By: Jazmin Moreno
Overview
There is a lot of diversity to consider in the history of British literature in terms of themes, and yet, throughout the centuries of its documentation, a recurring aspect has been the inclusion of chivalry. The Old English epic that is Beowulf set the literary stage with its protagonist who embodied an early chivalry at once dependent and independent of the ancient world’s epic heroes. While the survival of the Beowulf manuscript over other manuscripts may be happenstance, it is likely that it had a role to play in the literary culture that would come to be significant in the formation of a unified British identity. Although British identity has been influenced by innumerable variables, the early introduction and persistence of chivalric themes within its literature has had a greater impact on its formation than is popularly acknowledged.
In order to explore the evolution of chivalric themes throughout the history of early British literature, this project will focus on a single work from two different eras: The Middle Ages and 16th century, as well as glimpse forward to more recent times. In doing this, the evolution of chivalry throughout British literary history can be isolated and given greater clarity.
In the page for the Middle Ages, readers will find the focus to be on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Beowulf acting as a point of reference. Chivalry was at the height of its popularity in the Middle Ages, and because of this, this section will explore how works like Sir Gawain and others helped to establish the long-standing popularity of the chivalric theme and how they began to influence a united British identity.
The following page will explore the 16th century and has the same goal of connecting the evolving use of the chivalric theme to the evolving national identity of the British. The focal text will be the Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser, and what is explored is how the presentation of the chivalric theme differs from the earlier examples seen in the Middle Ages. Additionally, I will also look at how chivalry in The Faerie Queene compares to the coming literary iterations produced in later years. This section will also offer my concluding thoughts on how the chivalric theme evolved from the past two periods and look a little closer at how the theme has manifested in British literature even nearer to today.
Both pages aim to demonstrate how the presence of Chivalry in British literature corresponds to the birth and establishment of Britain as a nation.
Happy reading!
Browse the pages below for more content on chivalry in Brit Lit:
Bibliography
Armitage, Simon. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages, by Stephen Greenblatt and James Simpson, W.W. Norton, 2018, pp. 201–256.
Behn, Aphra. “Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, by Stephen Greenblatt, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 139–186.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. the Sixteenth Century and the Early Seventeenth Century. Norton, 2012.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. the Restoration and The Eighteenth Century. W.W. Norton & Co., 2012.
Heaney, Seamus. “Beowulf.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages, by Stephen Greenblatt and James Simpson, W.W. Norton, 2018, pp. 37–109.
MacColl, Alan. “The Meaning of ‘Britain’ in Medieval and Early Modern England.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2006, pp. 248–269. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/499787.
Monmouth, Geoffrey Of. History Of The Kings Of Britain. DIGIREADS COM PUBLISHING, 2019.
Simpson, James. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Tenth ed., A, W.W. Norton, 2018.
-Simpson, James. “The Middle Ages to Ca. 1485.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages, Norton, 2018, pp. 3–29.
“The Faerie Queene.” The Sixteenth Century and the Early Seventeenth Century, by Stephen Greenblatt, Norton, 2018, pp. 247–249.