Medieval poetry
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Medieval poetry was often preserved by mere happenstance. Because most of what we have was written down by clerics, much of extant medieval poetry is religious. Old English religious poetry includes the poem Christ by Cynewulf, and the poem The Dream of the Rood, preserved in both manuscript and on the Ruthwell Cross. We do have some secular poetry, in fact a great deal of medieval literature was written in poetry, including the Old English epic Beowulf. Scholars are fairly sure, based on a few fragments and on references in historic texts, that much lost secular poetry was set to music, and was spread by traveling minstrels, or bards, across Europe. Thus, the few poems written eventually became ballads or lays, and never made it to being recited without song or other music.
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Medieval Latin literature
In medieval Latin, while verse in the old quantitative meters continued to be written, a new more popular form called the sequence arose, which was based on accentual metres in which metrical feet were based on stressed syllables rather than vowel length. These metres were associated with Christian hymnody.
However, much secular poetry was also written in Latin. Some poems and songs, like the Gambler's Mass (officio lusorum) from the Carmina Burana, were parodies of Christian hymns, while others were student melodies: folksongs, love songs and drinking ballads. The famous commercium song Gaudeamus igitur is one example. There are also a few narrative poems of the period, such as the unfinished epic Ruodlieb, which tells the story of a knight's adventures.
Topics
Medieval Latin poets
- St Ambrose
- St Thomas Aquinas
- The Archpoet
- St Bernard of Cluny
- St Bonaventure
- St Columba
- Dante Alighieri
- St Hildegard of Bingen
- Hrabanus Maurus
- Paul the Deacon
- Petrarch
- Peter of Blois
- Thomas of Celaeno
- Walafrid Strabo
- Walter of Chatillon
Medieval vernacular literature
One of the features of the renaissance which marked the end of the medieval period is the rise in the use of the vernacular or the language of the common people for literature. The compositions in these local languages were often about the legends and history of the areas in which they were written which gave the people some form of national identity. Epic poems, sagas and chansons de geste (songs of heroic deeds) were often about the great men, real or imagined, and their achievements like Arthur, Charlemagne and El Cid.
The earliest recorded European vernacular literature is that written in the Irish language. Given that Ireland had escaped absorption into the Roman empire, this had time to develop into a highly sophisticated literature with well-documented formal rules and highly organised Bardic schools. The result was a large body of prose and verse recording the ancient myths and sagas of the Gaelic-speaking people of the island, as well as poems on religious, political and geographical themes and a body of nature poetry.
The formality which Latin had gained through its long written history was often not present in the vernaculars which began producing poetry, and so new techniques and structures emerged, often derived from oral literature. This is particularly noticeable in the Germanic languages, which, unlike the Romance languages, are not direct descendants from Latin. Alliterative verse, where many of the stressed words in each line start with the same sound, was often used in the local poetry of that time. Other features of vernacular poetry of this time include kennings, internal rhyme, and slant rhyme. Indeed Latin poetry traditionally used meter rather then rhyme and only began to adopt rhyme after being influenced by these new poems.
Romance languages
Old French
The Matter of France
- chanson de geste
- paladin
- Charlemagne
- Charles Martel
- Saracen
- Chanson de Roland
- Garin de Monglane
- Doon de Mayence
- Huon de Bordeaux
- Renaud de Montauban
The Matter of Britain
Provençal
Italian
Spanish
Galacian-Portuguese
Authors
Germanic languages
Alliterative verse
Medieval English poetry
- Middle English
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- William Langland
- Everyman
- Sir Orfeo
- Book of the Civilized Man
- The Pearl Poet