The Old and Medieval Periods英国中古时期一．Key point1. The Old English(Anglo-Saxon) period2. The Middle English(Anglo-Norman) period3. Beowulf4. Geoffrey Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales二．Old English(Anglo-Saxon)Explain the following terms: P1-4The early inhabitants---Britons, a tribe of Celts.700BC,Celtic（凯尔特人） people from north-western Europe, bringing iron-working, Gaelic（盖尔语） language.“Britain”, the land of BritonsThe Roman Occupation (55BC-410):In 55 B.C., Britain was invaded by Julius Caesar (尤利乌斯·恺撒), the conqueror.Left behind: laws, architecture, social system, Latin, Christianity, churches.Anglo-Saxon(盎格鲁-撒克逊) Conquest:Three tribe from Northern Europe: Angles, Saxon and JutesBy the 7th century these small kingdoms were combined into a united kingdom called England.The dialects spoken by them naturally grew into a single language called Anglo-Saxon, which is now called Old English.The native Britons (Celts) were finally confined to the mountainous region of Wales where the modern form of their language is spoken alongside English to this day.In defeat, the Britons produced a body of stories revolving a legendary ruler called Arthur（亚瑟王） who had fought heroically against the Anglo-Saxon invaders.二．The Middle English(Anglo-Norman) periodThe Norman Conquest (1066): P7-13Politically, a feudalist system was established in England;Religiously, the Rome-backed Catholic Church had a much stronger control over the country;On language, three languages co-existed in England. French becamethe official language used by the king and the Norman lords;Latin became the principal tongue of church affairs and was used by the clergymen and scholars in universities;Anglo-Saxon (old English) was spoken only by the common English people.The union of French and Anglo-Saxon (English)the need of communicationthe absorption of the French三．English Literature in old and medieval periods1. Old English PeriodBeowulf《贝奥武夫》Beowul f is the first great English literary work and is regarded today as the national epic of Anglo- Saxons. P4-6 Story: Beginning and ending with the funeral of a great king, and set against a background of impending disaster, Beowulf describes the exploits of a Scandinavian hero, in fighting against the monster Grendel, his revengeful mother, and a fire-breathing dragon. P4 Theme: It is an adventure story about a hero killing monsters to make the world safe for people. It also serves to add testimony toa universal tradition that the human always manage to get a senseof control over live with the help of their imaginative powers. P52. Anglo-Norman period (1066-1485)Medieval Romance 浪漫传奇Romance which uses narrative verse or prose to sing of knightly adventures or other heroic deeds is a popular literary form in the Middle Ages. The importance of romance itself can be seen as a means of showing medieval aristocratic men and women in relation to their idealized view of the world.Matter of France and RomeMatter of Britain: the legendary history of Britain.Geoffrey ChaucerChaucer was the first preeminent English poet in history and ranks with Shakespeare as the most popular and most widely read of all poets todayChaucer was the first most significant poet in English literary history to write in Middle English.He greatly increased the prestige of English as a literary language and extended the range of its poetic vocabulary and meters.He, for the first time in English literature, presented to us a comprehensive realistic picture of the English society of his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks oflife in his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales.The Canterbury Tales《坎特伯雷故事集》The Canterbury Tales is one of the landmarks of English literature, perhaps the greatest work produced in Middle English;The structure of The Canterbury Tales is indebted to Boccaccio's Decameron《十日谈》;Story：The Canterbury Tales, begun in about 1386, consists of stories told by some of the thirty pilgrims who set off from the Tabard Inn in London, to visit the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket.The aim was to tell four stories each: two on the way, two on the way back. The teller of the best story would be given a free dinner by the cheerful host of the Tabard. In fact, the collection is incomplete and only 20 complete stories and 4 fragments. P15 4月的一天，一群香客去坎特伯雷朝圣，投宿在泰巴旅店。

次日，店主、香客与在此住宿的作者一起出发。

店主提议在去坎特伯雷的路上每人讲两个故事，回来时再讲两个，被大家公认为最佳的讲故事者可以在回来时白吃一顿丰盛的晚餐。