Medieval genres. Literature of the early Middle Ages (XII-XIII centuries)

General remarks

The prejudice that the Middle Ages was a dark, gloomy, joyless period in the history of mankind, when morals were wild and rude, and cultural achievements very insignificant, turned out to be unusually tenacious. It would be useful here to recall the words of D.S. Likhachev: “The ideas of historians who imagined the Middle Ages to be times of suppression of the individual are nothing more than a myth that developed on the basis of the self-confidence of people of the New Age.”
The three most important factors under the influence of which the culture of the early Middle Ages was formed are the following:
1) Christian doctrine, which at the end of the Middle Ages took on the form of Roman Catholicism;
2) cultural heritage of the ancient world;
3) folk art.
The preaching of Christianity in Western Europe was crowned with the widespread triumph of the Church, which, by the way, contributed to the emergence and development of written literature, since thanks to church education, literacy spread and the book industry was born. By implanting the Latin language as a liturgical language, the Church laid the foundations for the universalization of culture, as well as the dissemination of ancient literature, although in a limited volume and in a rather narrow circle.
The literature of the Western European Middle Ages is imbued with the spirit of Christianity. The Christian view of the earthly world and the heavenly world (or visible and invisible) took on the form of dual worlds in medieval culture. The belief that all earthly events are a reflection of what is happening in heaven taught the medieval thinker and artist to see behind every thing or phenomenon something more important and significant than what they represent in themselves. Hence the allegorism of medieval thinking and art, the symbolism and emblem of the artistic perception of the world.
Other features of the artistic method of medieval literature include strict regulation and a value hierarchy of genres, determined by their connection with liturgical practice, and even with the extra-church activities of believers. Here, first of all, mention should be made of hymnographic and hagiographic (hagiography) literature and liturgical theater (mysteries, miracles). Medieval literature is subject to strict canons, within which, however, the artist is given very wide freedom of creativity. To better understand this phenomenon, it is useful to draw a parallel with Russian medieval painting.
Artistic space and time in medieval literature are also closely connected with the Christian worldview. The idea of ​​the transience of earthly existence haunted medieval man, but at the same time, he saw a short earthly life as the threshold of eternal life. Time, thus, was conceptualized as an earthly image of eternity. in the same way, man, a mortal and perishable being, powerless and subject to sin, is conceived at the same time as the highest creation of God, created by God in His own image and likeness (see: Gen. I, 26 - 27). Therefore, it is the recognition of one’s own sinfulness and powerlessness that elevates a person and brings him closer to God. This determines the antinomianism of medieval literature.
The influence of ancient cultural heritage did not stop throughout the Middle Ages. True, for a number of reasons it turned out to be one-sided and selective. Let's start with the fact that many monuments of ancient literature were lost during the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In addition, legends about pagan gods and heroes initially caused rejection among medieval Christian authors, but they soon became interested in the allegorical, in the spirit of the times, interpretation of Greco-Roman myths.
The philosophy of Plato and especially Aristotle, whose ideas were coordinated with Christian doctrine in his treatise “Summa Theologiae” by Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274), had a great influence on the development of theological thought. The development of medieval literature was influenced by the fact that Roman literature was known incomparably better and more completely than Greek. Thus, Homer was unknown in Western Europe, and the plot, for example, of the knightly “Roman of Troy” was drawn from forged Latin chronicles. But Virgil enjoyed constant love in the Middle Ages, in which not the least role was played by the free interpretation of his IV Eclogue, where the story of the birth of a miraculous baby is understood as a prophecy about the Nativity of Christ.
Interest in the ancient heritage intensified during the era of the Carolingian (at the turn of the VIII - IX) and Ottonian (X century) revival. Thus, the nun Hrotsvita, who composed religious dramas, directly stated that she took Terence as a model - with the only difference that she made the heroines not pagan harlots, but holy martyrs and chaste righteous women.
The influence of oral folk art on medieval literature was also great. It is generally accepted that any written literature is preceded by folklore. Back at the end of the 19th century. A. N. Veselovsky put forward a theory of primitive choral syncretism, according to which all three types of literature - epic, lyricism and drama - initially existed in a single, undivided form, and only later did their differentiation begin, and then their division into genres.
It is not difficult to discover in medieval poetry of different countries and periods traces of folk song genres - labor, ritual, love, praise, disgrace and some other songs. For example, the earliest genre of Galician-Portuguese lyrics - “songs about a dear friend”, composed by male poets on behalf of girls in love - clearly goes back to folk “weaving” songs, and “slander songs” came from “disgraceful” songs. Myths, legends about heroes, pre-Christian religious ideas were vividly reflected in the heroic epic of the early Middle Ages (Icelandic sagas, skaldic poetry, the Elder and Younger Eddas, Beowulf). Finally, the primitive comic scenes played by buffoons influenced the formation of theatrical performances and the development of such dramatic genres as farce and soti.
There is no consensus on the issue of periodization of Western European literature of the Middle Ages. The beginning of the Middle Ages is traditionally considered to be the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476), and regarding the end of the Middle Ages, opinions are divided: dating ranges between the beginning of the 14th and the beginning of the 17th century. If the latter date is acceptable in the study of socio-political history (although this is not in dispute), then for the history of culture it is hardly acceptable, because then the Renaissance, qualitatively different from the Middle Ages in aesthetic terms, would have to be considered simply as the final episode of medieval culture. The trichotomous division of the Middle Ages into early, mature and later also gives rise to serious disagreements. Therefore, we consider it advisable to adhere to the following periodization:
1) Early Middle Ages. This period covers the 5th - 10th centuries, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the “great migration of peoples” to the completion of the decomposition of the tribal system in Western European monarchies. The written literature of this time is represented by clerical works in Latin, and later in living national languages, and the theatrical repertoire is represented by liturgical performances. Neighboring them were a variety of folk art, which later received written form - heroic epics, song folklore, performances of players (shpilmans, jugglers, huglars).
2) Late Middle Ages (XI - XV centuries) This is the heyday of Western European feudalism. It was during this era that the chivalric romance and courtly lyrics emerged and developed, the best examples of which are distinguished by the highest artistic merits. They had a great influence on the literature of subsequent centuries. At the same time, medieval theater reached its peak - both liturgical (mysteries, miracles) and folk (farces, morality plays, soti). Finally, in this era, urban literature arose as a reaction to knightly literature and partly as an addition to it.

Chapter 1. EARLY MIDDLE AGES

§ 1. Clerical literature

The first layer of written literature in Western Europe is clerical literature. This is explained primarily by the fact that for many centuries the Church was the only hotbed of education, enlightenment and literacy in general (it has been established that the runic writings of the Germanic tribes that preceded the Latin script had a purely ritual purpose). In addition, thoughts about the lofty and eternal occupied medieval man incomparably more than concerns about the temporary and transitory. Therefore, despite the fact that in the hierarchy of spiritual values ​​of that time, literature was included among the so-called “mechanical arts”, which had an “applied” character, and was placed below the “liberal arts” (which included grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy), first clerical and then secular literature began to win a worthy and honorable place.
The main genres of clerical literature in Latin - sequences, visions, lives of saints, stories about miracles performed through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and saints - were formed in the 5th - 8th centuries. based on some traditions of late antiquity. They had a significant influence on the development of both church and secular literature for many centuries to come (the most eloquent example is A. France’s short story “The Juggler of Our Lady”). Among the hagiographic literature, the biographies of Christian preachers stand out - for example, St. Boniface, the Enlightener of Germany, or St. Columbanus, the enlightener of Gaul, as well as devotees of piety, including “The Life of St. Alexy, man of God,” popular in both the Orthodox and Catholic worlds. Among the lives of the righteous who devoted themselves to works of mercy, “The Life of St. Herman" - a Gallic ascetic who spent all the money he collected on ransoming slaves and captives.
The unusually widespread genre of visions, which raised the question of the afterlife of man, found its highest embodiment in Dante's Divine Comedy. Calderon in the 17th century. wrote an excellent drama using the medieval plot of “Purgatory of St. Patricia."
The dual world inherent in the medieval worldview was also reflected in many monuments of clerical literature, a significant part of which combines stories of miracles with everyday descriptions. In later works of this kind, even artistic techniques borrowed from the arsenal of knightly literature are noticeable.
The oldest genre of moral didactics is the sermon. From sermons, a special genre emerged - “examples”, that is, laconic moralizing stories that were combined into collections that were widely circulated. In the late Middle Ages (from the 12th century), several collections of such “examples” appeared, the most famous of which is “The Roman Deeds” (“Gesta romanorum”), which served as a source for many Renaissance short stories, as well as for Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merchant of Venice.” Another collection of “examples” entitled “Fifteen Joys of Marriage” should be considered more advanced from the point of view of narrative technique.
The original genre of medieval didactic literature is represented by bestiaries, where the habits of animals appear before the reader as allegorical images of Christian virtues or events of sacred history. Let us emphasize that bestiaries are precisely a religious-didactic, and not a natural-scientific genre, and the habits of animals in them are often of a mythical nature (for example, a pelican feeding its chicks with its own blood and symbolizing Christ the Savior, who shed his blood for the atonement of the human race), yes and among the animals mentioned there are fictional ones (for example, the Phoenix bird reborn from the ashes, symbolizing the Resurrection of Christ, or the siren destroying sailors, symbolizing the riches of this world, destructive for the human soul).

§ 2. Heroic epic of the early Middle Ages

The most significant and characteristic monuments of the heroic epic include, first of all, the Irish and Icelandic sagas. Due to the remoteness of these countries from the centers of the Catholic world, their first written monuments reflect pagan religious ideas. Using the example of the sagas and the Edda (the so-called Scandinavian collection of songs with mythological, didactic and heroic content), one can trace the evolution of epic creativity from myths to fairy tales and then to the heroic epic, and indeed the heroic epic itself from the pagan era to the Christian. These tales are also interesting because they give an idea of ​​the way of life in the era of the tribal system.
A peculiarity of the Irish and Icelandic epic is that the prose narrative there chronologically precedes the poetic one.
When comparing the poetics of the Irish epic with the poetics of the epics of other peoples, many common features can be discovered. The Celtic pantheon is in many ways similar to the Greco-Roman one, but lacks the grace and harmony that the Greeks and Romans endowed their gods and heroes with. It is not difficult to notice the similarity between the hero Cuchulainn, born from the god of light Lug and a mortal woman, with the ancient heroes-demigods. King Conchobar is given the features of an ideal monarch, who, like the epic King Arthur, Charlemagne or the epic Prince Vladimir, is pushed into the background of the narrative by his heroes, primarily his own nephew Cuchulain. The duel between Cuchulainn and his illegitimate son Konlaich, who died at the hands of his father, is reminiscent of the single combat between Ilya Muromets and Sokolnichok or the death of Odysseus at the hands of the son he adopted from Kallipso. The simplicity and coarseness of morals and even cruelty and treachery, which are not condemned, but extolled, are inherent in the pre-Christian epic of different peoples and are related to the sagas and the Edda with the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, epics and historical books of the Old Testament.
It is no longer possible to objectively imagine the way of life of the Germans and Scandinavians during the period of the tribal system according to Beowulf. Who wrote down around 1000 this, which had been in use since the beginning of the 8th century. In the poem, the cleric strives in every possible way to erase pagan imagery from it, replacing it with biblical, mainly Old Testament (for example, the monster Grendel, defeated by the king of the Geats Beowulf, is called the “spawn of Cain,” although it clearly refers to the characters of ancient German mythology). It is curious, however, that despite the repeated mention of the One God (“Ruler of the World”), the name of Jesus Christ is not found anywhere. The ethics of Beowulf also represents a transition from pagan to Christian. The fact that the action of the poem takes place not in England, but on the Scandinavian Peninsula does not at all indicate its foreign origin: after all, in the poem “The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger” the events take place not in Georgia, but on the Arabian Peninsula.

Chapter 2. LATE MIDDLE AGES

§ 1. Heroic epic of the late Middle Ages

The heroic epic of the late Middle Ages went through three stages in its formation. In all likelihood, it was based on small songs composed by direct participants in the events described or their close observers (warriors, squad singers). Having gained the love of listeners and became widespread, these songs became the property of professional storytellers, who in France were called jugglers, in Spain huglars, and in Germany spilmans. The tales they processed grew significantly in volume - partly due to the fact that the storytellers combined the plots of several thematically similar songs, partly due to a more detailed development of the theme. Sometimes departing from the historical truth, storytellers increased the artistic truth through poetic and figurative descriptions of events and main characters. They began to cyclize epic poems. The epics were further processed and rethought when the monks recorded them: the didactic element in them was strengthened, and the theme of protecting Christianity from infidels was brought to the fore.
The most fully preserved monuments of the French heroic epic are songs about deeds (chansons de geste). By the time of their final recording, a stable form for epic poetry had emerged - a decasyllabic with a caesura after the fourth or sixth syllable, comparable to our iambic pentameter.
One of the important typological similarities between French “songs of deeds” and the epics of other peoples is the following. The figure that unites the cycle of legends is the image of an ideal sovereign. In the Celtic sagas this is the king of the Ulads Conchobar, in Russian epics it is Prince Vladimir, and in the French “songs of deeds” it is Emperor Charlemagne. The idealization of the monarch entails a certain staticism and inexpressiveness, which at first glance may seem like an artistic flaw, but in reality this is the law of the genre. Sometimes this image becomes partly collective: for example, Charlemagne is credited with the actions of his grandfather Charles Martel, who defeated the Arabs at the Battle of Poitiers and stopped their invasion of Europe.
The images of the main heroes of the heroic late Middle Ages, also called classical, differ sharply from the heroes of the archaic epic, whose main virtues are strength, dexterity, military prowess, mercilessness towards enemies, not excluding treachery and deceit. The heroes of the classical epic, in addition to courage, bravery and military prowess, are distinguished by subtlety of feelings, devotion to the monarch, which was unthinkable during the period of the tribal system, as well as piety, devotion to the Church and mercy, generosity, including towards defeated enemies, which was also impossible in pre-Christian era. All this was most fully reflected in the “Song of Roland” (c. 1100), which represents the most significant monument of the French heroic epic. Its main character, Count Roland, nephew of Charlemagne, dies along with his squad in the Roncesval Gorge, becoming a victim of the betrayal of his own stepfather Ganelon. It is enough to compare the “Song of Roland” with the chronicle to be convinced of the rethinking of the plot: the historical Roland dies at the hands of the Basques, and not the Saracens (Arabs). The poem called for a fight against Muslims and promoted the Crusades.
Less artisticly significant is the cycle of poems about Guillaume of Orange (XII - XIV centuries), glorifying faithful service to the king and depicting feudal strife.
The peculiarities of the Spanish heroic epic are related to the fact that the entire medieval history of Spain represents a heroic struggle against the Moorish (i.e., Arab) invaders, which is called the Reconquista (in Spanish, Reconquista, literally - reconquest). Therefore, the favorite hero of the Spanish people is Ruy (Rodrigo) Diaz, nicknamed Sid (from the Arabic “seid” - lord, ruler), who particularly distinguished himself in the war against the Moors. A loving, personal attitude towards this hero is expressed in the very title of the most famous monument of the Spanish classical epic - “The Song of My Cid” (c. 1140). It is distinguished from the “Song of Rodanda” by its much greater proximity to the historical basis, for it arose at a time when the exploits of the Sid were still remembered by many. The image of the main character is also not as idealized as the image of Roland. True, nowhere in the poem is there any mention of an episode that could cast a shadow on Sid (for example, his service to the Mohammedan sovereigns), but there is no knightly exclusivity in it, and therefore we can talk about the anti-aristocratic tendencies of the poem. The general tone of the narrative, for all its softness and sincerity, is distinguished by extraordinary restraint and laconicism.
Among other literary monuments dedicated to Sid, a later poem entitled “Rodrigo” and describing the hero’s youth and the story of his marriage stands out. Later, it formed the basis of Guillen de Castro’s play “The Youth of the Cid,” which, in turn, served as the primary source for Corneille’s famous tragedy “The Cid.”
The minor genre of heroic epic are romances that originated at the turn of the 14th - 15th centuries. Initially they were performed with a guitar, with the development of printing they were published in the form of separate leaflets, and later combined into collections - “Romansero”.
Of the monuments of the German classical epic, the most significant is the “Song of the Nibelungs” (that is, the Burgundians, inhabitants of the Kingdom of Burgundy; ca. 1200). The poem is not alien to elements of myth and even fairy tales, and the heroes carefully observe courtly etiquette, unthinkable in the era of the “great migration of peoples.” In this poem, the factual background is much more fragile than in the previous two. To a lesser extent than “The Song of Roland” and “The Song of My Sid”, it can be considered a national epic - in the sense that it is not about defending the homeland or its unity, but about family and clan feuds, and even ideal the sovereign - like Charlemagne or Prince Vladimir - becomes the foreign ruler Etzel (leader of the Huns Attila). The "Song of the Nibelungs" features the same heroes as in the tales of the Edda, only with changed names. By comparing these two literary monuments, one can trace the evolution of the plot from the original archaic epic to its stylization as a chivalric romance in verse.
The best translations of “The Song of Roland”, “The Song of My Sid” and “The Song of the Nibelungs” were made by Yu. B. Korneev.

§ 2. Courtly lyrics and chivalric romance

By the 12th century, Western European chivalry had reached both its political and cultural apogee. Having strengthened its social position, this class began to impose more stringent demands on its representatives. The knight was now required not only to have military valor, but also to have good manners, spiritual subtlety, education and worldliness. In other words, the ethical and even aesthetic began to be mixed with the heroic ideal.
The same period is marked by the beginning of the atomization of social consciousness, the predominance of personal, individual interest over the collective. It should be emphasized that individualism of this kind has very little in common with later individualism, since it is balanced and softened by the code of knightly honor and morality and, thus, does not turn into arbitrariness and permissiveness (at least, ideally). This change in public consciousness also affected literary creativity, where the epic was supplanted by lyrics - primarily intimate lyrics that artistically explore human feelings and experiences. And since the human personality is most clearly and fully revealed in love, it is not surprising that it is love lyrics that come first in knightly or courtly (i.e., court) poetry.
The very name of knightly, or courtly, lyrics indicates a change in the circle of authors. These are no longer wandering jugglers, people from the lower classes, but knights-aristocrats, who, moreover, from an early age were taught the rules of versification and playing musical instruments (this was part of the knightly education program). That is why they carefully worked on the poetic form, achieving maximum rhythmic and genre diversity, unknown in the previous era. It was the poet-knights who introduced rhymes into widespread use, and used the most complete and accurate ones. Here it would be useful to recall the words of A. S. Pushkin: “Poetry woke up under the sky of midday France - rhyme echoed in the Romance language; This new decoration of verse, which at first glance means so little, had an important influence on the literature of modern peoples. The ear was delighted with the double emphasis of sounds; conquered difficulty always brings us pleasure - loving regularity and conformity is characteristic of the human mind. The troubadours played with rhyme, invented all sorts of changes to the verses for it, and came up with difficult forms.”
The knights-poets attached enormous importance to poetic discovery, a successful find, which is why they received the name troubadours or trouvères (from the Provençal verb trobar and the French trouver - to find). It was in courtly lyricism that for the first time there emerged a tendency towards the creation of elitist literature, which opposed the desire to write simply and clearly, focusing on the general reader. This struggle between the “dark” and “clear” styles was reflected, for example, in the tenson (debate) of Guiraut de Bornel and Lignaur:

Senor Giraut, how can this be?
You said there was a rumor going around
That songs don’t have a dark syllable, -
Then I'll tell you
I'll ask a question:
Can it really be that, having chosen an understandable syllable,
Could I show myself?

Senor Linyaure, I am not the enemy
For verbal undertakings, let him sing
Anyone who likes to sing attracts him -
But still myself
I will give praise
Only the simplicity of melodious lines:
What everyone understands is the good!

(Translation by V. A. Dynnik)

Characterized by the strictest genre regulation of courtly lyrics - canson (love song), sirvent (poem polemical in tone), tenson (dispute between two poets), pastorela (meeting of a knight with a shepherdess), alba (secret meeting with his beloved).
Originating among the Provencal chivalry, courtly lyrics spread in the north of France, as well as in Germany (minnesang, i.e. love songs), as well as in Spain and Portugal (Galician-Portuguese poetry, which developed a different system of genres - “songs about the beloved friend", "songs of love" and "songs of slander") and in Italy, where the poetic school of the "new sweet style" developed, which had a huge influence on the poetry of the Renaissance.
The central place in courtly lyricism is occupied by the cult of the Beautiful Lady, her idealization and admiration for her (there is a term “service to the lady”). There are different opinions about the origin of this phenomenon: the transfer of forms of vassal dependence to love relationships; the influence of Arab love lyrics (Pushkin, by the way, held the second opinion); the honorable social position of women among the ancient Germans (this opinion was expressed by W. Scott in his “Studies on Chivalry”, which were not translated into Russian); the cult of eternal femininity, that is, the projection onto the image of an earthly woman of the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose cult was increasingly spreading in Catholic countries in the era described. It seems that in many ways these explanations do not exclude, but complement each other.
Somewhat later, a chivalric romance arose in France. Unlike the heroic epic, which sought to tell about actual events, although often using allegory and without observing historical accuracy, the chivalric romance involves primarily fiction, although based on some historical facts. The authors of chivalric novels set themselves the task of entertaining the reader, giving him aesthetic pleasure, distracting him from the world of everyday life and transporting him to the realm of wonderful dreams. This is why the fantastic element is so strong in romances of chivalry. Another essential element of a chivalric romance is love, which inspires the hero to many deeds in honor of a beautiful lady. Let us emphasize that these feats are performed not for the sake of a common cause, but for the sake of personal glory, which is due to the beginning of the atomization of society and, accordingly, the primacy of the individual over the general.
The authors of chivalric novels did not strive to recreate historical and local color (this requirement was introduced into literature only by the romantics many centuries later). The heroes of knightly novels are given the features of ideal knights of that time. This is especially noticeable in novels with ancient subjects, primarily in the anonymous “Roman of Alexander,” which has the same literary source as the Slavic “Alexandria.” Another group of chivalric novels was created on the basis of Celtic traditions and legends (about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, about Tristan and Isolde, about the Holy Grail, as well as Breton lays).
In the 13th century Some chivalric novels - "Aucassin and Nicolet", "A Mule Without a Bridle" - acquire features of self-parody, which indicates a crisis in the genre. Despite this, chivalric romances were written and used in Spain until the end of the 16th century.

§ 3. Urban literature

The 13th century in Western Europe was marked by the intensive growth of cities and the development of crafts and trade. The political as well as cultural significance of cities is increasing. Against the background of knightly literature in crisis, urban literature emerges, partly opposite to knightly literature, partly complementing it (it is important to emphasize the dual nature of this phenomenon). Since urban literature was a kind of reaction to knightly literature, its values ​​are, first of all, the reversed values ​​of knightly literature. Urban literature contrasts selfless service to God, the sovereign and the Beautiful Lady with personal interest and selfish calculation, with sublime love - with rough eroticism, with the world of fantasy and fiction - with images of everyday life, with the kingdom of beautiful dreams - with common sense and sober prudence, with melancholic mood - with humor and ridicule, and, finally, self-sufficient art - didacticism and edification.
Genetically, urban literature is connected with folk art, primarily with fairy tales - with everyday tales and tales about animals. The favorite genre of urban literature is a short poetic humorous story, called a fabli in France, and a schwank in Germany. Some of them aim simply to make the reader laugh and amuse, while others already have a tendency to ridicule human and social vices.
By the middle of the 13th century. The final version of the large cyclic poem of 30 “branches” (i.e., parts) “The Romance of the Fox” took shape. The story centers on the struggle between the cunning fox Renard and the stupid and rude wolf Isengrim. Its compositional feature is that it does not have a single and complete plot - it consists of disparate episodes connected by the commonality of the main characters, which are anthropomorphic animals symbolizing representatives of different classes.
Another original work of French urban literature of the 13th century. - “The Romance of the Rose,” where a young man falls in love with a beautiful rose in a dream, which, after much ordeal, he finally plucks and wakes up. The first part of the novel was written by Guillaume de Lorris and continues the traditions of chivalric literature, and the second, which Jean de Maine wrote after the death of his co-author, debunks courtly ideology.
An important place in the literature of the 12th century. occupied by the poetry of vagantes, i.e., wandering clerics (from the Latin clerici vagantes), whose ranks were replenished with poor students. They composed poems in Latin, which for the first was a sacred language, and for others - the language of lectures and international communication. However, they did not use ancient metrics, but short rhyming lines, describing the hardships of life and singing the sensual joys that they clearly lacked in life. It was the vagants who composed the song that became the student anthem:

Gaudeamus igitur,
Juvenes dum sumus!
Post jucundam juventutem,
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus!

Let's have fun, friends!
Is youth dormant?
After a cheerful youth,
After a difficult old age
The earth accepts us!

(Translation by N. A. Morozov)

Among the representatives of French urban poetry, one should highlight Rutbeuf (2nd half of the 13th century), who describes the phenomena of everyday life in a deliberately reduced form, and especially Francois Villon (1431 - after 1463), the last major poet of medieval France. In his “Small” and “Big Testament”, as well as in scattered ballads, distinguished by their refined perfection of form, contrast and irony, lyrical subjectivism and extreme sensationalism, philosophy and parody paradoxically coexist. The poet puts into his lyrical and confessional ballads an unprecedented intensity of personal feeling, and also resorts to self-irony, which gives him the opportunity to rise above both the vicious world and his own vices.
The spontaneous feeling of dissatisfaction with the feudal order, noticeable in many manifestations of urban literature, brings it closer to peasant anti-feudal literature, primarily with the English ballads about Robin Hood. The image of Robin Hood opens up a whole gallery of noble robbers - both in folklore and in literature. The ideological connection between the ballads about Robin Hood and the anti-feudal movements in England in the 14th and 15th centuries is obvious. The anti-clericalism of these ballads is due to the emergence of reformation movements, the ideologist of which was the Oxford priest John Wycliffe (1324 - 1387), who believed (like all subsequent Protestants and sectarians, up to the modern “Jehovah's Witnesses”) that the only source of doctrine should be the Bible.

§ 4. Medieval theater

At the end of the Middle Ages, drama developed intensively - both religious and secular. The first developed from the elements of theatricalization and dialogization contained in the divine service. Thus, in the Russian Orthodox Church, dialogization is obvious in antiphons and litanies, and the dramatic element is in the “cave action” that existed in the pre-Petrine era and quite accurately reproduced from S. Eisenstein’s film “Ivan the Terrible,” as well as the rite of washing the feet, which is still performed on Maundy Thursday. Something similar is practiced in the Roman Catholic Church.
The earliest form of Western European religious theater is liturgical drama (Christmas and Easter), performed exclusively by clergy in Latin, chanting, near the altar and with very modest props. Subsequently, liturgical drama absorbs some elements of secular theater, moves from Latin to national languages, and enriches its props. The biblical text is supplemented with episodes of everyday and often comic nature. This is how the mysteries arose, initially presented on the porch, and later in the city square. By the 15th century, two types of stage began to be used for staging mysteries: in France and Germany - simultaneous (that is, combining several different places of action at the same time), and in England - mobile, when small platforms were erected on carts traveling throughout the city.
B XIII century Another genre of religious drama arises - the miracle, the basis of which is no longer biblical, but hagiographic texts, where we are talking about miracles revealed through the prayers of the Mother of God and the saints. Miracles were often equipped with a romantic and adventurous element and magnificent props. One of the most famous early miracles is “The Miracle of Théophile” by Ruetbeuf, which tells about a cleric who sold his soul to the devil. He influenced the formation of the German legend of Doctor Faustus, which was subsequently repeatedly subjected to literary adaptation (Marlowe, Goethe, Pushkin).
Another genre of medieval theater - morality plays - reached its peak in the 15th century. in France and England. This genre has a frankly didactic, moralizing character. Most of the characters in the morality play are allegorical figures of human virtues and vices.
As for the folk-comic theater, not many recorded plays have survived. Among them are two short plays by Adam de la Halle (13th century), one of which is a reworking of a pastorelle for the stage. Farces and soti (literally - tomfoolery), which appeared in the late Middle Ages, continue the traditions of the folk farcical theater of previous eras and are close in character and ideological orientation to the fablio about “The Romance of the Fox”.

Conclusion

Western European medieval literature differs sharply from ancient literature - both in the ideology underlying it, in the system of genres, and in the range of topics. Almost all common features of ancient and medieval literature can be explained by direct borrowing, especially in the late Middle Ages, under the conditions of the Carolingian and Ottonian revivals. Appeal to the artistic experience of antiquity prepared the ground for a direct orientation towards antiquity and its idealization during the Renaissance.
One of the most important achievements of medieval literature should be recognized as psychologism, inaccessible to antiquity, which had a huge influence on the literature of subsequent centuries.
Some literary genres of the Middle Ages passed into the Renaissance. These include the chivalric romance, which received a second wind in the early work of Boccaccio and was transformed at the end of the Renaissance into a Renaissance chivalric poem. In Spain, the chivalric romance was popular until the beginning of the 17th century. The heirs of the troubadours, who sang sublime love, became the Italian poetic school of the “new sweet style”, from the depths of which came Dante, and later Petrarch, whose sonnets on the life and death of Madonna L;ura extremely strongly influenced the lyrics of all European countries where Renaissance aesthetics penetrated . Medieval theatrical genres were supplanted by the scientific and humanistic theater during the Renaissance, but were later revived in the works of Spanish playwrights of the “golden age.”

Literature.

1. Alekseev M.P., Zhirmunsky V.M., Mokulsky S.S., Smirnov A.A. History of Western European literature. Middle Ages and Renaissance. M., 1999.
2. Foreign literature of the Middle Ages. Latin, Celtic, Scandinavian, Provençal literature. Reader / Comp. B. I. Purishev. M., 1974.
3. Foreign literature of the Middle Ages. German, Spanish, Italian, English, Czech, Polish, Serbian, Bulgarian literature. Reader / Comp. B. I. Purishev. M., 1975.

ON THE SUBJECT WORLD ART CULTURE ON THE TOPIC PERFORMED IN MOSCOW 2003 CONTENTS Introduction Heroic epic Beowulf excerpts Elder Edda songs about the gods, Speeches by Vysotsky Appeal to crusade Knightly literature Alba, pastoral, canson Urban literature Vagant poetry INTRODUCTION The spirit of knowledge lived, hidden in a secret elixir, Singing healingly the vague darkness of centuries. Let life be a continuous struggle of enemies, Let the sword ring in battle and in the tournament The alchemist was looking for the stone of the sages, Mind the theologian tried to know the creator - And thought shook the world's weights. Monk, judge, knight, minstrel All dimly saw the holy goal, Although they walked to it on more than one road. In the days of horror, fire, murder, anxiety That goal shone like a star In all centuries it lived hidden.

Valery Bryusov Starting from the 12th century, a rich literature appeared in Western Europe in Latin and in national languages. Medieval literature is characterized by a variety of genres: heroic epic, chivalric literature, sunny poetry of troubadours and minnesingers, fables and poetry of vagantes. The most important component of the emerging written culture was the heroic epic, recorded in the 12th-12th centuries. In the heroic epic of Western Europe, there are two varieties: historical epic, and fantastic epic, which is closer to folklore.

The epic works of the 12th century were called poems of deeds. At first they were oral poems, performed, as a rule, by wandering singers and jugglers.

The famous song about Roland, the Song about my Sid, in which the main ones are patriotic motives and a purely knightly spirit. The concept of a knight in Western Europe became synonymous with nobility and nobility and was contrasted, first of all, with the lower classes of peasants and townspeople. The growth of class self-awareness of knighthood strengthens their sharply negative attitude towards commoners. Their political ambitions also grew, their claims to place themselves on an unattainable and moral height.

Gradually in Europe, an image of an ideal knight and a code of knightly honor are emerging, according to which a knight, without fear or reproach, must come from a noble family, be a brave warrior, and constantly care about his glory. The knight was required to be courteous, to be able to play musical instruments and write poetry, and to follow the rules of KUTOISIA - impeccable upbringing and behavior at court. The knight must be a devoted lover of his chosen LADY. Thus, the code of knightly honor of military squads is 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 knightly culture, such literary genres as knightly romance and knightly poetry appeared in the 12th century. The term novel originally meant only a poetic text in the pictorial Romance language, as opposed to Latin, and then it came to be used to name a specific genre.

The first chivalric romances appeared in the Anglo-Norman cultural environment in 1066. Geoffrey of Monmouth is traditionally considered to be the originator of the legends about the exploits of King Arthur, about his glorious knights of the Round Table, and about their struggle with the Anglo-Saxons. The Arthurian romance series is based on the Celtic heroic epic. His heroes Lancelot and Perceval, Palmerin embodied the highest chivalric virtues. A common motif of chivalric romances, especially the Breton cycle, was the search for the Holy Grail, a cup in which, according to legend, the blood of the crucified Christ was collected.

The Breton cycle of novels also includes the wonderful story of Tristan and Isolde - a poem about the eternal undying passion that flares up in the main characters after they mistakenly drink a love drink. The largest representatives of the genre of the 11th century were the French project Chrestien de Troyes. He even predicted the legends of the Arthurian cycle and embodied them in his novels and poems. The works of Krestien de Troyes Erec and Enida, Yvain, or the Knight of the Lion, Lacelot, or the Knight of the Cart, and others are among the best examples of courtly Western European literature.

The plots of the works of K. De Troyes were processed by the authors of German chivalric novels, for example, Rartman Von Aue. His best work was Poor Henry - a short poetic story. Another famous author of knightly courtly novels was WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, whose poem Parsifal, one of the knights of the Round Table, later inspired the great German composer R. Wagner.

The chivalric romance reflected the growth of secular trends in literature, as well as an increased interest in human feelings and experiences. He passed on to subsequent eras the idea of ​​what came to be called chivalry. The chivalric novel reflected the growth of secular trends in literature, as well as an increased interest in human experiences. It conveyed to subsequent generations the idea of ​​​​what came to be called chivalry.

Sunny French Provence became the birthplace of troubadour poetry, which arose at the courts of feudal lords. In this type of courtly poetry, the cult of the lady occupied a central place. Among the troubadours, knights of average income predominated, but there were also representatives of the feudal nobility and people from a plebeian environment. The main features of poetry were elitism and intimacy, and love for a beautiful lady acted in the form of a kind of religion or cultural action.

The most famous troubadours of the XXI 1st century there were Bernard Deventarion, Heraut de Bornel, and Bertrant de Born. The poetry of the Trouvères flourished in the north of France, the poetry of the Minnesingers in Germany, and the poets of the new voluptuous style in Italy. Urban Literature XII I centuries was anti-feudal and anti-church. Urban poets praised the hard work, practical ingenuity, cunning and cunning of artisans and merchants. The most popular genre of urban literature was the poetic short story, fable or joke.

All of 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 Roman of the Rose, which consists of two dissimilar and multi-temporal parts, has become widespread. In the first part, various human qualities, reason and hypocrisy, appear in the form of characters. 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 the carnival and laughter theatrical art. The culture of laughter dominated the carnival and the work of folk traveling actors, jugglers, acrobats, and singers. The highest manifestation of folk square culture was the carnival. The phenomenon of folk laughter culture allows us to reconsider the cultural world of the Middle Ages and discover that the dark Middle Ages were characterized by a festively poetic perception of the world. The principle of laughter in folk culture could not find responses in the church-feudal culture, which contrasted it with holy sorrow.

The Church taught that laughter and fun corrupt the soul and are inherent only in evil spirits. They included traveling artists and buffoons, and shows with their participation were branded as godless abomination. In the eyes of the clergy, buffoons served demonic glory.

The poetry of wandering schoolboys is close to urban culture. The poetry of the vagants, wandering throughout Europe in search of better teachers and a better life, was very daring, condemning the church and clergy and praising 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 nature and in this way differ from the aristocratic creativity of the troubadours. The vagrants were persecuted and condemned by the Catholic Church.

One of the most famous heroes of medieval world literature was Robin Hood, the protagonist of numerous ballads and literary monuments of the 13th century. HEROIC EPIC Literature of the Western Early Middle Ages was created by new peoples inhabiting the western part of Europe: Celts Britons, Gauls, Belgians, Helvetians and ancient Germans living between the Danube and the Rhine, near the North Sea and in the south of Scandinavia Suevi, Goths, Burgundians, Cherusci, Angles, Saxons etc. These peoples first worshiped pagan tribal gods, and later adopted Christianity and believed, but, in the end, the Germanic tribes conquered the Celts and occupied the territory of what is now France, England and Scandinavia.

The literature of these peoples is represented by the following works: 1. Stories about the lives of saints, hagiography. Lives of saints, visions and spells 2. Encyclopedic, scientific and historiographical works. Isidore of Seville c.560-636 etymology, or the beginnings of Bede the Venerable c.637-735 on the nature of things and the church history of the English people, Jordan on the origin of the acts of the Goths Alcuin c. 732-804 treatises on rhetoric, grammar, dialectics Einhard c.770-840 Lives of Charlemagne 3. Mythology and heroic-epic poems, sagas and songs of Celtic and Germanic tribes.

Icelandic sagas, Irish epic, Elder Edda, Younger Edda, Beowulf, Karelian-Finnish epic Kalevala. The heroic epic as a holistic picture of folk life was the most significant legacy of 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 most ancient Irish epic. It is formed from the 3rd to the 8th century. Created by the people back in the pagan period, epic poems about warrior heroes first existed in oral form and were passed on from mouth to mouth. They were sung and recited by folk storytellers. Later, in the 7th and 8th centuries, after Christianization, they were revised and written down by scholar-poets, whose names remained unchanged.

Epic works are characterized by the glorification of the exploits of heroes, the interweaving of historical background and fiction, the glorification of the heroic strength and exploits of the main characters, the idealization of the feudal state. The heroic epic was greatly influenced by Celtic and German-Scandinavian mythology. Often epics and myths are so connected and intertwined with each other that it is quite difficult to draw a line between them. This connection is reflected in the special form of epic tales - sagas - Old Icelandic prose narratives; the Icelandic word saga comes from the verb to say.

Scandinavian poets of the 9th-12th centuries composed sagas. The ancient Icelandic sagas are very diverse: the sagas of the kings, the saga of the Icelanders, the sagas of ancient times, the Saga of the Välsungs. A collection of these sagas has come to us in the form of two Eddas, the Elder Edda and the Younger Edda. The Younger Edda is a prose retelling of ancient Germanic myths and tales, written by the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sjurluson in 1222-1223. The Elder Edda is a collection of twelve poetic songs about gods and heroes.

The compressed and dynamic songs of the Elder Edda, dating back to the 5th century and apparently written down in the 10th-11th centuries, are divided into two groups: tales of gods and tales of heroes. The main god is the one-eyed Odin, who was originally the god of war. Second in importance after Odin is the god of thunder and fertility, Thor. The third is the malevolent god Loki. And the most significant hero is the hero Sigurd. The heroic songs of the Elder Edda are based on the pan-German epic tales about the gold of the Nibelungs, on which lies a curse and which brings misfortune to everyone.

Sagas also became widespread in Ireland, the largest center of Celtic culture in the Middle Ages. This was the only country in Western Europe where no Roman legionnaire had set foot. Irish tales were created and passed on to their descendants by druid priests, bards, singer-poets and felid fortune tellers. A clear and concise Irish epic was formed not in verse, but in prose. It can be divided into heroic sagas and fantastic sagas.

The main hero of the heroic sagas was the noble, fair and brave Cu Chulainn. His mother is the king's sister, and his father is the god of light. Cuchulainn had three shortcomings: he was too young, too brave and too beautiful. In the image of Cuchulainn, ancient Ireland embodied its ideal of valor and moral perfection. In epic works, real historical events and fairy-tale fiction are often intertwined. Thus, the Song of Hildenbrand was created on a historical basis - the struggle of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric with Odoacer.

This ancient Germanic epic of the era of migration of peoples originated in the pagan era and was found in a manuscript of the 9th century. This is the only monument of the German epic that has come down to us in song form. In the poem Beowulf, the heroic epic of the Anglo-Saxons, which came down to us in a manuscript from the early 10th century, the fantastic adventures of the heroes also take place against the backdrop of historical events. The world of Beowulf is a world of kings and warriors, a world of feasts, battles and duels.

The hero of the poem is a brave and generous warrior from the Gaut people, Beowulf, who performs great feats and is always ready to help people. Beowulf is generous, merciful, loyal to the leader and greedy for fame and rewards, he performed many feats, spoke out against a monster named Grldelo and destroyed him, defeated another monster in an underwater dwelling - Grendel's mother, entered into battle with a fire-breathing dragon, who was angry at the attempt on the protected they had an ancient treasure and devastated the country. At the cost of his own life, Beowulf managed to defeat the dragon.

The song ends with a scene of the solemn burning of the hero's body on a funeral pyre and the construction of a mound over his ashes. Thus the familiar theme of gold bringing misfortune appears in the poem. This theme will be used later in knightly literature. An immortal monument of folk art is Kalevala - a Karelian-Finnish epic about the exploits and adventures of the heroes of the fairy-tale country of Kalev. Kalevala is composed of folk songs of the runes, which were collected and recorded by Elias Lönnrot, a native of a Finnish peasant family, and published in 1835 and 1849. runes are letters of the alphabet carved on wood or stone, used by Scandinavian and other Germanic peoples for religious and memorial inscriptions.

The entire Kalevala is a tireless praise of human labor, there is not a hint of court poetry in it. According to Marietta Shaginyan, powerful images of people that will forever be remembered by you, grandiose pictures of nature, an accurate description of the processes of labor, clothing, peasant life - all this was embodied in the runes High Kalevala The French epic poem The Song of Roland, which came down to us in a 12th century manuscript, tells the story of the Spanish campaign of Charlemagne in 778, and the main character of the poem, Roland, has his own historical prototype.

True, the campaign against the Basques in the poem turned into a seven-year war with the infidels, and Charles himself - from a 36-year-old man into a gray-haired old man. The central episode of the poem - the Battle of Roncesvalles - glorifies the courage of people faithful to duty and dear France.

The Spanish heroic epic Song of Cid reflected the events of the Reconquista - the conquest of their country by the Spaniards from the Arabs. The main character of the poem is the famous figure of the reconquista Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar 1040 - 1099, whom the Arabs called Sid the Lord. In the German epic Song of the Nibelungs, which finally developed from individual songs into an epic tale in the 12-13th 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 figure - the formidable leader Attila, who turned into the kind, weak-willed Etzel.

The poem consists of 39 songs - adventures. The action of the poem takes us into the world of court festivities, knightly tournaments and beautiful ladies. The main character of the poem is the Dutch prince Siegfried, a young knight who performed many wonderful feats. He is brave and courageous, young and handsome, daring and arrogant. But the fate of Siegfried and his future wife Kriemhild was tragic, for whom the treasure of Nibelungen gold became fatal.

CALL FOR A CRUSADE Love's good power has inspired us timid. The campaign was inspired by We are in harmony with the Lord. So let's hurry to the lands. Where, I listen to the call of the sky. The impulse is acceptable to the soul. We are the sons of the Lord. The Lord fights with us. With heroic hands, And the foreigners themselves are crushed by all of them. For us, Christ, filled with Love, Died in the land that was given to the Turks. Let us flood the fields with a stream of enemy blood Or our honor is forever disgraced Is it easy for us to fight In a distant battlefield, Lord, we are in your will. We want to beat our enemies. There will be no death.

For those who have received their sight, the blessed times will come, and the country will prepare glory, honor and happiness for those who returned to their homeland. CHIVAL LITERATURE The main themes of secular knightly, or courtly literature, which arose in the courts of feudal lords, were love for a beautiful lady, glorification of exploits and reflection of the rituals of knightly honor. The words courtly literature mean refined secular literature corresponding to the general concepts of knightly fidelity, valor, generosity and courtesy.

Courtly literature from French. soygyms - polite, which was created not in Latin, but in national languages, is represented by the lyrics of troubadours and trouvères in France, minnesingers in Germany and chivalric romances. The knight of the 12th century - the era of the High Middle Ages - was no longer only a warrior, but also a person with a rich and complex inner life. In the foreground in his experiences, selfless love for the Beautiful Lady, whom he was ready to selflessly and joyfully serve, came more and more to the fore.

In this service, the first European lyricists found an inexhaustible source of inspiration, so that the words lover and poet in a courtly environment, in the sphere of the feudal court, became synonymous. Since then, there has been an idea that a poet is a lover, and a lover is a person who writes poetry. The Virgin Mary was a special object of love and service. It was believed that the object of worship must necessarily be a married lady, moreover, more noble than the poet himself. In order to get closer to the Lady and become a legitimate singer of her virtues, the poet needed to go through several stages of initiation, first he had to appease his love, then, having opened up, wait for a signal from the Lady that he had been accepted into her service; such a sign could be the gift of a ring.

But even after this, the poet should not have sought intimacy. Ideal love, according to the courtly code, is unrequited love. It gives rise to suffering, which in creativity is melted into the perfect word; its beauty returns light and joy to the soul of the lover. Therefore, sadness and despondency in the eyes of courtly ethics are the greatest sin. Love could also be reckless, rude, and base.

A characteristic feature of courtly poetry, which challenged medieval asceticism, can be considered an increased interest in the world of man, who is capable of not only praying and fighting, but also loving tenderly and admiring the beauty of nature. The lyrical poetry of the troubadours arose in the south of France in Provence and was divided into the following forms Alba a poetic story about the separation of lovers in the morning after a secret night meeting, a pastourel, a lyrical song about the meeting of a knight with a shepherdess, a canson - the most complex poetic work in structure, combining different poetic meters, a sirventa poem on a moral and political theme, and tenson - poetic disputes.

The master of pastourelle was Bertrand de Born. Bernard de Ventadorn and Jaufra Rudel wrote in the canton genre, and in the Alba genre - the master of poets Giraut de Borneil.

The troubadours treated the writing of poetry as a conscious, serf-like work, as a craft that needed to be learned, but at the same time they understood that this was a measure that followed certain rules. Poets showed individuality and tried to invent new forms and dimensions of verse. At the end of the 12th century, the example of the troubadours was followed by the French court poets-singers trouvères and the German love singers minnesingers. Now the poets were no longer interested in lyrical poetry, but in verse poems of chivalry full of all sorts of adventures.

For many of them, the material was the legends of the Breton cycle, in which the Knights of the Round Table act at the court of King Arthur. There were a lot of chivalric romances. This is Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Lancelot, or Chrétien de Troyes' Knight of the Cart. But the most popular was the novel about tragic love - Tristan and Isolde. The novel about Tristan, which has come down to us in a secondary version, has many versions: Joseph Bedier, Béroul, Gottfried of Strasbourg, and each author contributed his own details to the novel.

Alba The hawthorn leaves are drooping in the garden, Where Dona and her friend are seizing every moment. The first cry of Alas is about to be heard from the horn. Dawn, you were too hasty Ah, if only God would give night forever, And my dear did not leave me, And the guard forgot his morning signal Alas, dawn, you were too hasty Pastoral I met a shepherdess yesterday, wandering here at the fence. A lively, albeit simple, girl I met. She was wearing a fur coat and a colored cap, a cap to cover herself from the wind. Kansona Love will sweep away all barriers, If two people have one soul. Love lives by reciprocity, It cannot serve as a substitute for the most precious gift, After all, it is stupid to snatch pleasure from someone who is disgusted by it. With hope, I look forward, Breathing tender love for the one who blooms with pure beauty, For the noble, non-arrogant one, Who was taken from fate humble, Whose perfection, they say, And kings everywhere honor. URBAN LITERATURE During the Gothic period, literature, music and theatrical performances developed as part of urban culture.

Secular urban literature of the late Middle Ages is represented, firstly, by realistic poetic short stories by fabliaux and schwanks, secondly, by the lyrics of vagants - wandering students, schoolchildren, and 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 fabliaux, 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 adventurism, commoners fabliau About Burenka, the priestly queen.

Lyrical poetry of the vagants from lat. ua anpes - wandering people, glorifying the generous gifts of nature, carnal love, the joy of drinking wine and gambling, was created in Latin. Its authors were mischievous schoolchildren, cheerful clerics and impoverished knights. Fans of Bacchus and Venus, they led a wandering lifestyle and in their work willingly turned to folklore, using the motifs and forms of folk songs.

The Vagants knew what poverty and humiliation were, but their poems, glorifying free brotherhood, were imbued with joy, freedom, and earthly love. The creativity of the vagants can be judged from the collection of nameless poets Sagtsh Vigap and the poems of the Archipit of Cologne, Walter of Chatillon and Hugh of Orleans. In the 12th century. folk poems appear, created on the basis of oral folk art - folklore.

In many of them, the main characters were distant relatives of our Ivan the Fool and animals, in whose behavior human traits were discernible. The Romance of the Fox. The treasury of spiritual food for the townspeople, which was revered as secular liturgy, teaching and legend, was the Romance of the Rose, the authors of which were Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Maine. In England, ballads about Robin Hood, a noble robber and protector of the poor and disadvantaged, were popular.

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The roots of the literature of the Middle Ages go back to the 4th-5th centuries, during the period when new state associations formed by barbarian peoples were created on the ruins of the Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages, a new, in comparison with antiquity, system of aesthetic thinking arose, the creation of which was facilitated by Christianity, the folk art of “barbarian” peoples and the influence of antiquity. Medieval thinking is distinguished by the ability to combine a subtle sensitivity to various exotic influences and a systematic development of the heritage of the past, as well as a unique ability to rediscover and apply the ancient developments of peasant, autochthonous culture, preserved “under the wing” of Roman civilization.

It is worth emphasizing that in the Middle Ages, religious thinking left a very deep imprint on literature; it also introduced allegory and elements of symbolic perception of reality into literary circulation. The range of literature of the Middle Ages included a huge number of genres with church origins, for example, cult drama, hymns, lives of saints, etc. In addition, the beginnings of historiography and the processing of biblical legends and motifs are associated with clerical literature.

Between the 11th and 14th centuries, medieval literature can be linked to folklore. But not too literally. A folk song or fairy tale is impersonal, while the main feature of a literary text is intentional individuality, uniqueness and clear specificity. Medieval works of that time have a certain duality, that is, some texts are close to literary work in the modern sense, while others, such as songs about deeds, are closer to folklore. However, the term “folklore” itself has the ability to refer to two different realities, which depends on what social function they perform.

Classification of literature of the Middle Ages

The literary art of the Middle Ages is divided into two stages, which are associated with the nature of social relations, namely: the literature of the period of the decline of the clan system and the emergence of feudalism, which fall in the 5th-10th centuries, as well as the literature of the stage of developed feudalism in the 11th-15th centuries . The first period is typical for monuments of folk poetry, and the second is classified as feudal-knightly, folk and urban literature, which appeared in the twelfth century. All of the above listed elements exist both in parallel and in complex interweaving, but still the basis for all literature of the Middle Ages remains works of folk poetry. Urban literature, starting from the 12th-13th centuries, develops very quickly and rapidly and largely absorbs clerical literature. In this period, the division of medieval literature becomes more “blurred” and conditional. The ascetic attitude is muted, and the warm tones of the attitude towards the world become the leading one.

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Essay

Medieval literature

Medieval literature is a period in the history of European literature that begins in late antiquity (IV-V centuries) and ends in the 15th century. The earliest works that had the greatest influence on subsequent medieval literature were the Christian Gospels, religious hymns of Ambrose of Milan (340-397), the works of Augustine the Blessed (“Confession”, 400; “On the City of God”, 410-428), translation of the Bible into Latin, carried out by Jerome (before 410) and other works of the Latin Church Fathers and philosophers of early scholasticism.

The origin and development of 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 XII-XIII centuries. At this time, his most important achievements were Gothic architecture (Notre Dame Cathedral), chivalric literature, and heroic epic. The extinction of medieval culture and its transition to a qualitatively new stage - the Renaissance (Renaissance) - took place in Italy in the 14th century, in other countries of Western Europe - in the 15th 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 experienced its heyday in the XIV-XV and XVI centuries.

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

The literature of the Middle Ages is based on Christian ideals and values ​​and strives for aesthetic perfection.

In recent years, a number of monuments of medieval literature have been published in our country. Many texts, which had already been published more than once, became available to the general reader for the first time: the “Library of World Literature,” which included many of the most famous artistic creations of the Western European Middle Ages, comprising several voluminous volumes, has a very impressive circulation. Songs of the Vagants, chivalric romance, poetry of troubadours and minnesingers, Irish tales, Icelandic sagas, songs of the Elder Edda, Beowulf, Song of the Nibelungs, Song of Roland, Song of Cid, Dante, Chaucer - such series coverage.

Thus, the domestic reader had the opportunity to become more closely acquainted with the literature of the era, which until very recently remained “dark” for him. Dark in two respects: firstly, because very little was known about its culture; secondly, because it is “dark” because it has long been the custom to stick the label “medieval” on everything backward and depict the Middle Ages as a “gloomy night”, an era of dominance of obscurantism, mental retardation, etc. With numerous texts of first-class artistic creations from this period, the reading public will be able to convince themselves of the exceptional diversity and richness of medieval culture.

Medievalists of the 19th century distinguished two types of medieval literature, “scholarly” and “folk”. The first class included Latin texts and court poetry, the second class included all other works that, in the spirit of the romantics, were considered primary art.

Currently, medieval literature is usually divided into Latin literature and literature in vernacular languages ​​(Romance and Germanic). The differences between them are fundamental. For a long time, neither Latin literary forms had correspondences in folk languages, nor, conversely, Romano-Germanic forms - in Latin. Only in the 12th century did the Latin tradition lose its isolation and become “modernized,” while vernacular languages ​​acquired the ability to develop some of its aspects. But this phenomenon has remained marginal for a long time. The concept of “literature” in the sense in which we understand it now, i.e. presupposing the written and at the same time expressing the individual character of the text, is truly applicable only to the Latin texts of the era. In those cases where there is a coincidence of any fact of Latin literature with a fact of Romano-Germanic literature, they are almost always separated from each other by a significant time interval: the Romano-Germanic phenomenon arises much later than its supposed sample.

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 a Latin genre adopted in its original form by the popular language is the animal fable, which dates back to Aesop. Modern philology has decisively abandoned the theories of the 1920s and 1930s, according to which fabliau or pastourelle go 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 be somehow related to the prehistory of Romanesque poetry. The “Renaissance of the 12th century” coincides with the emergence of new poetic forms, which are destined to soon supplant all others: courtly lyrics, novels, short stories, non-liturgical dramatic “actions”.

Throughout the centuries-long development of the Middle Ages, hagiography - church literature describing the lives of saints - was especially popular. By the 10th century the canon of this literary genre was formed: the indestructible, strong spirit of the hero (martyr, missionary, fighter for the Christian faith), a classic set of virtues, constant formulas of praise. The life of the saint offered the highest moral lesson and captivated people with examples of righteous life. Hagiographic literature is characterized by the motif of a miracle, which corresponded to popular ideas about holiness. The popularity of the lives led to the fact that excerpts from them - “legends” (for example, the famous legends about St. Francis of Assisi /1181/1182-1226/, who founded the mendicant order of Franciscans) began to be read in church, and the lives themselves were collected into extensive collections.

The penchant of the Middle Ages for allegory and allegory was expressed by the genre of visions. According to medieval ideas, the highest meaning is revealed only by revelation - vision. In the genre of visions, the fate of people and the world was revealed to the author in a dream. Visions often told about real historical figures, which contributed to the popularity of the genre. Visions had a significant influence on the development of later medieval literature, starting from the famous French “Roman of the Rose” (13th century), in which the motif of visions (“revelations in a dream”) is clearly expressed, to Dante’s “Divine Comedy”.

The genre of didactic-allegorical poem (about the Last Judgment, the Fall, etc.) is adjacent to visions.

Among the lyrical genres of clerical literature, the dominant position was occupied by hymns glorifying the patron saints of monasteries and church holidays. The hymns had their own canon. The composition of a hymn about saints, for example, included an opening, a panegyric to the saint, a description of his exploits, a prayer to him asking for intercession, etc.

Liturgy, the main Christian service, known since the 2nd century, is strictly canonical and symbolic in nature. The origins of liturgical drama date back to the early Middle Ages. Its origins are dialogical insertions into the canonical text of the liturgy, the so-called tropes, which arose at the end of the 9th-10th centuries. Initially, these dialogues were accompanied by pantomime, gradually turning into skits, and then into small plays based on biblical scenes, performed by priests or singers near the altar. The Catholic Church supported liturgical drama with its pronounced didacticism. By the end of the 11th century. liturgical drama has lost touch with liturgy. In addition to dramatizing biblical episodes, she began to act out the lives of saints and use elements of the theater proper - scenery. The intensification of the entertainment and spectacle of drama, the penetration of the worldly principle into it, forced the church to take dramatic performances outside the temple - first to the porch, and then to the city square. Liturgical drama became the basis for the emergence of medieval city theater.

Clerical lyrics originate from the work of vagantes (from Latin - “wandering”) (XI-XIII centuries). Their music was addressed to the spiritual elite of medieval society - the educated part of it, who knew how to appreciate poetic creativity. The songs were written in Latin. The creators of the vagant lyrics were wandering clergy, mainly half-educated students who had not found a place for themselves in the church hierarchy. The vagantes were educated people, personally independent, as if they had “fallen out” of the social structure of medieval society, and were financially insecure - these features of their position contributed to the development of the thematic and stylistic unity of their lyrics.

Like all Latin literature of this period, the lyrics of the Vagants are based on ancient and Christian traditions. The poetic heritage of the Vagants is wide and varied: these include poems glorifying sensual love, taverns and wine, and works exposing the sins of monks and priests, parodies of liturgical texts, flattering and even impudent, pleading poems. The Vagantes also composed religious chants, didactic and allegorical poems, but this theme occupied an insignificant place in their work.

The anti-church literature of the Vagants was persecuted by the Catholic Church. By the end of the 13th century. Vagant poetry came to naught due to repression imposed by the church, and unable to withstand competition from secular rivals - with the new language poetry of the Provençal troubadours and French trouvères.

Although medieval culture had ideological, spiritual and artistic integrity, the dominance of Christianity did not make it completely homogeneous. One of its essential features was the emergence of a secular culture in it, which reflected the cultural self-awareness and spiritual ideals of the military-aristocratic class of medieval society - knighthood and the new social stratum that emerged in the mature Middle Ages - the townspeople.

Secular culture, being one of the components of Western European medieval culture, remained Christian in nature. At the same time, the very image and lifestyle of the knights and townspeople predetermined their focus on earthly things, developed special views, ethical standards, traditions, and cultural values.

Before the urban culture itself was formed, secular spirituality began to establish itself in knightly culture.

The creator and bearer of knightly culture was the military class, which originated in the 7th-8th centuries, when conventional forms of feudal land tenure developed. Chivalry, a special privileged layer of medieval society, over the centuries developed its own traditions and unique ethical standards, its own views on all life relationships. The formation of the ideas, customs, and morality of chivalry was largely facilitated by the Crusades and his acquaintance with the Eastern tradition.

The heyday of knightly culture occurred in the 12th-13th centuries, which was due, firstly, to its final formation into an independent and powerful class, and secondly, to the introduction of knighthood to education (in the previous period, most of it was illiterate).

If in the early Middle Ages knightly values ​​were mainly of a military-heroic nature, then by the 12th century specifically knightly ideals and knightly culture were being formed.

Tradition required the knight to follow certain “rules of honor,” the so-called “code of knightly honor.” The basis of the code is the idea of ​​fidelity to duty, the code regulated the rules of combat, etc. Knightly virtues included noble behavior in battle, duel, generosity, and courage. Tradition required the knight to know the rules of court etiquette, to be able to behave in society, to court a lady in a refined manner, to treat a woman nobly, and to protect the humiliated and insulted. The “seven knightly virtues,” along with horse riding, fencing, swimming, playing checkers, and skillful handling of a spear, also included worshiping and serving the lady of the heart, writing and singing poems in her honor.

These ideals formed the basis of the idea of ​​specifically knightly behavior - courtoisie (from the French court - courtyard). COURTY, courtliness - a medieval concept of love, according to which the relationship between a lover and his Lady is similar to the relationship between a vassal and his master. The most important influence on the formation of the ideal of courtly love was the Roman poet Ovid (1st century), whose poetic “treatise” - “The Art of Love” - became a kind of encyclopedia of the behavior of a knight in love with a Beautiful Lady: he trembles with love, does not sleep, he is pale, may die from the unrequited feeling. Ideas about such a model of behavior became more complicated due to Christian ideas about the cult of the Virgin Mary - in this case, the Beautiful Lady whom the knight served became the image of his spiritual love.

Thus, by the 12th century. knightly values ​​were systematized and universalized, they were given a broad ethical meaning. These new values ​​formed the basis of secular, so-called courtly literature - knightly lyrics and knightly romance. It arose in the 12th century. simultaneously with the medieval heroic epic.

At the end of the 11th century. in Provence, the lyrical chivalric poetry of the troubadours arose (approximate translation - “composing verses”). The next two centuries were the time of the highest flowering of troubadour poetry, which became the first secular lyric poetry of the Middle Ages and marked the end of the dominance of church poetry. The themes of the troubadours' poetic creativity are extensive - poems were dedicated to knightly virtues, but the main theme is courtly love (the very concept of "courtiness", the cult of a beautiful lady as a new aesthetic ideal, were first developed in the poetry of the troubadours).

The troubadours' lyrics incorporated literary elements of church Latin poetry, folklore, and Arabic influences are also noticeable in it. The troubadours also created a new image of the author - a person who serves only Beauty.

The most famous courtly poet was Bernard de Ventadorn (12th century). Among the troubadours are Bertrand de Born, Peire Vidal, Guillaume de Cabestany, Guillaume IX, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Poitiers. Poems were also written by noble women, the most famous of them being the Duchess of Aquitaine Alienora.

In the XIV century. in the ideology of chivalry, the gap between dreams, ideals and reality begins to widen. Chivalric ethics with its principles of loyalty to duty, ruler, and lady is experiencing a deep crisis. In the new conditions, “courtiness” itself becomes an anachronism, and the knights themselves, in the changed historical conditions, turn to poetry less and less.

Contrary to religious works glorifying asceticism, knightly literature sang of earthly joys and expressed hope for the triumph of justice already in this earthly life. Knightly literature did not reflect reality, but embodied only ideal ideas about a knight. The image of a chivalric novel is a hero striving for glory, performing miraculous feats (knights in them often fought with dragons and sorcerers). The novel heavily features complex symbolism and allegories, although there is also a realistic element to it. The plot often contains real information on history, geography, etc.

Romances of chivalry first appeared in France. Perhaps their most famous author was Chrétien de Troyes (12th century), who used ancient tradition and the Celtic heroic epic in his works.

A Tale of Love Tristan and Isolde(XII century) became the plot for numerous chivalric novels, of which mainly only fragments have reached us. The novel was restored by the French scientist J. Bedier at the beginning of the 20th century. The plot goes back to Irish legends. Knight Tristan ends up in Ireland in search of a bride for his relative, King Mark. In the king's daughter Isolde Golden-haired, he recognizes Mark's destined bride. On the ship, Tristan and Isolde accidentally drink a love potion prepared by Isolde's mother and intended for Isolde and her husband. Love breaks out between Tristan and Isolde. True to his duty, Tristan leaves for Brittany and gets married there. At the end of the novel, the mortally wounded hero asks to meet his beloved, who alone can heal him. He is waiting for a ship with a white sail - Isolde's ship. However, a jealous wife tells Tristan that a ship with a black sail is sailing. Tristan dies. Isolde, who arrived to him, dies of despair.

By the 14th century In connection with the onset of the crisis of knightly ideology, the courtly novel gradually declines, losing touch with reality, increasingly becoming the object of parodies.

In the X-XI centuries. In Western Europe, old cities begin to grow and new ones emerge. A new way of life, a new vision of the world, a new type of people was emerging in the cities. Based on the emergence of the city, new social strata of medieval society were formed - townspeople, guild artisans and merchants. With the emergence of cities, the craft itself becomes more complex; it requires special training. Gradually, large cities, as a rule, managed to overthrow the power of the lord, and urban self-government arose in such cities. Cities were centers of trade, including foreign trade, which contributed to greater awareness among citizens and broadening their horizons. The formation of new social strata of society had a huge impact on the further development of medieval culture, the nation, and the formation of the education system.

The freedom-loving orientation of urban culture and its connections with folk art are most clearly reflected in urban literature. Although at the early stage of the development of urban culture there was a demand for clerical literature - lives of saints, stories of miracles, etc. - was still great, these works themselves changed: psychologism increased, artistic elements intensified.

In urban freedom-loving, anti-church literature, an independent layer is being formed, parodying the main points of church cult and doctrine. Numerous parodic liturgies have been preserved: parodies of prayers, psalms, church hymns.

In parodic literature in folk languages, the main place is occupied by secular parodies that ridicule the heroics of knights. Parody romances of chivalry and parody epics of the Middle Ages are created - animal, picaresque, stupid.

One of the most popular genres of French urban medieval literature of the 12th-14th centuries. were fabliau (from the French - fable - fable). Fabliaux are short funny stories in verse, comic everyday stories. The hero of these short stories was most often a commoner. Fabliaux are closely connected with folk culture (folk figures of speech, an abundance of folklore motifs). Fabliaux entertained, taught, praised townspeople and peasants, and condemned the vices of the rich and priests. Often the plot of fabliaux was love stories. Fabliaux reflected the love of life of the townspeople, their faith in the triumph of justice.

Thematically related to fabliaux is schwank (from German - joke) - a genre of German urban medieval literature. Schwank, like the fabliau, is a short humorous story in verse, later in prose. The plot of Schwank was often based on folklore. Schwank had an anti-clerical character, ridiculing the vices of the Catholic Church. Anonymous authors of fabliaux and schwanks contrasted their works with elite knightly literature. Cheerfulness, rudeness, and satirical ridicule of the knights were a kind of response to the spiritual elite and its sophisticated culture.

Urban literature of the XIV-XV centuries. reflected the growth of social self-awareness of the townspeople, who increasingly became the subject of spiritual life.

During the same period, a new genre of urban literature appeared - a prose short story, in which the townspeople appear as independent, shrewd, success-seeking, and life-loving people.

"The Romance of Tristan and Isolde"

"The Romance of Tristan and Isolde" is one of the most beloved works of medieval literature in Europe for many centuries. The names of Tristan and Isolde have become synonymous with true lovers. Individual scenes from the novel were reproduced many times on the walls of the hall in the form of frescoes, on carpets, carved caskets or goblets. Despite the enormous success of the novel, its text has reached us in very poor condition. From most of the above-mentioned treatments, only fragments have survived.

In these troubled centuries, when book printing did not yet exist, manuscripts were lost in colossal quantities, because their fate in the then unreliable book depositories was subject to the accidents of war, looting, fires, etc. The first ancient novel about Tristan and Isolde also perished entirely. However, scientific analysis came to the rescue. Just as a paleontologist, from the remains of the skeleton of some extinct animal, restores all its structure and properties, so a literary critic-philologist, from the reflections of a lost work, from allusions to it and its later alterations, can sometimes restore its plot outlines, its most important images and ideas, partly even his style.

Such work on the novel about Tristan and Isolde was undertaken by the prominent French scientist of the early 20th century, Joseph Bedier, who combined great knowledge with a subtle artistic flair. As a result of this, a novel was recreated by him and offered to the reader, representing both scientific, educational and poetic value.

"Song of the Nibelungs"

The most famous hero of Scandinavian myths is Sigurd (Siegfried). His exploits are described in the poem “The Song of the Nibelungs” - the most significant monument of the German medieval epic. Sigurd became famous for his victory over the dragon Fafnir.

The Song of the Nibelungs" was created at the very beginning of the 13th century, i.e. during the period of the highest rise of medieval culture, a period when the most indicative features for it were fully revealed. “The Song of the Nibelungs” is a knightly epic that, along with the general medieval picture of the world, captures the cardinal values ​​of life in the aristocratic society of Germany during the Staufen era. But since this song culminates the long development and complex transformations of the German heroic epic, it is possible to trace from it the important features of the epic genre in general. The rather significant volume of the song allowed its creator to fit very diverse content into it; a panorama of the life of medieval society with its inherent features.

For a long time, Sigurd was raised by the fairy-tale blacksmith Regin, brother of the dragon Fafnir. Regin forged a magic sword for Sigurd and persuaded Sigurd to kill Fafnir, hoping to capture his treasure. When Fafnir's blood fell on Sigurd's tongue, the speech of the birds became clear to him, and from them he learned of Regin's plan to kill him. Sigurd kills Regin and seizes the treasure of the Nibelung dwarfs. Among everything else, he found a gold ring there, which had the magical ability to increase wealth. But the dwarf Andvari placed a curse on the gold jewelry: everyone who takes possession of it will die. The ring brought death to Sigurd too.

Conclusion

middle ages creativity literature cultural

We should not think that the topic “Literature of the Middle Ages” takes us back to the depths of centuries and has nothing to do with modern times. Concepts such as honor, loyalty, nobility, true love are relevant at all times. A sublime idea of ​​love and glorification of knightly virtues can be heard, for example, in the ballads of Vladimir Vysotsky. They were written by the poet for the film "Robin Hood's Arrows" in 1975, but they were considered too serious and were not included in the film. Only after Vysotsky’s death, in 1983, the film “The Ballad of the Valiant Knight Ivanhoe” was released on Russian screens, where these songs took their rightful place. So, listen to the end of my essay “The Ballad of Love”. She will once again confirm us in the idea that the time of knights has not passed, that eternal values ​​do not age.

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The emergence of ancient Russian literature. Periods of the history of ancient literature. Heroic pages of ancient Russian literature. Russian writing and literature, education of schools. Chronicles and historical stories.

BY SUBJECT

WORLD ART

ON THE TOPIC

COMPLETED _____________

MOSCOW 2003

· Introduction

· Heroic epic

· "Beowulf" (excerpts)

· Elder Edda (songs about the gods, Speeches by Vysotsky)

· Call for a Crusade

· Chivalric literature

· Alba, pastoral, canson

· Urban literature

· Poetry of the Vagants

INTRODUCTION

The spirit of knowledge lived, hidden in the secret elixir,

Singing healingly the vague darkness of centuries.

Let life be a continuous struggle of enemies,

Let the sword ring in battle and in the tournament -

The alchemist was looking for the stone of the sages,

The mind became refined in discussions about the vampire,

The theologian tried to know the creator -

And thought shook the world's weights.

Monk, judge, knight, minstrel -

Everyone dimly saw the holy goal,

Even though they didn’t take the same road to get there.

In days of horror, fire, murder, anxiety

That target shone like a star;

In all centuries the vein has been hidden.

Starting from the 12th century, a rich literature appeared in Western Europe in Latin and in national languages. Medieval literature is characterized by a variety of genres - this is the heroic epic, and chivalric literature, and the sunny poetry of troubadours and minnesingers, and the fables and poetry of vagantes.

The most important component of the emerging written culture was the heroic epic, recorded in the 12th – 12th centuries. In the heroic epic of Western Europe, there are two varieties: historical epic, and fantastic epic, closer to folklore.

The epic works of the 12th century were called “poems of deeds.” At first they were oral poems, performed, as a rule, by wandering singers and jugglers. The famous “Song of Roland”, “Song of My Sid”, in which the main ones are patriotic motives and purely “Knightly spirit”.

The concept of “knight” in Western Europe became synonymous with nobility and nobility and was contrasted, first of all, with the lower classes - peasants and townspeople. The growth of class self-awareness of knighthood strengthens their sharply negative attitude towards commoners. Their political ambitions also grew, their claims to place themselves on an unattainable and moral height.

Gradually in Europe, an image of an ideal knight and a code of knightly honor are emerging, according to which “a knight without fear or reproach” must come from a noble family, be a brave warrior, and constantly care about his glory. The knight was required to be courteous, to be able to play musical instruments and write poetry, and to follow the rules of “KUTUAZIA” - impeccable upbringing and behavior at court. A knight must be a devoted lover of his chosen “LADY”. Thus, the code of knightly honor of military squads is 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 knightly culture in the 12th century, such literary genres as knightly romance and knightly poetry appeared. The term "novel" originally meant only a poetic text in the pictorial Romance language, as opposed to Latin, and then it came to be used to name a specific genre.

The first chivalric romances appeared in the Anglo-Norman cultural environment in 1066. Geoffrey of Monmouth is traditionally considered to be the originator of the legends about the exploits of King Arthur, about his glorious knights of the Round Table, and about their struggle with the Anglo-Saxons. The Arthurian romance series is based on the Celtic heroic epic. His heroes - Lancelot and Perceval, Palmerin - embodied the highest chivalric virtues. A common motif in chivalric romances, especially the Breton cycle, was the search for the Holy Grail - the cup in which, according to legend, the blood of the crucified Christ was collected. The Breton cycle of novels also includes “the beautiful story of Tristan and Isolde” - a poem about the eternal undying passion that flares up in the main characters after they mistakenly drink a love potion.

The largest representatives of the genre of the 11th century were the French project of Chrestien de Troyes. He even predicted the legends of the Arthurian cycle and embodied them in his “novels and poems.”

The works of Chrestien de Troyes “Erec and Enida”, Yvain, or the Knight of the Lion”, “Lacelot, or the Knight of the Cart”, etc. are among the best examples of courtly Western European literature. The plots of the works of K. De Troyes were processed by the authors of German chivalric novels, for example, Rartman Von Aue. His best work was « Poor Henry" is a short poetic story. Another famous author of knightly courtly novels was WOLFRAMPHONESCHENBACH, whose poem “Parsi-fal” (one of the knights of the Round Table) later inspired the great German composer R. Wagner. The chivalric romance reflected the growth of secular trends in literature, as well as an increased interest in human feelings and experiences. He passed on to subsequent eras the idea of ​​what came to be called chivalry.

The chivalric romance reflected the growth of secular trends in literature, as well as an increased interest in human experiences. He passed on to subsequent generations the idea of ​​what came to be called chivalry.

Sunny French Provence became the birthplace of troubadour poetry, which arose at the courts of feudal lords. In this type of courtly poetry, the cult of the lady occupied a central place. Among the troubadours, knights of middle income predominated, but there were also representatives of the feudal nobility and people from the plebeian environment. The main features of poetry were elitism and intimacy, and love for a beautiful lady appeared in the form of a kind of religion or cultural action.

The most famous troubadours of the 22nd century were Bernard Deventarion, Herout de Bornel, and Bertrand de Born. The poetry of the Trouvères flourished in the north of France, the poetry of the Minnesingers flourished in Germany, and the poets of the “new voluptuous style” flourished in Italy.

Urban literature of the 12th–13th centuries was anti-feudal and anti-church. Urban poets sang the diligence, practical ingenuity, cunning and cunning of artisans and traders.

The most popular genre of urban literature was the poetic short story, fable or joke. All of 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 has become widespread - “The Romance of the Rose”, which consists of two dissimilar and different parts. In the first part, various human qualities appear in the form of characters: 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 urban culture of the Middle Ages was carnival - laughter theatrical art. The culture of laughter dominated the carnival and the work of folk traveling actors, jugglers, acrobats, and singers. The highest manifestation of folk square culture was the carnival.

The phenomenon of folk culture of laughter allows us to reconsider the cultural world of the Middle Ages and discover that the “dark” Middle Ages were characterized by a festively poetic perception of the world.

The principle of laughter in folk culture could not find responses in the church-feudal culture, which contrasted it with “holy sorrow.” The Church taught that laughter and fun corrupt the soul and are inherent only in evil spirits. They included traveling artists and buffoons, and shows with their participation were branded as “godless abomination.” In the eyes of the clergy, buffoons served demonic glory.

The poetry of vagants - wandering schoolchildren - is close to urban culture.

The poetry of the vagants, wandering throughout Europe in search of better teachers and a better life, was very daring, condemning the church and clergy and praising the joys of earthly and free life. In the poetry of the Vagants, two main themes were intertwined: love and satire. The poems are mostly anonymous; they are plebeian in essence and in this way they differ from the aristocratic creativity of the troubadours.

The Vagantes were persecuted and condemned by the Catholic Church.

One of the most famous heroes of medieval world literature was Robin Hood, the protagonist of numerous ballads and literary monuments of the 13th century.

HEROIC EPIC

The literature of the Western Early Middle Ages was created by new peoples inhabiting the western part of Europe: the Celts (Brits, Gauls, Belgians, Helvetians) and the ancient Germans living between the Danube and the Rhine, near the North Sea and in the south of Scandinavia (Sevi, Goths, Burgundians, Cherusci, Angles, Saxons, etc.).

These peoples first worshiped pagan tribal gods and later adopted Christianity and became believers, but eventually the Germanic tribes conquered the Celts and occupied what is now France, England and Scandinavia. The literature of these peoples is represented by the following works:

1. Stories about the lives of saints - hagiographies.

"Lives of Saints", visions and spells

2. Encyclopedic, scientific and historiographical works.

Isidore of Seville (c.560-636) – “etymology, or beginning”; Bede the Venerable (c.637-735) - “about the nature of things” and “ecclesiastical history of the English people”, Jordan - “about the origin of the acts of the Goths”; Alcuin (c.732-804) – treatises on rhetoric, grammar, dialectics; Einhard (c.770-840) “Lives of Charlemagne”

3. Mythology and heroic-epic poems, sagas and songs of Celtic and Germanic tribes. Icelandic sagas, Irish epic, "Elder Edda", Younger Edda", "Beowulf", Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala".

The heroic epic as a holistic picture of people's life was the most significant legacy of 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 is the Irish epic. It is formed from the 3rd to the 8th century. Created by the people back in the pagan period, epic poems about warrior heroes first existed in oral form and were passed on from mouth to mouth. They were sung and recited by folk storytellers. Later, in the 7th and 8th centuries, after Christianization, they were revised and written down by scholar-poets, whose names remained unchanged. Epic works are characterized by glorification of the exploits of heroes; interweaving historical background and fiction; glorification of the heroic strength and exploits of the main characters; idealization of the feudal state.

The heroic epic was greatly influenced by Celtic and German-Scandinavian mythology. Often epics and myths are so connected and intertwined with each other that

the boundary between them is quite difficult. This connection is reflected in a special form of epic tales - sagas - Old Icelandic prose narratives (the Icelandic word “saga” comes from the verb “to say”). Scandinavian poets composed sagas from the 9th to the 12th centuries. - skalds. The Old Icelandic sagas are very diverse: sagas about kings, saga about Icelanders, sagas about ancient times (“Välsunga Saga”).

The collection of these sagas has come down to us in the form of two Eddas: the “Elder Edda” and the “Younger Edda”. The Younger Edda is a prose retelling of ancient Germanic myths and tales, written by the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sjurluson in 1222-1223. The Elder Edda is a collection of twelve poetic songs about gods and heroes. The compressed and dynamic songs of the Elder Edda, dating back to the 5th century and apparently written down in the 10th-11th centuries, are divided into two groups: tales of gods and tales of heroes. The main god is the one-eyed Odin, who was originally the god of war. Second in importance after Odin is the god of thunder and fertility, Thor. The third is the malevolent god Loki. And the most significant hero is the hero Sigurd. The heroic songs of the Elder Edda are based on the pan-German epic tales about the gold of the Nibelungs, on which lies a curse and which brings misfortune to everyone. Sagas also became widespread in Ireland, the largest center of Celtic culture in the Middle Ages. This was the only country in Western Europe where no Roman legionnaire had set foot. Irish legends were created and passed on to descendants by druids (priests), bards (singer-poets) and felides (soothsayers). The clear and concise Irish epic was written not in verse, but in prose. It can be divided into heroic sagas and fantastic sagas. The main hero of the heroic sagas was the noble, fair and brave Cu Chulainn. His mother is the king's sister, and his father is the god of light. Cuchulainn had three shortcomings: he was too young, too brave and too beautiful. In the image of Cuchulainn, ancient Ireland embodied its ideal of valor and moral perfection.

Epic works often intertwine real historical events and fairy-tale fiction. Thus, “The Song of Hildenbrand” was created on a historical basis - the struggle of the Ostrogothic king Theodorichas Odoacer. This ancient Germanic epic of the era of migration of peoples originated in the pagan era and was found in a manuscript of the 9th century. This is the only monument of the German epic that has come down to us in song form.

In the poem "Beowulf" - the heroic epic of the Anglo-Saxons, which came down to us in a manuscript of the early 10th century, the fantastic adventures of the heroes also take place against the backdrop of historical events. The world of Beowulf is a world of kings and warriors, a world of feasts, battles and duels. The hero of the poem is a brave and generous warrior from the Gaut people, Beowulf, who performs great feats and is always ready to help people. Beowulf is generous, merciful, loyal to the leader and greedy for glory and rewards, he accomplished many feats, opposed the monster named Gr^delo and destroyed him; defeated another monster in an underwater dwelling - Grendel's mother; entered into battle with a fire-breathing dragon, who was enraged by the attempt on the ancient treasure he protected and was devastating the country. At the cost of his own life, Beowulf managed to defeat the dragon. The song ends with a scene of the solemn burning of the hero's body on a funeral pyre and the construction of a mound over his ashes. Thus the familiar theme of gold bringing misfortune appears in the poem. This theme will be used later in knightly literature.

An immortal monument of folk art is “Kalevala” - a Karelian-Finnish epic about the exploits and adventures of the heroes of the fairy-tale country of Kalev. “Kalevala” is composed of folk songs (runes) collected and recorded by Elias Lönnrot, a native of a Finnish peasant family, and published in 1835 and 1849. runes are letters of the alphabet carved on wood or stone, used by Scandinavian and other Germanic peoples for religious and memorial inscriptions. The entire “Kalevala” is a tireless praise of human labor; there is not even a hint of “court” poetry in it. According to Marietta Shaginyan, “powerful images of people, forever memorable to you, grandiose pictures of nature, accurate descriptions of the processes of labor, clothing, peasant life - all this embodied the high

The French epic poem “The Song of Roland,” which came down to us in a 12th-century manuscript, tells the story of the Spanish campaign of Charlemagne in 778, and the main character of the poem, Roland, has his own historical prototype. True, the campaign against the Basques turned in the poem into a seven-year war with the “infidels,” and Charles himself turned from a 36-year-old man into a gray-haired old man. The central episode of the poem, the Battle of Roncesvalles, glorifies the courage of people faithful to duty and “dear France.”

The Spanish heroic epic “The Song of Cid” reflected the events of the Reconquista - the Spanish reconquest of their country from the Arabs. The main character of the poem is the famous figure of the reconquista Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (1040 - 1099), whom the Arabs called Cid (lord).

In the German epic “Song of the Nibelungs,” which was finally formed from individual songs into an epic tale 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 figure - the formidable leader Attila, who turned into the kind, weak-willed Etzel. The poem consists of 39 songs - “adventures”. The action of the poem takes us into the world of court festivities, knightly tournaments and beautiful ladies. The main character of the poem is the Dutch prince Siegfried, a young knight who performed many wonderful feats. He is bold and courageous, young and handsome, daring and arrogant. But the fate of Siegfried and his future wife Kriemhild was tragic, for whom the treasure of Nibelungen gold became fatal.

CALL FOR A CRUSADE

Love is a good power

She inspired us timid.

The campaign inspired:

We are right with the Lord.

So let's hurry to the lands.

Where, I listen to the call of the sky.

The impulse is acceptable to the soul.

We are the sons of the Lord!

G God is at war mi.

With heroic hands,

And the strangers themselves

All of them are crushed!

For us, Christ, filled with Love,

He died in the land that was given to the Turks. Let's flood the fields with a stream of enemy blood Or our honor is forever disgraced!

Is it easy for us to fight?

In a distant battlefield?

Lord, we are in your will.

We want to beat our enemies!

There will be no death. For those who have regained their sight,

Blessed times will come

And he will prepare glory, honor and happiness

Those who returned to their homeland wound.

KNIGHT LITERATURE

The main themes of secular knightly, or courtly literature, which arose in the courts of feudal lords, were love for a beautiful lady, glorification of exploits and reflection of the rituals of knightly honor. The words “courtly literature” mean refined secular literature corresponding to the general concepts of knightly loyalty, valor, generosity and courtesy. Courtly literature (from the French soygyms - polite), which was created not in Latin, but in national languages, is represented by the lyrics of troubadours and trouvères in France, minnesingers in Germany and chivalric romances.

It was believed that the object of worship must necessarily be a married lady, moreover, more noble than the poet himself. In order to get closer to the Lady and become a “legitimate” singer of her virtues, the poet needed to go through several stages of initiation: first he had to appease his love, then, having opened up, wait for a signal from the Lady that he had been accepted into her service (such a sign could be giving a ring). But even after this, the poet should not have sought intimacy. Ideal love, according to the courtly code, is unrequited love. It gives rise to suffering, which in creativity is melted into a perfect word; His beauty returns light and joy to the lover’s soul That’s why there is sadness and despondency in the eyes courtly ethics is the greatest sin. Love could also be reckless, rude, and base.

A characteristic feature of courtly poetry, which challenged medieval asceticism, can be considered an increased interest in the world of man, who is capable of not only praying and fighting, but also loving tenderly and admiring the beauty of nature. The lyrical poetry of the troubadours originated in the south of France in Provence and was divided into the following forms: Alba - a poetic story about the separation of lovers in the morning after a secret night meeting; pastourel - a lyrical song about the meeting of a knight with a shepherdess; canson - the most complex poetic structure

A work that combines different poetic meters, sirventa - a poem on a moral and political theme, and tenson - poetic debates. The master of pastourelle was Bertrand de Born. Bernard de Ventadorn and Jauffre Rudel wrote in the canton genre, and in the Alba genre - the “master of poets” Giraut de Borneil.

The troubadours treated the writing of poetry as a conscious, serf-like work, as a craft that needed to be learned, but at the same time they understood that this was a measure that followed certain rules. Poets showed individuality and tried to invent new forms and dimensions of verse.

At the end of the 12th century, the example of the troubadours was followed by the French court poets-singers Trouvères and the German love singers Minnesingers. Now poets were no longer interested in lyrical poems, but in verse poems full of all sorts of adventures - knightly novels. For many of them, the material was the legends of the Breton cycle, in which the Knights of the Round Table act at the court of King Arthur. There were a lot of chivalric romances. These are “Parzival” by Wolfram von Eschenbach, “Le Morte d’Arthur” by Thomas Malory, “Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart” by Chrétien de Troyes. But the most popular was the novel about tragic love - Tristan and Isolde. The novel about Tristan, which has come down to us in a secondary version, has many versions (Joseph Bedier, Béroul, Gottfried of Strasbourg), and each author contributed his own details to the novel.

Alba

The hawthorn leaves drooped in the garden,

Where Don and his friend capture every moment:

The first cry is about to sound from the horn!

Alas. Dawn, you were too hasty!

Oh, if God would grant night forever,

And my darling never left me,

And the guard forgot his morning signal...

Alas, dawn, you were too hasty!

Pastoral

I met a shepherdess yesterday,

Here at the fence wandering.

Brisk, albeit simple,

I met a girl.

She's wearing a fur coat

And colored katsaveyka,

A cap - to cover yourself from the wind.

Canzona

Love will sweep away all barriers,

Since two people have one soul.

Love lives in reciprocity

Cannot serve as a replacement here

The most precious gift!

After all, it’s stupid to waste pleasure

The one who hates them!

I look forward with hope

Breathing tender love for that one,

Who blooms with pure beauty,

To that noble, non-arrogant one,

Who was taken from a humble fate,

Whose perfection they say

And kings are honored everywhere.

URBAN LITERATURE

During the Gothic period, literature, music and theatrical performances developed as part of urban culture.

Secular urban literature of the late Middle Ages is represented, firstly, by realistic poetic short stories (fabliaux and schwanks), secondly, by the lyrics of vagants - wandering students, schoolchildren, the 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 fabliaux, 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 commoners, not devoid of adventurism (fablio “About Burenka, the priest’s queen").

The lyrical poetry of the vagantes (from the Latin vagrandes - wandering people), glorifying the generous gifts of nature, carnal love, the joy of drinking wine and gambling, was created in Latin. Its authors were mischievous schoolchildren, cheerful clerics and impoverished knights. Fans of Bacchus and Venus, they led a wandering lifestyle and in their creativity willingly turned to folklore, using motifs and forms of folk songs. The Vagants knew what poverty and humiliation were, but their poems, glorifying free brotherhood, were imbued with joy, freedom, and earthly love. The creativity of the vagants can be judged from the collection of nameless poets “Sagtsha Vigapa” and the poems of the Archipit of Cologne, Walter of Chatillon and Hugh of Orleans.

In the 12th century folk poems appear, created on the basis of oral folk art - folklore. In many of them, the main characters were distant relatives of our Ivan the Fool and animals, in whose behavior human traits were discernible (“The Novel about the Fox”). The treasury of spiritual food for the townspeople, which was revered “as a worldly liturgy, teaching and legend,” was the “Roman of the Rose,” the authors of which were Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Maine.

In England, ballads about Robin Hood, a noble robber and protector of the poor and disadvantaged, were popular.