Beowulf as an example of the greatest heroic epics. (Time of origin, genre of epic, main content, language of epic).
Beowulf, first and foremost, is a long narrative poem. It contains 3,182 lines and has been divided into forty-three sections. It has been written in a way that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience and arranged so that the language stimulates an emotional response, the basis of why a piece of writing would be considered a poem.
Beowulf also contains an epic hero. The title of the poem has been named after our epic hero, Beowulf. In definition, an epic hero is someone that does larger than life deeds and is stronger and smarter than any normal man; and Beowulf fits this description as if the mold were made for him. He has the strength of thirty men and uses it as a major weapon against evil. This can be seen through Beowulf’s battles with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon.
Beowulf falls into two parts. It opens in Denmark, where King Hrothgar’s splendid mead hall, Heorot, has been ravaged for 12 years by nightly visits from an evil monster, Grendel, who carries off Hrothgar’s warriors and devours them. Unexpectedly, young Beowulf, a prince of the Geats of southern Sweden, arrives with a small band of retainers and offers to cleanse Heorot of its monster.
The second part passes rapidly over King Hygelac’s subsequent death in a battle (of historical record), the death of his son, and Beowulf’s succession to the kingship and his peaceful rule of 50 years. But now a fire-breathing dragon ravages his land and the doughty but aging Beowulf engages it. The fight is long and terrible and a painful contrast to the battles of his youth. Painful, too, is the desertion of his retainers except for his young kinsman Wiglaf. Beowulf kills the dragon but is mortally wounded. The poem ends with his funeral rites and a lament.
The Anglo - Norman Literature of the XI - XIII centuries. Three-language literature in England.
Anglo-Norman literature, also called Norman-french Literature, orAnglo-french Literature, body of writings in the Old French language as used in medieval England. Though this dialect had been introduced to English court circles in Edward the Confessor’s time, its history really began with the Norman Conquest in 1066, when it became the vernacular of the court, the law, the church, schools, universities, parliament, and later of municipalities and of trade. For the English aristocracy, Anglo-Norman became an acquired tongue and its use a test of gentility. It was introduced into Wales and Ireland and used to a limited extent in Scotland. The earliest extant literary texts in the Anglo-Norman dialect belonged to the reign of Henry I in the early 12th century, the latest to that of Henry IV in the early 15th century. The alienation toward France during the Hundred Years’ War started an increasing use of English, the last strongholds of a French dialect being Parliament and the law, in both of which it still survives in a few formulas.
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From the 12th through the 14th century, Anglo-Norman was second only to Latin in its use as a literary language in England. Most types of literary works were represented in Anglo-Norman as in French, with a slight difference of emphasis. The chanson de geste was an exception; this type of French epic poem was not unknown in England, but there seem to have been no original works of the kind written there. Conversely, Anglo-Norman works were known, copied, or imitated on the Continent. One important difference between continental and Anglo-Norman literature is that the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 led to an outpouring of doctrinal and devotional works for the laity in England not paralleled in France, which perhaps explains the fact that in the early periods England was often in advance of the Continent in the development of new literary forms. Historical writing was popular both in Normandy and in the rest of the Continent; and although, after the Norman Conquest, Latin replaced English for use in documents and chronicles, examples of both are found in Anglo-Norman. Religious houses caused lives of native saints to be written, and the nobility had a taste for romances about imaginary English ancestors. Thus social and political differences between the two countries prevented Anglo-Norman literature from being a mere provincial imitation of French.
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