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.In 793 - some sixty-two years after Bede had concluded his History at the monastery at Jarrow with the optimistic sentiment that `peace and prosperity' blessed the English Church and people - the neighbouring abbey at Lindisfarne was sacked and devastated by Viking sea-raiders.A similar fate befell Jarrow in the following year.For a century the ordered and influential culture fostered by the English monasteries was severely disrupted, even extinguished.Libraries were scattered or destroyed and monastic schools deserted.It was not until the reign of the determined and cultured Alfred, King of Wessex (848-99), that English learning was again purposefully encouraged.A thorough revival of the monasteries took place in the tenth century under the aegis of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.910-88), Ćthelwold, Bishop of Winchester (?908-84), and Oswald, Bishop of Worcester (d.992).From this period date the four most significant surviving volumes of Old English verse, the so-called Junius manuscript, the Beowulf manuscript, the Vercelli Book, and the Exeter Book.These collections were almost certainly the products of monastic scriptoria (writing-rooms) although the anonymous authors of the poems may not necessarily have been monks themselves.Many of the poems are presumed to date from a much earlier period, but their presence in these tenth-century anthologies indicates not just the survival, acceptability, and consistency of an older tradition; it also amply suggests how wide-ranging, complex, and sophisticated the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon period was.While allowing that the surviving poems are representative of the tradition, many modern scholars none the less allow that what has survived was probably subject to two distinct processes of selection: one an arbitrary selection imposed by time, by casual destruction, or by the natural decay of written records; the other a process of editing, exclusion, excision, or suppression by monastic scribes.This latter process of anonymous censorship has left us with a generally elevated, elevating, and male-centred literature, one which lays a stress on the virtues of a tribal community, on the ties of loyalty between lord and liegeman, on the significance of individual heroism, and on the powerful sway of wyrd, or fate.The earliest dated poem that we have is ascribed by Bede to a writer named Cćdmon, an unskilled servant employed at the monastery at Whitby in the late seventh century.Cćdmon, who had once been afraid to take the harp and sing to its accompaniment at secular feasts, as divinely granted the gift of poetry in a dream and, on waking, composed a short hymn to God the Creator.Such was the quality of his divine inspiration that the new poet was admitted to the monastic community and is said to have written a series of now lost poems on Scriptural subjects, including accounts of Christ's Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.Bede's mention of Cćdmon's early fear of being a guest `invited to sing and entertain the company' at a feast suggests something of the extent to which poetry was a public and communal art.It also suggests that a specifically religious poetry both derived from, and could be distinct from, established secular modes of composition.Bede's story clearly indicates that the poetry of his day followed rules of diction and versification which were readily recognized by its audience.That audience, it is also implied, accepted that poetry was designed for public repetition, recitation and, indeed, artful improvisation.The elaborate, conventional language of Old English poetry probably derived from a Germanic bardic tradition which also accepted the vital initiatory role of a professional poet, or scop, the original improviser ofa song on heroic themes.This scop, drawing from a `word-hoard' of elevated language and terminology, would be expected to perform his verses at celebratory gatherings in the royal, lordly, and even monastic halls which figure so prominently in the literature of the period.The writer of Beowulf speaks, for example, of `the clear song of the scop' ('swutol sang scopes') (l.90) and of a poet, `a thane of the king's.who remembered many traditional stories and improvised new verses' (ll.867-71).The vitality of the relationship of a scop to his lord, and the dire social misfortune attendant on the loss of such patronage, also feature in the elegiac poem known as Deor, a poem which dwells purposefully, and somewhat mournfully, on the importance of the poet's memorializing.The scop's inherited pattern of poetry-making derived from an art which was essentially oral in its origins and development.Old English verse uses a complex pattern of alliteration as the basis of its form.Elaborately constructed sentences, and interweaving words and phrases are shaped into two-stressed half lines of a varying number of syllables; the half lines are then linked into full-lines by means of alliteration borne on the first stress of the second half line.The dying speech of Beowulf, commanding the construction ofa barrow to his memory, suggests something of the steady majesty this verse can carry:HataD heaDomćre hlćw gewyrceanbeorhtne ćfter bćle ćt brimes nosan;se scel to gemyndum minum leodumheah hlifian on Hronesnćsse,ţćt hit sćliDend syDDan hatanBiowulfes biorh, Da De brentingasofer floda genipu feorran drifaD.(Command the warriors famed in battle build a bright mound after my burning at the sea headland.It shall tower high on Whale Ness, a reminder to my people, so that seafarers may afterwards call it Beowulf's barrow when they drive their ships from afar over the dark waves [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.In 793 - some sixty-two years after Bede had concluded his History at the monastery at Jarrow with the optimistic sentiment that `peace and prosperity' blessed the English Church and people - the neighbouring abbey at Lindisfarne was sacked and devastated by Viking sea-raiders.A similar fate befell Jarrow in the following year.For a century the ordered and influential culture fostered by the English monasteries was severely disrupted, even extinguished.Libraries were scattered or destroyed and monastic schools deserted.It was not until the reign of the determined and cultured Alfred, King of Wessex (848-99), that English learning was again purposefully encouraged.A thorough revival of the monasteries took place in the tenth century under the aegis of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.910-88), Ćthelwold, Bishop of Winchester (?908-84), and Oswald, Bishop of Worcester (d.992).From this period date the four most significant surviving volumes of Old English verse, the so-called Junius manuscript, the Beowulf manuscript, the Vercelli Book, and the Exeter Book.These collections were almost certainly the products of monastic scriptoria (writing-rooms) although the anonymous authors of the poems may not necessarily have been monks themselves.Many of the poems are presumed to date from a much earlier period, but their presence in these tenth-century anthologies indicates not just the survival, acceptability, and consistency of an older tradition; it also amply suggests how wide-ranging, complex, and sophisticated the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon period was.While allowing that the surviving poems are representative of the tradition, many modern scholars none the less allow that what has survived was probably subject to two distinct processes of selection: one an arbitrary selection imposed by time, by casual destruction, or by the natural decay of written records; the other a process of editing, exclusion, excision, or suppression by monastic scribes.This latter process of anonymous censorship has left us with a generally elevated, elevating, and male-centred literature, one which lays a stress on the virtues of a tribal community, on the ties of loyalty between lord and liegeman, on the significance of individual heroism, and on the powerful sway of wyrd, or fate.The earliest dated poem that we have is ascribed by Bede to a writer named Cćdmon, an unskilled servant employed at the monastery at Whitby in the late seventh century.Cćdmon, who had once been afraid to take the harp and sing to its accompaniment at secular feasts, as divinely granted the gift of poetry in a dream and, on waking, composed a short hymn to God the Creator.Such was the quality of his divine inspiration that the new poet was admitted to the monastic community and is said to have written a series of now lost poems on Scriptural subjects, including accounts of Christ's Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.Bede's mention of Cćdmon's early fear of being a guest `invited to sing and entertain the company' at a feast suggests something of the extent to which poetry was a public and communal art.It also suggests that a specifically religious poetry both derived from, and could be distinct from, established secular modes of composition.Bede's story clearly indicates that the poetry of his day followed rules of diction and versification which were readily recognized by its audience.That audience, it is also implied, accepted that poetry was designed for public repetition, recitation and, indeed, artful improvisation.The elaborate, conventional language of Old English poetry probably derived from a Germanic bardic tradition which also accepted the vital initiatory role of a professional poet, or scop, the original improviser ofa song on heroic themes.This scop, drawing from a `word-hoard' of elevated language and terminology, would be expected to perform his verses at celebratory gatherings in the royal, lordly, and even monastic halls which figure so prominently in the literature of the period.The writer of Beowulf speaks, for example, of `the clear song of the scop' ('swutol sang scopes') (l.90) and of a poet, `a thane of the king's.who remembered many traditional stories and improvised new verses' (ll.867-71).The vitality of the relationship of a scop to his lord, and the dire social misfortune attendant on the loss of such patronage, also feature in the elegiac poem known as Deor, a poem which dwells purposefully, and somewhat mournfully, on the importance of the poet's memorializing.The scop's inherited pattern of poetry-making derived from an art which was essentially oral in its origins and development.Old English verse uses a complex pattern of alliteration as the basis of its form.Elaborately constructed sentences, and interweaving words and phrases are shaped into two-stressed half lines of a varying number of syllables; the half lines are then linked into full-lines by means of alliteration borne on the first stress of the second half line.The dying speech of Beowulf, commanding the construction ofa barrow to his memory, suggests something of the steady majesty this verse can carry:HataD heaDomćre hlćw gewyrceanbeorhtne ćfter bćle ćt brimes nosan;se scel to gemyndum minum leodumheah hlifian on Hronesnćsse,ţćt hit sćliDend syDDan hatanBiowulfes biorh, Da De brentingasofer floda genipu feorran drifaD.(Command the warriors famed in battle build a bright mound after my burning at the sea headland.It shall tower high on Whale Ness, a reminder to my people, so that seafarers may afterwards call it Beowulf's barrow when they drive their ships from afar over the dark waves [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]