Brief literature of the early Middle Ages. Literature in the Middle Ages. What was the literature of the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages came to replace ancient times - an important stage in spiritual development peoples Western Europe. This time period begins in the 5th century and ends in the first half of the 17th century. The contradictions and complexity of this era were manifested in the peculiarities of the development of its culture. The history of Western European art distinguishes between the Middle Ages proper and the Renaissance. The first lasted from the 5th century to the 15th century, and the second from and to the first third of the 17th century.

Western European medieval and Renaissance literature is traditionally divided into three periods. Chronologically, this corresponds to the distinction accepted by historical science. Periodization looks like this:

1. Literature (from the 5th century to the 11th century). It reflected life during the collapse of the communal system and the formation of feudal relations. Her works of oral art are represented mainly by Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Scandinavians, as well as Latin writing.

2. Literature of the heyday of feudalism (from the 11th century to the 15th century). At this time, in parallel with folk art the creativity of individual authors is developing more and more. In the general literary stream, trends are distinguished that express the interests and worldview of different classes of feudal society. There are works written not only in Latin, but also in living European languages.

3. Literature of the Renaissance (from the 15th century to the first third of the 17th century). This is the period of the so-called late Middle Ages, when the feudal community is undergoing a crisis and new economic relations are emerging.

The original genres of medieval literature were formed under the influence of the peculiar and complex life of the European peoples in this period. Many works have not been preserved, and those that remain are of great value for study. cultural heritage.

Medieval literature of the early period is divided into literature written in and literature in the languages ​​of the local peoples. The first in content is divided into clerical and secular.

Church literature, of course, is inextricably linked with faith in Christ, and however, "heretical" ideas, protesting against the oppression of the people by the clergy and feudal lords, also got into it.

Literature in Latin is represented by the poetry of the Vagantes and chronicles, reflecting the course of events and their causes. The latter have become a valuable source for historians.

Literature in the languages ​​of local peoples is represented by Irish and Anglo-Saxon epics, as well as Scandinavian works.

Medieval literature of the formative period is more diverse in content and genres. It reflects the morality, ideas, ethics and way of life of its time in a wider and deeper way. The interests of the clergy and the class of feudal lords are reflected in clerical and oral form, the creativity of the common people, who are not literate, continues to develop. Starting from the 12th century, in connection with the emergence of cities, burgher (urban) literature arose. It is characterized by democracy and has an anti-feudal orientation.

Medieval Renaissance literature pays close attention to real world. Its content becomes national-historical, it responds to all requests modern life, boldly displays all its contradictions. The main object of the image in the works of this period is a person with his world of feelings and thoughts, his actions. Also indicative is the use by the authors in their work of fantastic and fabulous elements originating in folklore.

Renaissance literature different countries has common features characteristic of this period.

Medieval European literature is the literature of the era of feudalism, which arose in Europe during the period of the withering away of the slave-owning way of life, the collapse of ancient forms of statehood and the elevation of Christianity to the rank of state religion (III-IV centuries). This period ends in the XIV-XV centuries, with the emergence of capitalist elements in the urban economy, the formation of absolutist nation states and the assertion of a secular humanistic ideology that broke the authority of the church.

In its development, it goes through two large stages: the early Middle Ages (III-X centuries) and the mature Middle Ages (XII-XIII centuries). It is also possible to single out the late Middle Ages (XIV-XV centuries), when qualitatively new (early renaissance) phenomena appear in literature, and traditionally medieval genres (knightly romance) are in decline.

The Early Middle Ages is a period of transition. The feudal formation took shape in any distinct form only by the 8th-9th centuries. For several centuries throughout Europe, where waves of the great migration of peoples rolled one after another, confusion and instability reigned. Until the fall in the 5th century. The Western Roman Empire retained the ground for the continuation of the ancient cultural and literary tradition, but then the monopoly in culture passes to the church, literary life freezes. Only in Byzantium do the traditions of Hellenic culture continue to live, and on the western outskirts of Europe, in Ireland and Britain, Latin education is preserved. However, by the eighth century political and economic ruin was overcome, the power, taken by the strong hand of Emperor Charlemagne, provided a material opportunity for the dissemination of knowledge (the establishment of schools), and for the development of literature. The empire of Karl after his death disintegrated, the academy he created dispersed, but the first steps towards the creation of new literature were made.

In the XI century. was born and established literature in the national - Romance and Germanic languages. The Latin tradition is still very strong and continues to put forward artists and phenomena of a pan-European scale: the confessional prose of Pierre Abelard (the autobiographical "History of my disasters", 1132-1136), the ecstatic religious lyrics of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the secular epic heroics of Walter of Châtillon (poem "Alexandreida", ca. 1178-1182), the ludicrous freethinking of the vagantes, itinerant clerics who sang of the joys of the flesh. But with each new century, Latin moves further and further away from literature and closer and closer to science. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the boundaries of literature in the Middle Ages were understood more widely than in our time, and were open even to philosophical treatises, not to mention historical writings. The sign of a literary work was considered not its subject, but its form, the polished style.

Medieval literature exists as class literature, and it could not be otherwise in a society with a rigid social hierarchy. Religious literature occupies a vast space in medieval culture with blurred boundaries. This is not only the literature of the church itself, but above all, a complex of liturgical literature developed over the centuries, which included both the lyrics of hymns, and the prose of sermons, epistles, lives of saints, and the dramaturgy of ritual actions. This is also the religious pathos of many works that are by no means clerical in their general orientation (for example, French epic poems, in particular the Song of Roland, where the ideas of defending the homeland and Christianity are inseparable). Finally, it is a fundamental possibility to subject any work that is secular in content and form to a religious interpretation, since for the medieval consciousness any phenomenon of reality acts as the embodiment of a “higher”, religious significance. Sometimes religiosity was introduced into the originally secular genre over time - such is the fate of the French chivalric romance. But it also happened vice versa: the Italian Dante in the Divine Comedy was able to endow the traditional religious genre of “vision” (“vision” is a story about a supernatural revelation, about a journey into afterworld) with general humanistic pathos, and the Englishman W. Langland in his "Vision of Peter Plowman" - with democratic and rebellious pathos. Throughout the mature Middle Ages, the secular trend in literature gradually grows and enters into not always peaceful relations with the religious trend.

Knightly literature, directly connected with the ruling class of feudal society, is the most significant part of medieval literature. It had three main sections: the heroic epic, courtly (court) lyrics and the novel. The epic of the mature Middle Ages is the first major genre manifestation of literature in new languages ​​and a new stage in the history of the genre in comparison with the ancient epic of the Celts and Scandinavians. Its historical soil is the era of state and ethnic consolidation, the formation of feudal public relations. Its plot is based on legends about the time of the great migration of peoples (the German "Nibelungenlied"), about the Norman raids (German "Kudruna"), about the wars of Charlemagne, his closest ancestors and successors ("The Song of Roland" and the entire French epic " corpus”, which includes about a hundred monuments), about the struggle against the Arab conquest (Spanish “Song of my Side”). The carriers of the epic were wandering folk singers (French "jugglers", German "spielmans", Spanish "huglars"). Their epic departs from folklore, although it does not break ties with it, forgets about fairy-tale themes for the sake of history, it clearly unfolds the ideal of vassal, patriotic and religious duty. The epic finally takes shape in the X-XIII centuries, from the XI century. begins to be recorded and, despite the significant role of the feudal-knightly element, does not lose its original folk-heroic basis.

The lyrics created by the poet-knights, who were called troubadours in the south of France (Provence) and trouvers in the north of France, minnesingers in Germany, pave a direct path to Dante, Petrarch and through them to all new European lyric poetry. It originated in Provence in the 11th century. and then spread throughout Western Europe. Within the framework of this poetic tradition, the ideology of courtesy (from "courtly" - "court") was developed as an elevated norm. social behavior and spiritual order - the first relatively secular ideology of medieval Europe. For the most part, this is love poetry, although it is also familiar with didactics, satire, and political statement. Its innovations are the cult of the Beautiful Lady (modeled on the cult of Our Lady) and the ethic of selfless loving service (modeled on the ethic of vassal fidelity). Courtly poetry discovered love as an inherently valuable psychological state, taking the most important step in comprehending inner peace person.

Within the boundaries of the same courtly ideology, the romance of chivalry arose. Its homeland is France of the 12th century, and one of the creators and at the same time the highest master is Chretien de Troyes. The novel quickly conquered Europe and already at the beginning of the 13th century. found a second home in Germany (Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasbourg, etc.). This novel combined plot fascination (the action, as a rule, takes place in the fairyland of King Arthur, where there is no end to miracles and adventures) with the formulation of serious ethical problems (the relationship between the individual and the social, love and knightly duty). The chivalric novel discovered a new side in the epic hero - dramatic spirituality.

The third array of medieval literature is the literature of the city. It, as a rule, lacks the idealizing pathos of chivalric literature; it is closer to everyday life and, to some extent, more realistic. But it has a very strong element of moralizing and teaching, which leads to the creation of wide-ranging didactic allegories (The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, circa 1230-1280). The range of satirical genres of urban literature extends from the monumental "animal" epic, where the characters are the emperor - the Lion, the feudal lord - the Wolf, the archbishop - the Donkey ("The Romance of the Fox", XIII century), to a short poetic story (French fablio, German schwank). Medieval drama and medieval theater, in no way connected with the ancient ones, were born in the church as the realization of the hidden dramatic possibilities of worship, but very soon the temple transferred them to the city, the townspeople, and a typical medieval system of theatrical genres arose: a huge multi-day mystery (dramatization of the entire sacred history, from the creation of the world to the Last Judgment), a quick farce (everyday comic play), a sedate morality (an allegorical play about the clash of vices and virtues in the human soul). Medieval drama was the closest source of the dramaturgy of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Calderon.

Medieval literature and the Middle Ages as a whole are generally regarded as a time of lack of culture and religious fanaticism. This characteristic, born in the Renaissance and inseparable from the process of self-affirmation of the secular cultures of the Renaissance, classicism, Enlightenment, has become a kind of stamp. But the culture of the Middle Ages is an integral stage of world-historical progress. A man of the Middle Ages knew not only prayer ecstasy, he knew how to enjoy life and rejoice in it, he knew how to convey this joy in his creations. The Middle Ages left us enduring artistic values. In particular, having lost the plasticity and corporality inherent in the ancient vision of the world, the Middle Ages went far ahead in comprehending spiritual world person. “Do not wander outside, but go inside yourself,” wrote Augustine, the greatest Christian thinker, at the dawn of this era. Medieval literature, with all its historical specifics and with all its inevitable contradictions, is a step forward in the artistic development of mankind.

Literature of the Early Middle Ages (XII-XIII centuries)

Cultural studies and art history

Literature of the early Middle Ages of the 19th century. Clerical Literature In the medieval literature of Western Europe, the Christian tradition prevailed over the ancient one. During the early Middle Ages, there were two main streams of literature: oral literature and written literature. Courtly Literature Beginning in the 12th century in Western Europe, the richest literature in Latin and national languages.

Lecture 1

Literature of the Early Middle Ages (XII-XIII centuries)

Clerical literature

In the medieval literature of Western Europe, the Christian tradition prevailed over the ancient one. It was the church that determined the themes of literature, in which the following genres were created: lyric poetry, oleographic, didactic, allegorical poetry.

During the early Middle Ages, there were two main streams of literature: oral literature and written literature. At that time it was given great importance Latin as the language of written literature. began to emerge new type positive hero, his divine inspiration, heroism and courage in upholding spiritual values ​​were glorified. New artistic language Christian literature introduced the concept of a symbolic image. Christian texts had a multilevel meaning.

The first Christian writers: Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome. One of major representatives Christian literature was Aurelius Augustine. The "Confession" of Aurelius Augustine is an enduring literary monument of Christian literature.

There is an orientation to the human soul, which is common feature clerical poetry. There is spiritual poetry (liturgical hymns).

courtly literature

Starting from the XII century in Western Europe there is a rich literature in Latin and in national languages. Medieval literature is characterized by a variety of genres: heroic epics, chivalric literature, sunny poetry of troubadours and minnesingers, fables and poetry of the Vagantes.

the most important integral part the emerging written culture was the heroic epic, recorded in the XII XII centuries. In the heroic epic of Western Europe, there are two varieties: the historical epic, and the fantastic epic, which is closer to folklore.

The epic works of the 12th century were called "poems about deeds." At first they were oral poems, performed, as a rule, by wandering jugglers. The famous "song of Roland", "Song of my Sid", in which the main motives are patriotic and purely "chivalrous spirit".

The concept of "knight" in Western Europe became synonymous with nobility and nobility and was opposed, first of all, to the lower classes - peasants and townspeople. The growth of the class self-awareness of chivalry strengthens their sharply negative attitude towards commoners. Their political ambitions also grew, their pretensions to place themselves on unattainable and moral heights.

Gradually, in Europe, the image of an ideal knight and a code of knightly honor are taking shape, according to which a “knight without fear and reproach” must come from a noble family, be a brave warrior, and constantly take care of his glory. The knight was required courtesy, the ability to play musical instruments and compose poetry, observe the rules of "COURTOISE" impeccable upbringing and behavior at court. A knight must be a devoted lover of his chosen "LADY". Thus, in the code of knightly honor of military squads, intertwined with the moral values ​​of Christianity and the aesthetic norms of the feudal environment.

Of course, the image of the ideal knight often diverges from reality, but still he played a big role in Western European medieval culture.

Within the framework of chivalric culture in the 12th century, literary genres such as chivalric romance and chivalric poetry appeared. The term "romance" originally meant only a verse text in the pictorial Romance language, as opposed to Latin, and then it began to be used to name a specific genre.

The first chivalric novels appeared in the cultural Anglo-Norman environment in 1066. The originator of legends about the exploits of King Arthur, about his glorious knights of the Round Table, about their struggle with the Anglo-Saxons is traditionally considered Geoffrey of Monmouth. The cycle of novels about King Arthur is based on the Celtic heroic epic. The heroic epic as a complete picture folk life was the most significant legacy of the literature of the early Middle Ages and occupied an important place in the artistic culture of Western Europe. According to Tacitus, songs about gods and heroes replaced history for the barbarians. The oldest Irish epic. It is formed from the 3rd to the 8th century. Created by the people in the pagan period, epic poems about warrior heroes first existed in oral form and were passed from mouth to mouth. They were sung and recited in a singsong voice by folk storytellers. Later, in the 7th and 8th centuries, after Christianization, they were revised and written down by learned poets, whose names remained unchanged. Epic works are characterized by the chanting of the exploits of heroes; interweaving of historical background and fiction; glorification of the heroic strength and exploits of the main characters; idealization of the feudal state.

On the heroic epic big influence rendered Celtic and Norse mythology. Often epic and myths are so connected and intertwined with each other that it is quite difficult to draw a line between them. Its heroes Lancelot and Perceval, Palmerin embodied the highest knightly virtues. A common motif of chivalric romances, especially the Breton cycle, was the search for the Holy Grail the chalice into which, according to legend, the blood of the crucified Christ was collected.

In the German epic "Nibelungenlied", which finally took shape from individual songs in the epic legend in the 12th-13th centuries, there is both a historical basis and a fairy tale-fiction. The epic reflects the events of the Great Migration of Peoples of the 4th-5th centuries. there is also a real historical person the formidable leader Atilla, who turned into a kind, weak-willed Etzel. The poem consists of 39 songs "adventure". The action of the poem takes us to the world of court festivities, knightly tournaments and beautiful ladies. Main character poems the Dutch prince Siegfried, a young knight who accomplished many miraculous feats. He is bold and courageous, young and handsome, bold and arrogant. But the fate of Siegfried and his future wife Kriemhilds, for whom the treasure with gold of the Nibelungs became fatal.

The plots of French works were reworked by the authors of German chivalric novels, for example, Rartmann von Aue. His best work was "Poor Heinrich" a short poetic story. Another famous author of chivalric courtly novels was WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, whose poem "Parsifal" (one of the Knights of the Round Table) subsequently inspired the great German composer R. Wagner. The chivalric romance reflected the growth of secular tendencies in literature, as well as the growing interest in human feelings and experiences. He passed on to later eras the idea of ​​what came to be called chivalry.

The chivalrous romance reflected the growth of secular tendencies in literature, as well as the growing interest in human experiences. He passed on to subsequent generations of eras the idea of ​​​​what became known as chivalry. characteristic feature Courtly poetry, which challenged medieval asceticism, can be considered an increased interest in the world of a person who is able not only to pray and fight, but also to love tenderly, admire the beauty of nature.

urban literature

During the Gothic period, literature, music and theatrical performances developed within the urban culture. The urban literature of the 12th-13th centuries was anti-feudal and anti-church. City poets sang of diligence, practical ingenuity, cunning and cunning of artisans and merchants.

The secular urban literature of the late Middle Ages is represented, firstly, by realistic poetic short stories (fablios and schwanks), secondly, by the lyrics of vagants vagrant students, schoolchildren, lower clergy, and, thirdly, by folk epic.

Unlike courtly poetry, urban poetry gravitated towards everyday life, towards everyday life. Realistic poetic short stories, which in France were called fablios, and in Germany schwank, were a secular genre, and their plots were comic and satirical in nature, and the main characters were, as a rule, cunning, not devoid of adventurous commoners (fablio “About Burenka, priestly queen").

The most popular genre of urban literature was the poetic novella, fable or joke. All these genres were characterized by realistic features, satirical sharpness, and a little rough humor. They ridiculed the rudeness and ignorance of the feudal lords, their greed and treachery. Another work of medieval literature, The Romance of the Rose, which consists of two heterogeneous and different parts, has become widespread. In the first part in it in the form actors various human qualities stand out: reason, hypocrisy. The second part of the novel is satirical in nature and decisively attacks the federal-church order, asserting the need for universal equality.

Another direction of the urban culture of the Middle Ages was carnival laughter theatrical art. Laughter culture dominated the carnival, in the work of folk itinerant actors, jugglers, acrobats, and singers. The carnival was the highest manifestation of folk square culture.

The phenomenon of folk laughter culture allows us to rethink the cultural world of the Middle Ages and discover that the "gloomy" Middle Ages was characterized by a festive poetic perception of the world.

Laugh start in folk culture could not find responses in the church-feudal culture, which opposed him with "holy sorrow". The Church taught that laughter and merriment corrupts the soul and is inherent only in evil spirits. They included wandering artists and buffoons, and spectacles with their participation were stigmatized as "godless abomination." In the eyes of the churchmen, buffoons served demonic glory.

Close to urban culture is the poetry of the vagants wandering scholars.

The poetry of the Vagantes, wandering all over Europe in search of the best teachers and a better life, was very bold, condemning the church and the clergy and singing the joys of earthly and free life. In the poetry of the Vagants, two main themes were intertwined - love and satire. The poems are for the most part anonymous; they are plebeian in their essence and in this they differ from the aristocratic creativity of the troubadours.

Vagants were persecuted and condemned by the Catholic Church.

Medieval literature is a period in the history of European literature that begins in late antiquity and ends in the 15th century. The earliest writings that had the greatest influence on subsequent medieval literature were the Christian Gospels, the religious hymns of Ambrose of Milan, the works of Augustine the Blessed ("Confession", 400; "On the City of God", 410-428), translation of the Bible into Latin language, carried out by Jerome and other works of the Latin Church Fathers and philosophers of early scholasticism.

The origin and development of the literature of the Middle Ages is determined by three main factors: the traditions of folk art, the cultural influence of the ancient world and Christianity.

Medieval art reached its culmination in the 12th-13th centuries. At this time, his most important achievements were Gothic architecture (Notre Dame Cathedral), chivalric literature, heroic epic. The extinction of medieval culture and its transition to a qualitatively new stage - the Renaissance (Renaissance) - takes place in Italy in the XIV century, in other countries of Western Europe - in the XV century. This transition was carried out through the so-called literature of the medieval city, which in aesthetic terms has a completely medieval character and flourishes in the 14th-15th and 16th centuries.

The formation of medieval literature was influenced by ancient literature. In the episcopal schools of the early Middle Ages, students, in particular, read the "exemplary" works of ancient authors (Aesop's fables, the works of Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, etc.), assimilated ancient literature and used it in their own writings.

The ambivalent attitude of the Middle Ages towards ancient culture, as primarily pagan, led to the selective assimilation of ancient cultural traditions and their adaptation to express Christian spiritual values ​​and ideals. Pronounced moral and didactic character. Medieval man expected morality from literature; outside of morality, the whole meaning of the work was lost for him. The literature of the Middle Ages is based on Christian ideals and values ​​and strives for aesthetic perfection.

1. Theocentrism - aspiration to God. At the heart of the whole system of values ​​lies the religious idea. The entire era of the Middle Ages was shaped by Christianity. Christianity arises in the 1st century and soon supplants paganism. Total influence on the whole spiritual life of people. Christianity occupies a monopoly position, the entire value scale of a person is determined by religion - all aspects of life. Christianity brings new ideas about time - linear time, the movement from the creation of the world to its death, Last Judgment. In antiquity there was a cyclic idea of ​​time, the world seemed to be eternal. Eschatological motives appear. Eschatology is the doctrine of the end of the world.

2. Medieval man was characterized by the idea of ​​the dualism of the world: the earthly (immanent) and spiritual (transcendental) parts. The earthly world is visible. Spiritual - heavenly, heavenly. Any religious system is built on a certain philosophical basis. Christianity is based on idealism, which states that the spirit is primary. The heavenly world is the main, eternal, unchanging world. Plato. 3. Changing moral priorities. In antiquity, the main thing is civic prowess. Example: the epitaph of Aeschylus. In the Middle Ages - faith and fidelity (class fidelity). loyalty to the feudal lord. Vassal loyalty to one's overlord. 4. Symbolism and allegorism. It comes from dualism. In the real manifestations of the earthly world one sees revelation, divine signs. Art is also symbolic and allegorical. 5. Art almost did not express the joy of being, not the beauty of the form, but the beauty of the idea. There is no portrait genre in art. Medieval art is mostly anonymous. The division of European medieval literature into periods is determined by the stages of the social development of peoples at the present time. There are two major periods:

early Middle Ages - the period of decomposition literature tribal system(from the 5th century to the 9th-10th centuries);

mature Middle Ages - the period of literature of developed feudalism (from the 9th-10th century to the 15th century).

Latin and folk literature

Medievalists of the 19th century distinguished between two types of medieval literature, "learned" and "folk". Such a classification seemed plausible, for it contained social connotations; the first class included Latin texts and court poetry, the second - all other works, considered, in the spirit of the romantics, to be the original art.

At present, medieval literature is usually divided into Latin literature and literature in the vernacular languages ​​(Romance and Germanic). The differences between them are fundamental. For a long time neither Latin literary forms had counterparts in vernacular languages, nor, conversely, Romano-Germanic forms in Latin. Only in the 12th century did the Latin tradition lose its isolation and “modernize”, while the vernacular languages ​​acquire the ability to develop some of its aspects. But this phenomenon remains marginal for a long time. The concept of "literature" in the sense in which we understand it now, that is, assuming the written and at the same time expressed the individual character of the text, is truly applicable only to the Latin texts of the era. In cases where there is a coincidence of some fact of Latin literature with the fact of Romano-Germanic literature, they are almost always separated from each other by a significant time interval: the Romano-Germanic phenomenon appears much later than its supposed model.

Folk languages ​​borrowed a certain number of techniques from the school tradition - but from time to time, due to secondary needs and opportunities. The only example of the Latin genre, assimilated in its original form by the popular language, is the animal fable, which goes back to Aesop. Modern philology has resolutely abandoned the theories of the 1920s and 1930s, according to which the fablio or pasturel goes back to Latin models.

It is difficult to say how the "Carolingian revival" is connected with the appearance of the first texts in the vernacular, but there is certainly a connection between these two phenomena. The decline of the 10th century seems to have something to do with the prehistory of Romanesque poetry. The "Renaissance of the XII century" coincides with the emergence of new poetic forms, which are destined to soon supplant all the others: courtly lyrics, the novel, the short story.

At the beginning of the 12th century, at the Anglo-Norman court, the process of translating Latin texts into the Romance language began (the development of the vernacular language in this environment was apparently favored by those Anglo-Saxon customs that existed before the conquest - and which still had no analogues on the continent). For about half a century the Anglo-Norman translators labored alone, and only from the middle of the century Picardy translators joined them. The number of translators has increased sharply since the beginning of the 13th century, the century of morality and pedagogy, when the share of cities and schools in the cultural balance increased.

The word "translation" here must be understood in a broad sense. Most often we are talking about adaptations - approximate, simplified or annotated equivalents of the original, which were intended for any court that showed an interest in "learned" issues. These works mainly pursued a practical goal: the translator, trying to please the tastes of the client, created something like a literary analogue of the original, usually with the help of verse - almost always an eight-syllable, fixed by that time in the narrative tradition.

Carried out by Jerome of Stridon (before 410) and other works of the Latin Church Fathers and philosophers of early scholasticism.

The origin and development of the literature of the Middle Ages is determined by three main factors: the traditions of folk art, the cultural influence of the ancient world and Christianity.

Medieval art reached its culmination in the 12th-13th centuries. At this time, his most important achievements were Gothic architecture (Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris), chivalric literature, heroic epos. The extinction of medieval culture and its transition to a qualitatively new stage - the Renaissance (Renaissance) - takes place in [Italy|Italy] in the XIV century, in other countries of Western Europe - in the XV century. This transition was carried out through the so-called literature of the medieval city, which in aesthetic terms has a completely medieval character and flourishes in the 14th and 16th centuries.

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Subtitles

Latin and folk literature

The mythology of early national literatures (Irish, Icelandic) is expressed in fabulousness- beautiful and adventurous elements of courtly literature. In parallel, there is a change in the affective motivation of the characters' actions to a more complex one - moral and psychological.

Until the end of the 12th century, only legal documents were written in prose in vernacular languages. All "fiction" literature is poetic, which is associated with performance to music. Starting from the middle of the 12th century, the eight-syllable, assigned to narrative genres, gradually became autonomous from the melody and began to be perceived as a poetic convention. Baudouin VIII orders the chronicle of pseudo-Turpin to be transcribed for him in prose, and the first works written or dictated in prose are the chronicles and "Memoirs" of Villardouin and Robert de Clari. The novel took over from prose.

However, the verse has by no means faded into the background in all genres. Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, prose remained a comparatively marginal phenomenon. In the XIV-XV centuries, a mixture of poetry and prose is often found - from Machaux's "True Story" to Jean Maro's "Textbook of Princesses and Noble Ladies".

medieval poetry

In the lyrics of Walter von der Vogelweide and Dante Alighieri, the greatest lyric poets of the Middle Ages, we find a fully formed new poetry. The vocabulary has been completely updated. Thought was enriched by abstract concepts. Poetic comparisons refer us not to the everyday, as in Homer, but to the meaning of the infinite, ideal, "romantic". Although the abstract does not absorb the real, and in the chivalrous epic the element of low reality is revealed quite expressively (Tristan and Isolde), a new technique is discovered: reality finds its hidden content.