This long Arthurian poem was composed by a poet roughly contemporary with Chaucer, who lived in a different part of England from the author of The Canterbury Tales (probably the West Midlands or the North West of England). Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Recommended edition: the Rubáiyát is a great long poem of Arabian love and mysticism, translated into English by Victorian poet Edward FitzGerald, whose edition is available (in a very affordable edition) as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Wordsworth Classics). Meaning ‘quatrains’, the Rubáiyát is an extraordinary work by an extraordinary figure: Khayyám (1048-1131) was a Persian poet, philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician – a ‘Renaissance man’ four centuries before the Renaissance even came into being. Recommended edition: The Nibelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs (Oxford World’s Classics). Following his death, his wife avenges him. The poem inspired Wagner’s Ring Cycle and is one of the great epic poems in medieval European literature. Like Beowulf (another Germanic story), the poem focuses on a dragon-slayer, Siegfried. This long Germanic poem has been called ‘the German Iliad‘, such is its centrality to German culture. Recommended edition: now sadly out of print, but available second-hand, this Norton Critical Edition includes Seamus Heaney’s acclaimed translation of the poem along with invaluable background information and a selection of critical essays on the poem: Beowulf: Verse Translation: A Verse Translation (Norton Critical Editions) by Heaney, Seamus New edition (2002). Perfect fireside reading, and an archetypal work of English literature, composed when the notion of ‘England’ itself was only just beginning to emerge. It chronicles the hero’s exploits, notably his slaying of the monster Grendel – actually only the first of three monsters Beowulf has to vanquish. As we’ve discussed in our detailed summary of Beowulf, this poem is part of a rich literary narrative tradition that encompasses Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the story of St George and the dragon, and even Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’. Is this the greatest English poem of the medieval era? It’s certainly one of the first. Recommended edition: The Mabinogion (Oxford World’s Classics). They are important in offering an alternative view of ancient Britain to the one presented in Arthurian legend. It was composed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by unknown Welsh monks, who wrote down earlier oral tales about love, war, and heroism. This collection of eleven tales constitutes the first substantial prose work written in Britain. Recommended edition: The History of the Kings of Britain (Classics). (The nineteenth-century French scholar Gaston Paris suggested that Geoffrey changed the Welsh Myrddin to Merlin to avoid resemblance to the Latin merda, ‘faeces’.) Geoffrey’s account of the legendary king contains the first appearance of many of the iconic features of the Arthurian legend, including the wizard Merlin. And like some other popular ‘histories’ of the time, such as the fascinating Vinland sagas, the line between ‘history’ and ‘fiction’ was something drawn rather vaguely. Like Polo’s Travels it was a bestseller and is one of most exciting medieval books in existence. But, like the unseen 92 percent of the iceberg that lies below the ocean’s water, there was more diversity in medieval Europe than meets the eye.Among other things, this chronicle, written in Latin in the twelfth century by a Welsh monk, popularised the story of King Arthur. Most likely, people of color were noticeably absent.
#Middle ages time period names movie
Think of the last time you watched a period movie set in England during the middle ages. Yet, there is something of which many of us are blindly unaware- there were black people in medieval Europe. All are highlighted by themes of heroism, bravery, chivalry, and romance. Kings, queens, ladies, lords, monks, friars, musketeers, knights and thespians, and peasants. We think of stone castles with moats, stained glass windowed monasteries, straw-roofed villages, and brilliantly green pastures. Thoughts of knights clad in battle armor while jousting on horseback are easily recalled. The folklore of Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Merlin the magician are rapidly called to memory.
Medieval times are, without question, one of the most recognizable periods in human history.
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