Е. В. Воевода английский язык великобритания: история и культура Great Britain: Culture across History Учебное пособие

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Содержание Church and State Magna Carta and the beginning of Parliament First universities Historia Regum Britanniae Art and architecture in Norman England Do you know that

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Church and State

During the reign of Henry II (1154-1189) there happened an event which had a powerful effect on the history of English Church and social life in the country.

In order to strengthen monarchy, Henry II made his friend Thomas Becket first Chancellor and then Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket, a merchant’s son, was known to be a sinner and an ardent supporter of the king. But when Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury he got completely reformed. Within a few years he became one of the most respected priests in England. The greatest problem was that now he was trying to prove to Henry that royal power was inferior to God’s power and Papal power, and that was quite the opposite to what Henry had expected him to do. The former friends turned into bitter enemies, and finally Becket had to flee to France. He visited Rome where he got the Pope’s blessing and several years later returned to England to continue strengthening the position of the Church. He landed in an unexpected place and avoided Henry’s men, who had been sent to kill him. Shortly afterwards, in 1171, Thomas Becket was killed in Canterbury Cathedral by the four barons sent by the king. The murder in the Cathedral shook the country. Henry had to admit that it was a political murder, an assassination. But Henry II had achieved his aim and royal power was strengthened. In two years’ time Becket’s tomb became a centre of pilgrimage, and in 1173 Thomas Becket was canonised.

One of the masterpieces of English literature, “The Canterbury Tales” written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14^th century, is based on the stories told by a group of pilgrims travelling to the tomb of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Two outstanding figures in world literature of the 20^th century, Jean Anouilh of France and T.S. Eliot of Britain, a Nobel Prize winner, wrote respectively “Thomas Becket” and “Murder in the Cathedral”. The central idea of each piece is the antagonism between friendship and duty, friendship and treachery for the sake of the state.

Henry II’s son Richard known as Richard the Lion Heart was one of England’s most popular kings, although he spent only six months of his reign in England. He was brave, cruel and generous, and inspired loyalty. With other Christian leaders Richard I headed the Third Crusade against Muslim rule in the Holy Land and secured Christian access to the holy places. Richard was a superb military leader and a fine troubadour-style lyric poet, but his wars on the Continent cost England a lot of money and weakened the crown which, during his absence, was usurped by his wicked brother John.

• Magna Carta and the beginning of Parliament

After Richard’s death, when John became lawful king of England, he lost Normandy and other territories in the wars against the king of France. His vassals came over to England to receive lands and titles. John began to give the lands and castles of the first Norman barons, who had come with the Conqueror, to the newcomers. Hatred for King John united the old barons, bishops and the Anglo-Saxons in their almost open struggle against the king. In the civil war which broke out, the barons worked out a programme which King John was finally forced to sign and seal. Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, was signed on June 10, 1215. The document was a detailed statement of how the king’s government ought to work and what kind of relations there ought to be in a feudal state between the monarch and his vassals. Instead of paying their lords in services, some vassals paid them in money. Vassals were beginning to turn into tenants. Feudalism, the use of land in return for service, was weakening. But it took three hundred years more to get rid of feudalism.

Magna Carta was the first document to lay the basis for the British Constitution.

When the throne went to Henry III, he tried to centre all power in his hands. Several times he demanded money from the Great Council but the barons refused to grant money. The first attempt to curb the power of the king and his foreign advisers was made by Simon de Montfort, the leader of the lesser barons and the new merchant class and poorer clergy. In 1258 they took over the government and elected a council of nobles which de Montfort called parliament (from the French word “parler” - “to speak”). The nobles were supported by the towns, which wished to be free of Henry’s heavy taxes. In 1264 a civil war began and the incompetent king was defeated. In 1265 de Montfort became the virtual ruler of the country and called “two knights from every shire, two burgesses from every borough” to his parliament The first Parliament was quite a revolutionary body. It represented the interests of barons, the clergy and the new class of merchants.

During the reign of Henry III’s son, Edward I, it was granted by the king that no new taxes would be raised without the consent of Parliament. At the end of the 13^th and the beginning of the 14^th centuries, Parliament was divided into the Lords (the barons) and the Commons (the knights and the burgesses). The alliance between the merchants and the squires paved the way to the growth of parliamentary power. Edward I conquered Wales and made it a principality of England (1284), passed exclusively to the heir to the English throne (Prince of Wales; 1301).

4. Language of the Norman Period
The Norman period in the English language, which lasted from the 11^th to the 15^th century, is known as Middle English. The Conquest was not only a historical event, it was also the greatest single event in the history of the English language.

One of the most significant consequences of the Norman domination was the use of the French language in many spheres of English political, social and cultural life. But though the court and the barons spoke Norman-French and the clergy spoke and wrote Latin, the invasion of these two Romance languages could not subdue the popular tongue spoken by peasants and townsfolk all over England. The two main languages, French and English, intertwined and by the end of the 14^th century made one language, which was used both in speech and in writing. English was bound to survive and win in this linguistic battle as it was the living language of the people in their native land, and part of their culture. At the same time, Norman-French was torn away from its roots and had to surrender, although it greatly influenced English.

Three hundred years after the Norman Conquest, in 1258, Henry III issued a “Proclamation” to the counsellors elected to sit in Parliament from all parts of England. It was written in three official languages: French, Latin and English. This was the first official document to be written in English. In 1349 it was ruled that schooling should be conducted in English and Latin. In 1362 Edward III gave his consent to an act of Parliament proclaiming that English should be used in the law courts because French had become “much unknown in the realm”. In the same year Parliament, for the first time, was opened with a speech in English.

But the three hundred years of French domination in many spheres of life affected the English language more than any other single foreign influence before or after. The impact of French upon the vocabulary can hardly be exaggerated: the numerous borrowings reflect the spheres of Norman influence on English life.

The phonetic structure of the language was, naturally, affected. It is, however, controversial whether it was only the French language that affected the grammatical structure of English. The need to bring together the language of the new lords of the land and the language of those who cultivated the land brought about considerable changes in the grammar of the Old English language. Endings began to give way to auxiliary verbs. Thus Middle English is known as the period of levelled endings, a transitional period from synthetic forms (with various endings) to analytical forms (the use of auxiliary verbs).

In its turn, the French language brought in a number of new suffixes and prefixes:

• -ance, -ence: ignorance, experience
  
• -ment: government, agreement
  
• -age: village, marriage
  
• -able: available, admirable
  
• dis-: disbelieve, disappear, distaste.
  

The suffixes gave an abstract meaning to the words and were also used to form new words from the English roots: unbearable, readable, etc.

It was during the Middle English period that the indefinite article a/an, stemming from the Old English numeral an (one), came into use. Spelling changed altogether. Instead of the Germanic runes Þ and T the Normans introduced the digraph th. The Old English u was changed into ou or ow as in hus>house, mus>mouse, cu>cow. It should be noted that at the time ou/ow was pronounced as [u:] and the diphthongs [ou]/[au] appeared later.

The Norman period enriched the English language with synonyms. Linguistic practice shows that words denoting the same object or the same idea cannot coexist in the same language, that is why there practically can be no full synonyms in a language. With the inflow of French words into the language, English retained the Anglo-Saxon words denoting things or concepts that the language had had before, and borrowed the French words which gave a new idea or a new shade of meaning. Thus the words ‘to eat, land, house’ come from Old English, but ‘to devour, territory, building’ come from French. The words describing feudal relations or related to the law courts and governing were borrowed from French: to command, to obey, baron, council, to accuse, court, crime, arms, guard, battle, victory, etc.

Even if both Anglo-Saxon and French words remained in the language, they were at least slightly different in meaning. This was illustrated by Walter Scott in Ivanhoe: a domestic animal in the charge of a Saxon serf was called by its Anglo-Saxon name, but when it was sent to the table of a Norman baron it changed it name into French. Thus the English language still has such pairs of words as ‘ox – beef’, ‘calf – veal’, ‘sheep – mutton’, ‘swine – pork’.

Some synonymous words are used in different styles. The English words usually give a homelier idea, while the French ones are mostly used in formal speech: ‘to give up – to abandon’, ‘to give in – to surrender’, ‘to come in – to enter’, ‘to begin – to commence’, ‘to go on – to continue’.

As a result, the stock of synonyms in English is larger than in any other European language, and the English word-stock is the largest in Europe.

5. The development of culture
The 11^th-12^th centuries was a period of significant changes in English culture due to the Norman Conquest and the influence of Norman culture on the English court and the nobility. It was a transitional period from Old English and Anglo-Saxon literature of the conquered on the one hand, and the Norman French and continental French literature and the conquerors, on the other hand, to a new language and a new people, with their specific culture.

The 13^th century in Britain witnessed an intellectual development which established Britain’s reputation as equal to the continental centres of learning. Central to this was the founding of the two great universities at Cambridge and Oxford.

• First universities

Originally, the first universities in Europe appeared in Italy and France. A fully developed university comprised four faculties: three superior faculties – Theology, Canon law, Medicine – and one inferior (primary) faculty of Art where music, grammar, geometry and logic were taught. University graduates were awarded with 3 degrees: Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts and Doctor. Towards the end of the 13^th century there appeared colleges where other subjects were taught. It became a custom with students to go about from one great university to another, learning what they could from the most famous professors of the time.

Already at the end of the 11^th century Oxford was a centre of learning. In the middle of the 12^th century, after controversial debates at Paris University, a group of professors were expelled. They went over to England and in 1168 founded schools in Oxford which formed the first university. Students and scholars were attracted to to Oxford where they tried to recreate the style of learning they had experienced in Europe. However, the plague, which devastated whole towns, led to a temporary dispersion of the schools. In 1214 the university received a charter from the Pope, and by the end of the 13^th century four colleges had been founded: University, Balliol, Merton and St. Edmund Hall. There were already 1500 students and the university was famous all over Europe.

Another university was founded in Cambridge. It is generally considered to date from 1209, when a group of students who had been driven out of Oxford by serious rioting came to Cambridge to continue their studies. Following a Papal Bull of 1318, Cambridge was declared a ‘studium generale’ or place of general education, which meant that degree holders could teach in any Christian country.

Unless a university student was a member of a religious house, it was necessary for him to provide for his own board and lodgings, and usually he would reside with a family in town. This caused certain problems: the young students, who were usually 14 or 15 years old, were often ill-disciplined and needed supervision and financial aid as the landlords often charged them more than other tenants. That led to the opening of colleges, with their hostels and the first student grants which were paid by benefactors and charity funds.

The nobles generally had no use for university education in the Middle Ages. It was the sons of the lower middle-class families who hoped to better their stations in life by getting an education. Most of the English writers and poets of the time had university education.

• Literature of the 11^th-13^th centuries
  

The Norman barons were followed to England by the churchmen, scribes, minstrels, merchants and artisans. Each rank of society had its own literature. Monks wrote historical chronicles in Latin. Scholars in universities wrote about their experiments - also in Latin. Even religious satires were written in Latin. The aristocracy wrote their poetry in Norman-French. But the peasants and townspeople made up their songs and ballads in Anglo-Saxon.

The literature of the 11-12^th centuries was represented by the romance, the ballad, the fable and the fabliau. The fable and the fabliau were typical literary forms of the townsfolk. Animal characters in fables mocked out human evils and conveyed a moral. Fabliaux were short funny stories about cunning crooks and unfaithful wives written as metrical tales.

The influence of continental literature was marked by the increasing popularity of French chivalric romances – a form already popular in France and Germany, which revolved around the love of a knight for a lady, with definite religious undertones. In southern France the lyric poets of the Middle Ages called ‘troubadours’ wrote dancing-songs called ‘ballads’ (stemming from the same root as ‘ballet’).

The most famous poet in the reign of Henry II was the Norman poet Wace. An educated person who had studied theology at Paris University, he was a clergyman, a secretary, a teacher, a writer and a poet. His chief works were two rhyming chronicles written in form of romance: Brut, or the Acts of the Britts and Rollo, or the Acts of the Normans.

Of great importance was the introduction into English of the Arthurian legend, first in 1140 by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Britons) and then by Wace who translated History of the Britons into French. Geoffrey of Monmouth had been brought up in Wales and lived close to the myth of King Arthur, the legendary Celtic chief.

Later, in the 13^th -15^th centuries there appeared a series of legends about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The best-known legends are “Arthur and Merlin”, “Lancelot of the Lake”, “Percival of Wales”, “Sir Tristram” and others. In the 15^th century Thomas Malory collected Arthurian stories and arranged them in twenty books.

Soon another powerful myth gained popularity, that of Robin Hood and his merry men, the outlaws who would not accept Norman rule but lived free in Sherwood Forest.

Norman kings, who were fond of hunting, turned vast territories into King’s Forest. (The word ‘forest’ comes from the Latin word ‘fores’ which means ‘out of doors’.) It was not a wood, though some parts of King’s Forest were wooded. King’s Forest was carefully guarded: peasants could neither make their living by hunting nor cut trees or shrubs nor pick firewood. Sheep and cattle that had the right to feed in the forest were branded with a special mark and their owners paid taxes. Unbranded animals, if caught, were made royal property. No goats were allowed in the forest as deer hated their smell and would not feed in the place where goats had walked. A man who killed a deer in the forest was either blinded, or had his fingers or arm cut off, or even put to death.

No wonder rebellious peasants, serfs and people who were driven to despair by hunger and need hunted in the forest, thus becoming outlaws.

Ballads describe Robin Hood, the famous legendary outlaw of the period as a strong, brave and skilful archer. Robin Hood was presumably a Saxon nobleman who had been ruined by the Normans. Together with his merry men (Little John – a gigantic manly fellow, brother Tuck – a stray friar and the others) they fought against Norman nobles and clergy and would appear wherever the poor were in need of help. Ballads about Robin Hood were composed and sung throughout the 12^th and the 13^th centuries. Robin is supposed to have lived in the reign of King Henry II and his son Richard the Lion Heart. All through the ballads goes the idea of Robin waiting for Richard the Lion Heart to return. Then he would lay his bow at the king’s feet and subdue to the lawful king, whose wicked brother John had taken his place while Richard went crusading.

• Art and architecture in Norman England
  

Art and architecture in the 12^th century were especially influenced by continental developments. In addition, crusaders returning from the Holy Lands brought back Byzantine influences. One of the four most unusual churches, the Round Church in Cambridge, is the oldest of the four surviving Norman churches built in 1130. The style was introduced by the returning crusaders in remembrance of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The production of illuminated manuscripts increased as new religious orders and monasteries were founded. The use of elaborate initials of these manuscripts was accompanied by a variety of depictions of events, monsters and people which became increasingly sophisticated as the century progressed, until this Romanesque illumination became Gothic. In architecture, the 12^th and 13^th centuries also experienced this transition, with the development of the early Gothic style. It was in this style that the original Westminster Abbey was constructed from 1245.

DO YOU KNOW THAT King Harold Godwin’s elder daughter Gytha married Prince Waldemar of Novgorod, later King Waldemar of Kiev, and became Queen. William the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of the Norman duke Robert the Devil, was also known as William the Bastard. The Bayeux Tapestry (1067-1077), an embroided wall-hanging in coloured wool on linen, narrating the events leading up to the invasion of England by William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, is believed to have been made by William’s wife Matilda and her ladies in waiting. In 1940, when Britain was desperately fighting against fascist Germany, there circulated a rumour that King Arthur, who would never die, had come again to drive out the expected invader.

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