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    Early European Literature

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    Ffrncy Tagalogon
    This document provides an overview of early European literature during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages. It discusses how Roman civilization and culture survived through the Christian Church and monasteries, where intellectual pursuits took place. Universities then began to emerge, helping to gradually lift Europe out of the darkness. The document then focuses on defining the epic, describing it as a narrative form that emerged early in a nation's literature and captured events of grandeur involving heroes representing something greater than themselves, like a nation. It provides examples of major European epics that emerged during this time period.

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    Early European Literature

    Uploaded by

    Ffrncy Tagalogon
    19 views10 pages
    This document provides an overview of early European literature during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages. It discusses how Roman civilization and culture survived through the Christian Church and monasteries, where intellectual pursuits took place. Universities then began to emerge, helping to gradually lift Europe out of the darkness. The document then focuses on defining the epic, describing it as a narrative form that emerged early in a nation's literature and captured events of grandeur involving heroes representing something greater than themselves, like a nation. It provides examples of major European epics that emerged during this time period.

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    This document provides an overview of early European literature during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages. It discusses how Roman civilization and culture survived through the Christian Church and monasteries, where intellectual pursuits took place. Universities then began to emerge, helping to gradually lift Europe out of the darkness. The document then focuses on defining the epic, describing it as a narrative form that emerged early in a nation's literature and captured events of grandeur involving heroes representing something greater than themselves, like a nation. It provides examples of major European epics that emerged during this time period.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    19 views10 pages

    Early European Literature

    Uploaded by

    Ffrncy Tagalogon
    This document provides an overview of early European literature during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages. It discusses how Roman civilization and culture survived through the Christian Church and monasteries, where intellectual pursuits took place. Universities then began to emerge, helping to gradually lift Europe out of the darkness. The document then focuses on defining the epic, describing it as a narrative form that emerged early in a nation's literature and captured events of grandeur involving heroes representing something greater than themselves, like a nation. It provides examples of major European epics that emerged during this time period.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 10

    Notre Dame of Salaman College

    Lebak, Sultan Kudarat

    Early European
    Literature

    Romy O. delos Santos Jr.,LPT, MIE


    Teacher
    Introduction: Reading the Epic
    With the fall of Rome, Europe slipped backward almost into
    savagery. Here and there were great men, saints, and
    mystics; but the mass of the people were helpless both
    against nature and against their oppressors, the raiding
    savages, the roaming criminals, the domineering nobles.
    The very physical aspect of Europe was repellent-a
    continent of ruins and forests dotted with rude forts,
    miserable villages, tiny scattered towns joined by a few
    rough roads, between which lay backwoods, areas where the
    inhabitants were really as savage as those inhabiting Central
    Africa.
    These Dark Ages gave way to the Middle
    Ages, representing the gradual but steady
    and laborious progress of civilization.
    Little by little, the darkness lifted and the
    Greco-Roman civilization began to reassert
    itself.
    Roman civilization and culture had not
    completely perished.
    How much of it survived? Very little.

    Through what channels did it survive? It


    survived in the Christian Church, in the
    monasteries. From very humble beginnings, the
    Church was rising into power and authority.
    Practically all intellectual pursuits and activities
    took place in the monasteries.
    Much of the progress of the Middle Ages was
    educational.
    Universities appeared like street lights being
    lighted one by one after a blackout.
    The University of Salermo was the first, rapidly
    followed by the universities of Bologna, Paris,
    Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, and Heidelberg.
    At the same time, standards of scholarship rose in
    certain monastic orders.
    The learning and aesthetic sensibility which still
    survived was preserved in the monasteries.
    Reading the Epic
    The epic is a major literary type in a nation's literature:
    it is the earliest literary form to appear. The early epic
    appears in a pristine morning light. It has its basis in
    prehistory.
    The epic is inseparable from the idea of grandeur, for it
    must have magnitude.
    Of epic deeds, war is the most obvious example; so an
    epic can partly be described as "a narrative in verse full
    of warlike adventures."
    From this fundamental idea of grandeur, the first
    inference to be drawn is that no man, purely as
    an individual, can be the proper subject of an
    epic.
    A hero remains an individual although he rises
    above the average human stature; but a hero
    becomes an epic hero when he represents
    something greater than himself-a nation, a race, a
    faith.
    The Iliad does not sing only of the anger and warlike deeds
    of Achilles. It brings to mind the whole Trojan War which, in
    the Homeric world, was an event of great magnitude and
    importance.
    The Aeneid, apart from the wanderings and warlike
    adventures of Aeneas, opens an impressive prospect of the
    destiny of imperial Rome.
    The Song of Roland not only pictures the pride and
    obstinacy of Roland but is also filled with the crusading zeal
    of a man who represents Christianity against Islam.
    In Europe, the Middle Ages was an age of epics, and
    the oldest of these European epics is the English epic,
    Beowulf.
    It relates incidents which took place as early as A.D.
    520. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it gives us a
    picture of a stage of civilization earlier than any other
    European epic.
    The type of life described, the disorganized world of
    tribal states, the raiding parties, and the gallant chiefs
    are much like what are found in the Homeric epics.
    The European countries produced a number of
    epics, but only four stand out as major epics.
    These are
    • from Germany, the Nibelungenlied:
    • from France, the Song of Roland;
    • from Spain, El Cid;
    • from Italy, the Divine Comedy.

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