ASSIGNMENT

                                                       The Dark Age And Middle Age

SUBMITTED TO:                                                                                      SUBMITTED BY:

Dr. Shalini                                                                                                   Mohd: Uvais PA

Central University of Kerala                                                                       I ECL

                                                      Submitted on: 11/9/2014

Introduction

According to M H Abraham, for convenience of discussion, historians divide the continuity of English literature into segments of time that are called “periods”. The exact number, dates and number vary, but there a certain conformed chronological order for English literature. How can somebody call a number of days as Dark Age and some others as medieval?  Who did give them authority to categorize so called “ages”? On what basis somebody can say these are dark ages and these are Middle Ages?

            These are some of the questions that arrive while we generally discuss about ages of literature or history, periods.

            “Periods in literature are generally named after rulers, historical events, intellectual or political or religious movements and styles. Most literary periods therefore have multiple names. What’s worse, some of these names are debated…..”

                                                                                                Daniel Reed and Tim Horton.

            Dark Age is sometime known age of illiteracy, war, destruction and death. Dark Age and light age are easy metaphors which are used to describe whether you live in a good age or bad age. More interestingly, while we hear the Dark Age it would be quite general to attribute it to fourteenth century Italian poet Petrarch. In one of his works he writes :

            “My fate is to live among varied and confusing storms. But for you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. This sleep of forgetfulness will not last for ever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.” Later on many Italian scholars of fourteenth and fifteenth century followed him as they having an intellectual and artistic boom. Janet Nelson tells that in their minds was a time of “ reborn classical culture, they rescued Greek from near-oblivion, removed errors from Latin, cleared fog from philosophy, crassness from theology, crudeness from art.”

            They divided history into three parts-  there  was  1) Classical age, which is the time of Greek wisdom,  2) Roman power when Jesus Christ walked in the world, 3) Renaissance, their own time, when everything was better. Actually from the fall of the Roman empire in the Fifth century they started to call their own time. Eventually it came to known as the “middle ages”. At the other hand, some other Italian writers saw it as a time when everything was in declaim, even the great building of  Rome like the Colosseum  was in trouble  and  when no one was producing great works of  literature. Even it widely talked  in Europe , the English writing that of  famous historian Edward Gibbon  referred to that time as “the darkness of  middle ages” and  “ portraying life during this time as full of either uncultured barbarians, evil tyrants or superstitious peasants.”  Later on , by the nineteenth century the darkages and the middle ages come to be known as the very same thing. Since then most of the historians have happen to analyze about the medieval period and its achievements.

            Concerning more to English historians we get a simple conclusion that if there were any dark age in medieval age it would be right from the early part of  it, namely, after the fall of  Roman power  in Britain around fifth and sixth centuries. Unfortunately, by the lack of historical resources we don’t know much about them. Shortly, medieval academics are more concerned about the dark age in medieval age, but they do not call it fully as an age of dark age like the other names like Barbarous age, the Obscure age, the Leaden ages, the Monkish age and the Muddy age. While we discuss all these things,  Early period, Late period and  Caxton  and  the English language. Enlightenment and reformation during  the  same period too deserve due attention. However, there are lot of issues and events to take into concern while we discuss the dark age, whether it starts from the great fall of Roman Empire or the pre-Chaucerian  period and to name a few.

 Darkages

Following the decline of the Roman Empire, Western Europe  has completely fallen into cultural and economic deterioration. These days are called the dark ages, originally for the middle ages as a historical per iodization. The light-versus-darkness label is used conventionally for this dark age and following light age. In some areas of Europe  which were drown in dark age is historically unproved  by the lack of authentic historical proof. The term “dark age” originates from the latin word saeculum obscurum , applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 to a continuing period in the 10^th and 11^th centuries. The term again is used for the 6^th to 13^th centuries, the middle ages shortly after the light antiquity and the Italian renaissance. But wide range of recognition of the achievements during the middle ages made the label being restricted in application.  Later, since the 20^th century, it is used  to denote the early middle ages of 5^th -10^th century. On because of it’s negative connotation, modern scholars hardly use the term dark age, finding it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the middle ages. Italian scholar Petrarch is said to be known as the first one who used the term dark age in 1330s and he was actually criticizing late latin literature. Petrarch concerned post-roman centuries as “dark” compared to the light of classical antiquity.

             Some of the writers came to say the intermediate period between classical antiquity and the modern era. As contrary, 19^th century scholars challenging the term dark age by showing the achievements of middle age and they restricted the dark age to the early middle ages. Many a developments of 20^th century like the rise of archaeology and other things throw light to those ages and understood much more things about dark age. Other aspects of per iodization like late antiquity, the early middle ages and the great migration, depending on which aspects of culture are being emphasized. Later on, the every studies of “dark age” in the 19^th century  concerned it very critically. But at least they take it rarely for the indication of an age which lacked artistic and cultural output, including historical records. The idea of the dark age is started with the Petrarch when he said : “Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius; no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom”. The so called term is used very secularly by Petrarch as he called classical antiquity as an age of light where many of the writers called it as an age of dark on because of it’s lack of Christianity. Petrarch happened to see the roman empire as an age which lost the power of  classical latin and greek texts. Later he wrote that  history had two periods :

 1) classical period of greek and roman’s  

 2) time of darkness

In his last days, he wrote the epic Africa in which he says : “My fate is to live among varied and confusing storms. But for you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. This sleep of forgetfulness will not last for ever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance”

            Later in 15^th century historian like Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo developed a tree kinds of history, the that Petrarch said adding a modern. Till then, period of supposed decline came to known as the middle age.   It was Baronius who attributed to the between the end of the  Carolingian Empire in 888 and the first inklings of  the  Gregorian  Reform  under  Pope Clement II in 1046. After that, during the enlightenment of 17^th and 18^th centuries many scholars came to observe religion is fundamentally opposes reason. On because of that the writers like Kant and Voltaire called those ages as dark age. On the other hand, Gibbon and others expressed  their own time as “new age” and  before their days as dark age similarly like Petrarch.

Middle age

            From the 12^th century until the 1470s,  the age wildly known as medieval age in English literature on because of middle english’s use, majorly as a result of printing press. Mainly after the Norman conquest language get changed hugely and the great poet like Geoffrey Chaucer arrived and glorified the age almost likely that of Virgil and Dante. The wild and occasional play of new language opened a different and creative era to English literature. Unlike the dark age it’s history is written any many artistic and literary outputs came into limelight with which the entire English culture said to have published throughout the whole world either.

            Towns : A new class emerged during the middle Ages; the merchant. The growth of trade and the merchant middle class went hand in hand with the growth in towns. Town populations swelled during this period, particularly after the Black Death. Trade routes grew, though roads remained poor and dangerous, so most goods were transported by water. Towns were built on trade, and the elite of towns were the merchants. Merchant guilds-controlled town, government, though they often clashed with craft guilds for power. Merchants needed stability for trade, so they supported the king and the establishment of a strong central government against the rule of individual nobles. The king, for his part, encouraged the growth of towns and trade. Town charters became a major source of royal revenue.

Conclusion

 To conclude, It's clear that there was a collision in learning and much technical capacity as a result of the fragmentation and contradictories  that followed the declain of the Roman Empire in Western Europe. In areas such as southern Gaul or northern Spain, this collision  was a slow decline over several hundred years. In others, such as Britain, it was much more quick and catastrophic. Modern surveys of archaeological and documentary evidence, such as those summarized by Bryan Ward-Perkins  show that this means a clear fall in material culture and technical capacity between the later Roman era and the seventh century. 

Factory-made, mass-produced ceramics that had been exported to the out  corners of the empire were replaced with rough, homemade pottery. Evidence of luxury goods that exported  over long distances disappears from the record in all but the most elite gravesite finds. Learning was not extinguished completely thanks to the church's teaching that "pagan" philosophy was valuable for its own sake and to be preserved. But much was lost in the turmoil. We have, for example, some correspondence between two monks from the ninth century discussing mathematical problems that, to modern eyes, look totally elementary but which were cutting-edge at the time.

This was not due to any lack of "intelligence." People in the early Middle Ages were every bit as intelligent as their Roman-era forebears and also just as smart as we are. But when the whole infrastructure of the earlier culture falls apart under a complex combination of economic and political failures and your region is assailed on all sides from successive waves of invaders and wracked internally by political division and warfare, there tend to be more important things to apply that intelligence to than building aqueducts or translating Aristotle from the Greek. If our civilization collapsed, we would still have the intelligence to design computer games or decorate loft apartments, but we would be using it to grow food, protect our crops, and survive.

The myth of the Middle Ages as a "dark age" does not lie in the fact that things declined markedly after the fall of Rome—they did. It lies in the idea that this situation persisted until the dawning of something called "the Renaissance," which somehow rescued Western Europe from the clutches of the Catholic Church, revived ancient Greek and Roman learning, reinvented "good" (i.e. realistic) art and made everything OK again.

This is the part of the story that is the myth.

The revival of material culture came long before the so-called "Renaissance." It began as early as the eighth century and was driven by the needs of early medieval farmers to achieve more with less. With long-distance trade at a low ebb, European farmers had to be far more self-sufficient, and with populations lower, they had to be more labor-effective. Technologies and farming techniques that reduced labor and increased yields became increasingly required and saw an adoption of changes in the period between 500 and 1200 that revolutionized agrarian production. The adoption of the horse collar and horseshoes made plowing more effective, and the wider use of the heavy mouldboard plow meant that heavy, fertile Northern European soils could be brought under production for the first time. Watermills began to proliferate through Europe, mechanizing not just flour production but also a range of other processes once done manually. This mechanization spread to use of tidal mills and, eventually, to the invention of lateral windmills. The range of processes driven by these new machines increased to include sawing masonry, driving trip hammers, automated forge bellows, and more.

The resultant rise in production levels and standards of living from these technologies, combined with the end of the waves of invasion and greater political stability, paved the way for an upswing in the later Middle Ages. Contact with Jewish and Muslim scholars in Spain saw lost works by Aristotle, Ptolemy, Archimedes, and many others translated into Latin and returned to the West. In the same period, universities began to appear across Europe, setting up a network of scholarship. This medieval revival also saw further technological innovation, with major inventions such as the mechanical clock, eyeglasses, effective gunpowder weapons, and the printing press.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

         Albert Edward, History of English Literature, Rev, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014

         Nagarajan  M S, English Literary Criticism and Theory Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2006.

         Abraham K.M, Social and Cultural History of Great Britain, Kozha: Institute of Secularism , 2011 .

                   www.wiki.org

Anjitha Tom, A2- Dark Ages and Middle Ages.

                              Dark Ages and Middle Ages

      Middle Age is the age between antiquity and modern. It begins with the fall of Roman Empire in the west or with the settlement of Germanic tribes in 476 A.D and ends in 1500 or with the beginning of Renaissance. The periodization of Middle Age is different for different countries and is extremely long.

      On the other hand, Dark Ages is defined differently in different sources. In many dictionaries, Dark Ages is used as a synonym for Middle Ages, some other sources claim it as the early Middle Ages and other few point it out as the period between Chaucer and Renaissance. However, one point is clear regarding the meaning of the age; it is a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity where no literary works were produced.

     The notion of dividing time into major three ages lies in the hands of Petrarch in the mid-fourteenth century. According to him, the middle ages began when barbarians destroyed the Roman Empire and the centuries followed by where the ages of darkness until Europeans recovered the civilization of the ancient Rome.'One of the great attractions of the Dark Ages', W.P Ker wrote, 'is that they exhibit... a different kind of literary tradition from the classical; the pure elements contributed by the barbarians to the literary art of Europe'.

     The literary works of Middle Age comprises of the works from the Old English Period till Renaissance. The true beginnings of the literature start with the texts such as Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in Latin by Beda Venerbalis in England and in other parts of the Europe, the national literatures developed in the vernacular parallel to the Latin literature. The works of this age comprises of magic charms, riddles, poems, lyric poetry, epic long poems with religious contents. Romance, a new genre was developed in the period;it also produced cycles of narratives, such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.However, the literary criticism of the age is not an age of much merit.The age can be divided into early middle and the late middle age.

       It was somewhere between the year 700 and the year 900, the epic poem Beowulf was composed. It tells the story of a warrior, Beowulf from Geatland in Sweden, who goes to Denmark and kills the monster named Grendel, Grendel’s mother takes revenge, but he kills it too and becomes the King of Geats at the end.The author of this epic poem is unknown.

    One of the major developments during this time was the development of Christianity as the religion of the Mediterranean region.  Christian writers during the time wrote lyric laments such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer and Deor, which reflected the pagan life of the past. Caedmon and Cynewulf, the poets of the time wrote on Biblical and religious themes. There were secular poems too which can be named as national, rather than pagan, mostly written during the tenth century.

Talking about the Middle Ages in context of England, it was attacked by the French speaking Normans in the eleventh century and a definite rapture occurred in culture and literature. The period provides large amount of interesting and often delightful works. There is a great influence of French and Latin works during the period.  From the later half of this Middle Ages, a number of texts from various literary genres have been preserved. The long list includes lyric poetry and epic “long poems” with religious contents, such as Piers Plowman, which has been attributed to William Langland. The Romance, a new genre of a secular kind, was developed in the period and  can be classified according to the subject. The best of the romances dealing with English history and its heroes includes the King Horn and Havelock the Dane and the popular Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton. Romances that are connected with the King Arthur includes the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which was written in the fourteenth century, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Arthur and Merlin , to name a few. There are romances that deal with classical themes, Charlemagne legends and other miscellaneous romances. This form indirectly influenced the development of the novel in the eighteenth century. 

     Unusual numbers of verse chronicles were also written. They were distinguished by their use of stories which appear incredible by their inventiveness and vivacity of the style. The major chronicle writers include Lazamon, Robert of Gloucester and Robert Manning of Brunne.Several religious and didactic poetry were also written during the age.

     Considering the prose writing The Ancrene Riwle, which is ascribed to the twelfth century is the most important of the prose texts, and has been pointed out as the most influential.  The text was written as a guide to three noble ladies who had become anchoresses.

    Towards the end of the later middle age, greater importance was given to the social and the intellectual movements of the time. This period witnessed a series of famines and plagues, such as the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, which reduced the population to half before the calamity, followed by political unrest, which lead to the Peasant’s revolt, Wars of Roses, which all provided for the expression of new ideas and ideologies.

   The most important development in the literary field during this time was regarding the standardization of the vernacular language which attains its full expression in the works of Chaucer.In the fourteenth century, William Langland produced an allegorical vision of human life in Piers Plowman. But, a vivid picture of the medieval people is mostly represented in The Canterbury Tales.

    On the other hand, Italy produced some of the most influential poets of the time. Among them, Dante Alighieri is arguably the greatest medieval poet. Even though he wrote on wide range of subjects he is famous for the lyric poems written to his beloved, Beatrice and the Divine Comedy. Dante’s works provided inspiration for other writers but it influenced other two Italian writers, Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarch.

    Petrarch (1304-1374) is considered to be the first modern poet. His most famous work is a collection of Italian verses, Canzoniere dedicated to his love, Laura.His perfection of the use of sonnets was useful for the later English poets such as Chaucer and Shakespeare.

     Boccaccio was only nine years younger to Petrarch. His writings were inspired by his love for Fiametta. Even though he is the author of many works, he is famous for The Decameron, a collection of love stories between 1348 and 1353; several of his own lyric poems are also included with the collection of which both Shakespeare and Chaucer drew heavily for the structure and style.

     The time followed by was the age of Chaucer, the father of English poetry. His correct birth date is uncertain, but generally accepted as being 1340. His works can be divided into three stages, the French, the Italian, and the English of which the last is the development of the first two. The third group contains work of the greatest individual accomplishment, Canterbury Tales. For the general idea of the tales, he is indebted to Boccaccio. It is a cycles of narratives, where Chaucer draws together twenty- nine pilgrims, including himself and they meet at the tabard Inn, in order to go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. The twenty- nine are carefully chosen types, of all ranks from a knight to a humble ploughman of both the sexes. At the suggestion of the host of the Tabard, each of the pilgrims is to tell two tales on the outward journey and two on the return, but Chaucer did not complete it. Even in its incomplete state, the work is a small literature in itself, an almost unmeasured abundance and variety of humour and pathos, of narrative and description, and of dialogue and digression (Albert, 34). These cycles of narratives are considered as the models for the short stories of the nineteenth century.

     However, the most striking literary innovations of the later Middle Ages are mystery and miracle plays and these dramas paved way for the re-emergence of the drama after an entire millennium in which theatre had no significance. Thus, it indirectly influenced the development of drama in the Renaissance, the beginning period of the Modern Age.

Bibliography

Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey Harpham. A glossary of literary terms, New York Cengage Learning, 2011.

Nagarajan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and Theory: An Introductory History, Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2006.

Albert, Edward. History of English Literature, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Klarer, Mario. An Introduction to Literary Studies, London: Routledge, 1999.

MIDDLE AGES

INTRODUCTION

Middle Age is the period from fifth to fifteenth century from the collapse of Roman civilization in the 5th century to the Renaissance. It is variously interpreted as beginning in the 13th, 14th, or 15th century, depending on the region of European countries and on other factors.

The term and its conventional meaning were introduced by Italian humanists with invidious intent and the humanist were engaged in a revival of Classical learning and culture, and the notion of a thousand-year period of darkness and ignorance separating them from the ancient Greek and Roman world served to highlight the humanists’ own work and ideals. In a sense, the humanists invented the middle Ages in order to distinguish themselves from it. The middle Ages nonetheless provided the foundation for the transformations of the humanists’ own Renaissance.

THE DARK AGES

The Dark Ages were a period of great upheaval, constant war, horrendous plague, and stagnant cultural growth. However, through these difficult centuries new ideas and a new culture were born. In today’s world we still feel the effects of these changes that were brought about so long ago.

The Dark Ages were a period that is generally accepted as having begun in the year 410 CE with the fall of Roman Empire, and ending in 1095 CE with the launch of the first Crusades. The fall of Rome sets a good understanding for what the Dark Ages were all about because, for centuries, the Roman Empire was a unified force that brought stabilization to most of Europe. It had a vibrant trade and commerce industry that supported a reasonably secure lifestyle for millions of people. When Rome fell, this network of trade and commerce collapsed and the European World descended into chaos. It took seven hundred years of war, plague, and poverty before the continent emerged from turmoil and moved into the Renaissance.

Before it fell, Rome had been the center of the European world for centuries. The Emperor ruled over all, and when societal collapse struck, the concept of one man ruling the world remained. It was this aspiration to rule that perpetuated the darkness of the times. Lords from all over Europe were engaged with each other in battles for land and power. These conflicts lasted hundreds of years, and created a massive drain on natural resources and a period of cultural stagnation.

This constant struggle for power within Europe made it very easy for outside forces to penetrate the continent, leaving death and destruction in their wake. From the north, Vikings invaded and plundered many major cities, and from the south, Moorish invaders brought war and the word of their prophet. Europe was under siege--from the inside and the outside.

Throughout the first century of the Dark Ages, Europe made slow but tangible progress and Emperor Justinian was on the verge of reuniting the continent when the plague struck and killed tens of millions of people. This destroyed all hope of reunification and kept the continent in chaos for several more centuries.

Christianity was an ideal that rose to power during the dark ages and many warlords of the time embraced it. This had a unifying force on the entire European continent and even though there were many kingdoms they all swore allegiance under the pope. This brought an end to the internal fighting that had been going on for centuries and this unification was solidified with the launching of the Crusades beginning in 1095. This gave all the various warlords and kings a common religious goal and a foe they could join together and focus on.

The Crusades, while being for the most part a failure in that they held very little of the land they attempted to conquer, were a significant factor in the rebirth of Europe in that Europe was reunited under a common religion and returning crusaders brought back with them to Europe a wealth of new information in architecture, medicine, philosophy, mathematics and many other areas. This infusion of ideas, paired with the end of constant war within Europe set the stage for the Renaissance.

The Dark Ages were an extraordinarily difficult period in the story of humanity. It is estimated that hundred million people died at the hands of war, poverty, and plague. But during this time new ideas and ideals were born and much of the groundwork was laid for the world we know today.

THE MIDDLE ENGLISH

This age have two divisions in it, the high middle ages and late middle ages. During the High Middle Ages, which began after AD 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish. The organization of peasants into villages that owed rent and labor services to the patricians and  feudalists and the political structure whereby man at arms and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and mansions, were two of the ways society was organized in the High Middle Ages. The movement, first preached in 1095, where military attempts by Western European Christians to gain the considered holy land of Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralized nation states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified society more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasized joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. The theology, the paintings, the poetry, the travels and the architecture of gothic cathedrals are among the outstanding achievements of this period.

The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine, plague, and war, which significantly diminished the population of Europe, between 1347 and 1350. Controversy, falsehood and indifference within the church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, and peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning of the early modern age.

THE RENAISSANCE

The Renaissance was a cultural and scholarly movement which stressed the rediscovery and application of texts and thought from classical antiquity, occurring in Europe c. 1400 – c. 1600. The Renaissance can also refer to the period of European history spanning roughly the same dates.

“Renaissance” can also refer to the period, c. 1400 – c. 1600. “High Renaissance” generally refers to c. 1480 – c. 1520. The era was dynamic, with European explorers finding new continents, the transformation of trading methods and patterns, the decline of feudalism and scientific developments. Many of these changes were triggered, in part, by the Renaissance, such as classical mathematics stimulating new financial trading mechanisms, or new techniques from the east boosting ocean navigation. The printing press was also developed, allowing Renaissance texts to be disseminated widely.

Across the fourteenth century, and perhaps before, the old social and political structures of the medieval period broke down, allowing new concepts to rise. A new elite emerged, with new models of thought and ideas to justify themselves; what they found in classical antiquity was something to use both as a prop and a tool for their aggrandizement. Exiting elites matched them to keep pace, as did the Catholic Church. Italy, from which the Renaissance evolved, was a series of city states, each competing with the others for civic pride, trade and wealth. They were largely autonomous, with a high proportion of merchants and artisans thanks to the Mediterranean trade routes.

At the very top of Italian society, the rulers of the key courts in Italy were all new men, recently confirmed in their positions of power and with newly gained wealth, and they were keen to demonstrate both. There was also wealth and the desire to show it below them. The Black Death had killed millions in Europe and left the survivors with proportionally greater wealth, whether through fewer people inheriting more or simply from the increased wages they could demand. Italian society, and the results of the Black Death, allowed for much greater social mobility, a constant flow of people keen to demonstrate their wealth. Displaying wealth and using culture to reinforce your social and political was an important aspect of life in that period, and when artistic and scholarly movements turned back to the classical world at the start of the fifteenth century there were plenty of patrons ready to support them in these endeavors to make political points.

The importance of piety, as demonstrated through commissioning works of tribute, was also strong, and Christianity proved a heavy influence for thinkers trying to square Christian thought with that of pagan classical writers.   

Some historians argue that the Renaissance ended in the 1520s, some the 1620s. The Renaissance didn't just stop, but its core ideas gradually converted into other forms, and new paradigms arose, particularly during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.

CONCLUSION

The middle age lasted from fifth to fifteenth century. It is considered from Western Roman Empire, to the renaissance. And it is divided into three stages, which are early middle age, high middle age and later middle age. During these ages revolutionary changes took place in the attitude and life of the Europeans.  The region entered into a new era. The new, modern age dawned upon the west. Many factors concentrated and caused for the birth of modern age. Developments, inventions, renaissance and reformation revolutionized the European mind and consequently the middle ages came into an end. In England this new era was opened during the Tudor reign and therefore we can say that the history of modern England begins almost with the advent of the Tudors. The main factors that brought about the end of the middle ages and ushered in the modern era are the geographical discoveries, ‘The Renaissance’.

BIBLIOGRAPHy

·                   Prof K.M. Abraham, ‘A Hand Book of British History’, Premier Printers Calicut 2.

·                    John Peck and Martin Coyle, ‘A Brief History of English Literature’, Replica Press Pvt.               Ltd. Kundli, 2004 Print.

·                     www.google.co.in

·                     En.wikipedia.org

            ASSIGNMENT WORK            
             
         
           COURSE TITLE              :         CRITICAL TRANSACTIONS
           
             COURSE CODE              :          LEC 5104
           
              TOPIC                              :         MIDDLE AND DARK AGES

               
  PREPARED BY :       MUHAMED SHEHIN T.V
                                           IST SEMESTER ECL
                                 CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF KERALA
 
  SUBMITTED TO :      SHALINI MADAM
                                   ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
                               CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF KERALA

   DATE           :                    10-09-2015        
                                 
                                     
                                          MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE
The term Middle English literature refers to the literature written in the form of the English language known as Middle English, from the 12th century until the 1470s. During this time the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English became widespread and the printing press standardised the language. Between the 1470s and the middle of the following century there was a transition to early Modern English. In literary terms, the characteristics of the literary works written did not change drastically until the effects of the Renaissance and Reformed Christianity became more evident in the reign of King Henry VIII. There are three main categories of Middle English Literature: Religious, Courtly love, and Arthurian, though much of Geoffrey Chaucer's work stands outside these realms. Among the many religious works are those in the Katherine Group and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle.

After the Norman conquest of England, Law French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and society. The Norman dialects of the ruling classes mixed with the Anglo-Saxon of the people and became Anglo-Norman, and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English. Around the turn of the thirteenth century, Layamon wrote in Middle English. Other transitional works were popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament and courts of law. Early examples of Middle English literature are the Ormulum and Havelock the Dane. In the fourteenth century major works of English literature began once again to appear, including the works of Chaucer. The latter portion of the 14th century also saw not only the consolidation of English as a written language and a shift to secular writing. William Caxton printed four-fifths of his works in English, which helped to standardize the language and expand the vocabulary.

EARLY PERIOD
After the Norman conquest of England, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language continued in some monasteries but few literary works are known from this period. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, Law French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society.
As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives. The Norman dialects of the ruling classes became Anglo-Norman, and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English. Political power was no longer in English hands, so the West Saxon literary language had no more influence than any other dialect. Middle English literature is written, then, in the many dialects that correspond to the history, culture, and background of the individual writers.

It was with the fourteenth century that major works of English literature began once again to appear; these include the so-called Pearl Poet's Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Langland's political and religious allegory Piers Plowman; John Gower's Confessio Amantis; and the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, the most highly regarded English poet of the Middle Ages, who was seen by his contemporaries as an English successor to the great tradition of Virgil and Dante.
The latter portion of the 14th century also saw not only the consolidation of English as a manuscript language, taking over from French or Latin in certain areas, but a paradigm shift from primarily theological or metaphysical subject matter to also include that of a more secular nature.

Vernacular book production saw a spurt in the amount of books being copied, both secular and religious. Thus, the latter portion of the 14th century can be seen as one of the most significant periods in the history of the English language.

Caxton and the English language
The first English printer, William Caxton, printed four-fifths of his works in English. He translated a large number of works into English; Caxton translated 26 of the titles himself. Caxton is credited with printing as many as 108 books, 87 of which were different titles. However, the English language was changing rapidly in Caxton's time and the works he was given to print were in a variety of styles and dialects. Caxton was a technician rather than a writer and he de Worde faced similar dilemmas.
Caxton is credited with standardising the English language (that is, homogenising regional dialects) through printing. This paved the way for the expansion of English vocabulary, the development of inflection and syntax and the ever-widening gap between the spoken and the written word.

THE DARK AGES
The Dark Ages is a historical term used originally for the Middle Ages, which underlines the cultural and economic decline that supposedly occurred in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The label uses traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the "darkness" of the period with earlier and later periods of "light". The period is marked by a relative scarcity of historical and other written records at least for some areas of Europe, rendering it unknown to historians. The term "Dark Age" derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum, originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 to a turbulent period in the 10th and 11th centuries. The term once characterized the bulk of the Middle Ages, or roughly the 6th to 13th centuries, as a period of intellectual darkness between extinguishing the "light of Rome" after the end of Late Antiquity, and the rise of the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century. This definition is still widely used but increased recognition of the achievements of the Middle Ages has led to the label being restricted in scope. Since the 20th century, it is frequently applied to the earlier part of the era, the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th century).However, many modern scholars who study the era tend to avoid the term altogether for its negative connotations, finding it out of place and inappropriate for any part of the Middle Ages.

The idea of a Dark Age evolved with the Italian scholar Petrarch  in the 1330s, and was originally intended as a scathing criticism of the character of Late Latin literature. Petrarch regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared to the light of classical antiquity.Later historians expanded the term to refer to the transitional period between Roman times and the High Middle Ages (c. 11th–13th century), including the lack of Latin literature, and a lack of contemporary written history, general demographic decline, limited building activity and material cultural achievements in general.

Popular culture has further expanded on it as a vehicle to depict the early Middle Ages as a time of backwardness, extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope.

HISTORY
The term "Dark Ages" originally was intended to denote the entire period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance; the term "Middle Ages" has a similar motivation, implying an intermediate period between Classical Antiquity and the Modern era. In the 19th century scholars began to recognize the accomplishments made during the period, thereby challenging the image of the Middle Ages as a time of darkness and decay. Now the term is not used by scholars to refer to the entire medieval period; when used, it is generally restricted to the Early Middle Ages.

The rise of archaeology in the 20th century has shed much light on the period and offered a more nuanced understanding of its positive developments. Other terms of periodization have come to the fore: Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages, and the Great Migrations, depending on which aspects of culture are being referred to. When modern scholarly study of the Middle Ages arose in the 19th century, the term "Dark Ages" was at first kept, with all its critical undercurrents. On the rare occasions when the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, it is intended to be neutral, namely, to express the idea that the events of the period often seem "dark" because of the lack of artistic and cultural output, including historical records, when compared with both earlier and later times.
The idea of a Dark Age originated with Petrarch in the 1330s. Writing of those who had come before him, he said: "Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius; no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom" Christian writers, including Petrarch himself had long used traditional metaphors of "light versus darkness" to describe "good versus evil". Petrarch was the first to co-opt the metaphor and give it secular meaning by reversing its application. Classical Antiquity, so long considered the "dark" age for its lack of Christianity, was now seen by Petrarch as the age of "light" because of its cultural achievements, while Petrarch's time, allegedly lacking such cultural achievements, was seen as the age of darkness.

During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries, Protestants wrote of the Middle Ages as a period of Catholic corruption. Just as Petrarch's writing was not an attack on Christianity per se — along with his humanism, he was deeply occupied with the search for God — neither was this an attack on Christianity: it was a drive to restore what Protestants saw as biblical Christianity.
The Magdeburg Centuries was a work of ecclesiastical history compiled by Lutheran scholars and published between 1559 and 1574. Devoting a volume to each century, it covered the first thirteen centuries of Christianity up to 1298. The work was virulently anti-Catholic. Identifying the Papacy as the Antichrist, it painted a "dark" picture of church history after the 5th century, characterizing it as "increments of errors and their corrupting influences".

In response to the Protestants, Roman Catholics developed a counter-image, depicting the High Middle Ages in particular as a period of social and religious harmony, and not "dark" at all. The most important Catholic reply to the Magdeburg Centuries was the Annales Ecclesiastici by Cardinal Caesar Baronius. Baronius was a trained historian who kept theology in the background and produced a work that the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1911 described as "far surpassing anything before his day" and that Acton regarded as "the greatest history of the Church ever written".The Annales, covering the first twelve centuries of Christianity up to 1198, was published in twelve volumes between 1588 and 1607. It was in Volume X that Baronius coined the term "dark age" for the period between the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and the first inklings of the Gregorian Reform under Pope Clement II in 1046.

In the 19th century, the term "Dark Ages" was widely used by historians. In 1860, in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt delineated the contrast between the "dark ages" of the medieval period and the more enlightened period of the Renaissance, which had revived the cultural and intellectual achievements of antiquity. However, the early 20th century saw a radical re-evaluation of the Middle Ages, and with it a calling into question of the terminology of darkness, or at least of its pejorative use. Historian Denys Hay exemplified this when he spoke ironically of "the lively centuries which we call dark".

When the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, therefore, it is intended to be neutral, namely, to express the idea that the events of the period often seem "dark" to us because of the paucity of historical records compared with both earlier and later times. The term is used in this sense (often in the singular) to reference the Bronze Age collapse and the subsequent Greek Dark Ages, the dark ages of Cambodia (c. 1450-1863), and also a hypothetical Digital Dark Age which would ensue if the electronic documents produced in the current period were to become unreadable at some point in the future. Some Byzantinists have used the term "Byzantine Dark Ages" to refer to the period from the earliest Muslim conquests to about 800, because there are no extant historical texts in Greek from this period, and thus the history of the Byzantine Empire and formerly Byzantine territories that were conquered by the Muslims is poorly understood and must be reconstructed from other types of contemporaneous sources, such as religious texts. It is also known that very few Greek manuscripts were copied in this period, indicating that the 7th and 8th centuries, which were a period of crisis for the Byzantines because of the Muslim conquests, were also less intellectually active than other periods. The term "dark age" is not restricted to the discipline of history. Since the archaeological evidence for some periods is abundant and for others scanty, there are also archaeological dark ages.

WHY THE MIDDLE AGES ARE GENERALLY REFERRED TO AS THE DARK AGE
     
The Fall of the Great Roman Empire 

Rome during this time was the greatest empire in the world. Its scope was very wide with the help of their great leaders such as Julius Caesar, Augustus Aurelius, and many other great Roman leaders. However, time came when there were no more leaders like them, Rome slow down and its economy and the whole system of the entire empire fell down. Many problems arise like no able leaders, corruption, civil wars, and most importantly was the barbarian invasions. These barbarian invasions of the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, etc. from Germany and from North Europe just entered and invaded Rome when the empire itself was already weak. So, this event makes the Middle Ages dark because of so many chaos.

The Crusades

Crusades were also the Holy wars led by the popes in the Roman Empire with the aim of preserving Christianity over Islam faith in the countries or places that surrounded the Holy City- Israel. The people or the warriors who joined the crusades were of mixed reasons why they joined. Some really wanted to stand firm in the Christian belief and defend it. However, others who were sent by their lords to join may had different motives like for money, territory,, discoveries, etc. And because crusades were holy wars, many people have died; lost their money and properties in supporting it; and even the Roman Empire itself lost one or some of its territories and wealth.


Faith, Enlightenment and Science

This dark medieval period was a tumultuous time when small kingdoms fought for their existence and expansion. Apart from political struggles, people were also struggling for religious movements. Because of these struggles and a general environment of insecurity, people were forced to accept the tyrannical feudal system and serfdom.

During these political and religious conflicts, barbarians and Muslims invaded and conquered lands and devastated kingdoms. Because of all these serious issues, this period faced drastic reduction in literature, arts and cultural developments. During these religious conflicts, common men and women were ultimately drawn towards faith and beliefs and they sought after God. Many people opted for harsh rituals of the Catholic Church, cathedrals and monasteries, while other people opted for Orthodox forms of worship. Many intellectuals claim that the overall triumph of religion over reason itself suggests that this period was dark as it is a type of ‘darkness.’

According to these intellectuals, those people who followed religious beliefs were driven by organized lies and deceit. They were trapped in a false reality and were dominated by emotions and whims of papacy. They weren’t leading their lives based on logic, reason and fact. Gradually, people started to move away from religion towards the Age of Enlightenment when they opted for science and reason and gained progress. Various intellectuals like Kant and Voltaire vehemently criticized the religious periods of Middle Ages and claimed that it was a period of social regress.

The dark medieval period is called so, to express the idea that the situations and event of this particular period of history of Europe often seem to be ‘dark’ because of the paucity and lack of historical records which are in plenty for the earlier and later times.