第1部分 古代和中世纪英国文学 (450-1485)
第1章 古英语时期与《贝奥武甫》
(450～1066)
1Give an account of the history of England from the Celtic settlement to the Norman Conquest.
Key: In about BC 600 Celts, who inhabited the upper Rhineland, started to migrate to the British Isles, and among them the Britons, a branch of the Celts, came to the Isles in BC 400 to BC 300, from whom Britain got its name. Later, troops led by Julius Caesar of the Roman Empire invaded the British Isles, defeated the Celts and ruled there from BC 55 to AD 407, bringing with them the slave system. At the beginning of the 5th century, the Roman Empire declined and in AD 410 all their troops were withdrawn.
After the Romans, the Teutonic or Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes moved to live in the British Isles. This happened in about AD 450. They drove the Celts to Wales, Scotland and Ireland, settled down themselves and named the central part of the island England, that is the land of Angles.
Starting from the late 8th century, the Danes from Scandinavia came plundering the Isles. They were a strong sea people known as the Vikings and at first they mainly invaded the eastern coast of England. But soon they pushed inland to plunder the whole country.
The greatest historical event that followed was the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Normans came from Normandy in northern France to attack England and won a decisive victory at the battle of Hastings under the leadership of the Duke of Normandy, usually known as William the Conqueror.
2How did Christianity came to England? Name the most important monasteries of this period.
Key: It was in the year of 597 that Pope Gregory the Great of the Roman Catholic Church sent St. Augustine to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons. King Ethelbert of Kent was the first to be converted and he founded in Kent the Canterbury Abbey. In the north, the earlier Christianised Ireland was engaged in sending missionaries to the Angles.
The monasteries built by them in Northumbria were the earliest civilizing influences, and the well- known Northumbrian School in literary history refers to the learned monks in these monasteries.
3Name some representative pieces of the Old English poetry.
Key: “Widsith”, “The Wanderer”, “The Seafarer”, The Wife’s Complaint and The Husband’s Message, Beowulf and so on.
4Name the two most important Christian poets of this period.
Key: The two most important Christian poets of this period were Caedmon and Cynewulf.
5Analyze the artistic features of Beowulf, using the quoted passage to illustrate your points.
Key: (1)The most noticeable artistic feature of Beowulf is alliteration. The poem is written in alliterative verse with a caesura in the middle and two stresses (or accents) in each half. The number of unstressed syllables in the two halves may vary.
(2)Another peculiar feature characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry is the frequent use of kennings, to poetically present the meaning of one single word through a compound simile of two elements.
(3)The general mood and spirit of Anglo-Saxon epic poetry is both solemn and animated, the movement of action or events vigorous, and the descriptions with kennings very picturesque and exact.
(4)There are many other stylistic points to notice in Beowulf such as the use of similes, the elevated diction, and the great deal of variation in the style, especially through thesis and antithesis. We also find good use of balance and parallelism.