of the literature of this period: Pagan ---- oral sagas Christian ---- the writings developed under teaching of the monks ? III. Beowulf Beowulf , written in Old English sometime before the tenth century A.D., describes the adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior of the sixth century. 1.? A rich fabric of fact and fancy, Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature. 2. Definitions of epic i. An extended narrative poem with a heroic or superhuman protagonist engaged in an action of great significance in a vast setting (often including the underworld and engaging the gods). Examples of epic poems are Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene, John Miltons Paradise Lost, William Wordsworths The Prelude, Elizabeth Barret Brownings Aurora Leigh, and T. S. Eliots The Waste Land. The Iliad Odyssey iii. Homer and Epic Poetry The earliest surviving Greek poems of antiquity are Homers Iliad and Odyssey, the oldest epic poems. Virgil, consciously imitating Homer, produced the most famous epic poem of Augustan Rome, the Aeneid. Theyre long narrative poems that recount the deeds of a hero (often legendary), and are usually grand in scope. A number of formal qualities are traditionally associated with the epic, usually because they appeared in Homer and have been imitated since. In both Greek and Latin, th