Байланысты: Тілі оқытылатын елдің әдебиеті және аударма мәселелері
The language and the first Universities.
William the Conqueror could not speak a word of English. His barons spoke Norman-French. Yet during the following 200 years that they kept coming over to England, they couldn’t suppress the English Language. Communication went on three languages. Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon were molded into one national language only towards the beginning of the14th century. Most of the British writers and poets whom we are going to speak were educated at the Universities. But with the development of such sciences as medicine and law, corporations of general study called “universities” appeared in Italy and France. The Fully developed universities comprised four faculties: three superior /higher/ faculties, that of Theology /the study of religious books/, of Canon Law /church law/ and of Medicine; and one inferior /primary/ faculty, that of Art, where Music, Grammar, Geometry, Logic and some other subjects were studied.
Paris was the great centre for higher education for English students. In the middle of the 12th c-y a controversy on the study of Logic arose among the professors. A group of professors were expelled. Followed by their students, they went over to Britain and founded schools at the town of Oxford in 1168 which formed the first university. However the plague and war and other trouble led to temporary dispersion of the schools. A second university was formed in 1209 at Cambridge, to which a body of students migrated from Oxford. The graduates were awarded with degrees: Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts, and Doctor. Towards the end of the 13th c-y collages where other subjects were studied appeared around the universities.
It became the custom for students to go about from one great university to another, learning what they could from the most famous teachers in each place.
HOW THE LANGUAGE CHANGED. Though the Normans had subdued the Anglo-Saxons, they nevertheless could not subdue the English language. But it had changed so much. As a result of this process there appeared a store of synonyms larger than in any other European language. Each word has its own shade of meaning. Many synonymous words are used for different styles. Words of Anglo-Saxon origin are used to express homelier ideas, while the verbs of French origin are used in formal speech.
Under the influence of the French language the pronunciation of the people changed very much, but it did not become French. Some French words could not be pronounced by the A-Ss, and some of the French sounds were substituted by more familiar sounds from Old English. There appeared many new long vowels, and the rhythm of the language evened out. This newly formed pronunciation was very much like Modern English.
The history of literature shows us how the popular tongue became the language of the educated classes because it was spoken by the majority of the population, by those who tilled the soil, sowed and reaped, produced the goods and struggled against the foreign oppressors. The language intercourse gradually subdued Norman-French, and a single national language developed.
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Тема 4
The Renaissance in Europe. Elizabethan literary achievement. Thomas More (1478-1535) “Utopia”.
The period of European history and culture traditionally known as the Renaissance began in Italy during the 14th century and extended, in England past the middle of the 17th c-ry. Renaissance means “rebirth” – the “rebirth” of those intellectual and artistic energies that characterized ancient Greek and Roman civilization, and with this the awakening of a whole range of new interests in humane beings and the world they lived in. People in the Middle Ages were not entirely ignorant of those aspects of Greek and Roman Culture supposedly ‘reborn” during the Renaissance. Historians have taught not to think of the Middle Ages as the “Dark Ages” anymore. But it is true that in the Renaissance people came to take a revitalized interest in Greek and Roman civilization and often thought of their own times as a return to the glorious achievements of classical antiquity. The Renaissance in England. England was slow to participate in the European Renaissance, because of the political reasons. In the 15th century, during the great period of Renaissance in Italy, England experienced terrible internal turmoil and instability. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, defeated the Yorkist King Richard III with his victory at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485; Henry II (1485-1509) crowned the king of England, ushered in a new dynasty and a new period of prosperity and stability for England. The Wars of Roses were ended. He laid the foundation for one of the most fruitful periods in English history. But with the coming to the throne his son Henry VIII (1509-1547) the progress in England was to be slow. He was a self-centred and extravagant. His efforts to make England politically important in Europe, as the balance of power between Spain and France, came to nothing. The rain of Edward VI (1547-1553) and Mary Tudor (1553-1558) “the Bloody Mary”.
Elizabeth 1st (1558-1603) had a sharp intellect. She was ideally equipped to encourage those literary achievements and artistic developments that would allow the Renaissance in England to grow and flourish. She made the church part of the state regime and tried to avoid open quarrels with Spain and France (both Catholic countries), or to marriages with there kings (so as not to disturb the delicate balance of power in Europe. Elizabeth also encouraged the creation of colonies abroad, a first step on the way to Britain’s colonial empire of later centuries. Elizabethan Literary Achievements. She led England through difficult times toward increasing national confidence; her court in England became the centre of an exuberant literary culture that was “Renaissance” in the fullest sense of that term. The greatest and most distinctive achievement of Elizabethan literature is the drama. Elizabethan attitudes toward literature and art, and life in general, were a peculiar combination of old and new, of attachments to the medieval past and anticipation of a more modern outlook.
Thomas More, the first English humanist of the Renaissance, was born in London in1478. Educated at Oxford where he met a foreign humanist, the writer Erasmus of Rotterdam and made friends with him who believed in the common sense of man and taught that men ought to think for themselves, and not merely to believe things to be true because there fathers, or the priest, or the pope had raid they where true. The Works of Thomas More. His writings include discussions on political subjects, biographies, poetry. His style is simple, colloquial. The work by which he is well known is “Utopia” which was written in Latin. The origin of the word “Utopia” in Greek means “nowhere”. This word has become a byword and used in modern English to denote an unattainable ideal, usually in social and political matters. This work is divided into two books. In the first, the author gives a profound and truthful picture of the people’s sufferings and points out the social evils of existing in England at that time. In the second book he presents his ideal of what the future society should be like.
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Тема 5
Second period of the Renaissance. The predecessors of Shakespeare. Thomas Malory.
William Shakespeare.
