Beast poetry

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Beast poetry, in the context of European literature and medieval studies, refers to a corpus of poems written in Latin from the 8th to the 11th century.

Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages.

In linguistics, a corpus or text corpus is a large and structured set of texts. In corpus linguistics, they are used to do statistical analysis and hypothesis testing, checking occurrences or validating linguistic rules within a specific language territory.

Latin Indo-European language of the Italic family

Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets and ultimately from the Phoenician alphabet.

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These poems draw upon an ancient literary tradition of anthropomorphic animals dating back into antiquity and exemplified by Aesop. They are the immediate foundation for the flowering of Reynard literature that occurred in the 12th century. Elements from beast poetry have been adapted into subsequent works ranging from the Canterbury Tales to contemporary movies made with computer animation.

Classical antiquity Age of the ancient Greeks and Romans

Classical antiquity is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 6th century AD centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.

Aesop Ancient Greek storyteller

Aesop was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.

Computer animation art of creating moving images using computers

Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animated images. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to the moving images. Modern computer animation usually uses 3D computer graphics, although 2D computer graphics are still used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and faster real-time renderings. Sometimes, the target of the animation is the computer itself, but sometimes film as well.

Although it makes sense to discuss beast poetry as a single corpus of literature, they do not form a genre but rather:

Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. Genre is most popularly known as a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility.

The medieval Latin poems have few immediately discernible traits in common with one another. They were not the products of the same time or region. They range greatly in length... In structure, a beast poem can be as humble as one speech by a bird struggling to fly home safely... but then again it can intertwine a dozen main stories and another dozen visions, reminiscences, and divagations... The beast poems were created for many occasions and audiences... to be pored over in the library... read aloud, sung, and staged... Some were perhaps scripts for schoolroom performances... others for recitation in the refectory. [1]

Some examples

Italian language Romance language

Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, and together with Sardinian, is by most measures the closest language to it of the Romance languages. Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria. It formerly had official status in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece, and is generally understood in Corsica and Savoie. It also used to be an official language in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it still plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither a co-official nor a regional or a traditional language in these countries, where Italians do not represent a historical minority. In the case of Romania, Italian is listed by the Government along 10 other languages which supposedly receive a "general protection", but not between those which should be granted an "advanced or enhanced" one. Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian and other regional languages.

Related Research Articles

Old English literature or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses literature written in Old English, in Anglo-Saxon England from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066. "Cædmon's Hymn", composed in the 7th century, according to Bede, is often considered the oldest extant poem in English, whereas the later poem, The Grave is one of the final poems written in Old English, and presents a transitional text between Old and Middle English. The Peterborough Chronicle can also be considered a late-period text, continuing into the 12th century.

Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible

The Vulgate is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible that was to become the Catholic Church's officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible during the 16th century. The translation was largely the work of Jerome, who in 382 had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels then in use by the Roman Church. Jerome, on his own initiative, extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible; and once published, the new version became widely adopted; and over succeeding centuries eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina, so that by the 13th century it had taken over from the former version the appellation of versio vulgata or vulgata for short, and in Greek as βουλγάτα ("Voulgata").

Greek literature dates from ancient Greek literature, beginning in 800 BC, to the modern Greek literature of today.

Troubadour Composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word troubadour is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz.

Medieval literature Literary works of the Middle Ages

Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages. The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works. Just as in modern literature, it is a complex and rich field of study, from the utterly sacred to the exuberantly profane, touching all points in-between. Works of literature are often grouped by place of origin, language, and genre.

Reynard the Fox Medieval series of fables describing the titular characters exploits

Reynard the Fox is a literary cycle of medieval allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. The first extant versions of the cycle date to the second half of the 12th century. The genre is very popular throughout the Late Middle Ages, and in chapbook form throughout the Early Modern period.

Cockatrice mythological serpent

A cockatrice is a mythical beast, essentially a two-legged dragon or serpent-like creature with a rooster's head. Described by Laurence Breiner as "an ornament in the drama and poetry of the Elizabethans", it was featured prominently in English thought and myth for centuries.

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in the Iberian Peninsula some time after 405, possibly around 413. The place of his birth is uncertain, but it may have been Caesaraugusta (Saragossa), Tarraco (Tarragona), or Calagurris (Calahorra).

Medieval Latin Form of Latin used in the Middle Ages

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned as the main medium of scholarly exchange, as the liturgical language of the Church, and as the working language of science, literature, law, and administration.

Coelius Sedulius Roman poet

Sedulius was a Christian poet of the first half of the 5th century.

<i>The Owl and the Nightingale</i> Middle English poem

The Owl and the Nightingale is a twelfth- or thirteenth-century Middle English poem detailing a debate between an owl and a nightingale as overheard by the poem's narrator. It is the earliest example in Middle English of a literary form known as debate poetry.

This article concerns poetry in the Spanish language.

Allegory in the Middle Ages

Allegory in the Middle Ages was a vital element in the synthesis of biblical and classical traditions into what would become recognizable as medieval culture. People of the Middle Ages consciously drew from the cultural legacies of the ancient world in shaping their institutions and ideas, and so allegory in medieval literature and medieval art was a prime mover for the synthesis and transformational continuity between the ancient world and the "new" Christian world.

<i>Ysengrimus</i> Latin beast fable

Ysengrimus is a Latin fabliau and mock epic, an anthropomorphic series of fables written in 1148 or 1149, possibly by the poet Nivardus. Its chief character is Isengrin the Wolf, and it describes how his various schemes are overcome by the trickster figure Reynard the Fox.

French folklore encompasses the fables, folklore and fairy tales and legends of the French people.

Medieval debate poetry refers to a genre of poems popular in England and France during the late medieval period.

An animal tale or beast fable generally consists of a short story or poem in which animals talk. It is a traditional form of allegorical writing.

The Ecbasis captivi is an anonymous Latin beast fable that probably dates to the middle of the 11th century, and was likely written in the Vosges region of France. It is the oldest example of a European beast fable to survive, and the first medieval European example of anthropomorphic animals. The poem is written in hexameters with Leonine internal rhyme frequently used throughout the poem. The text survives in two manuscripts, both of which now are at the Royal Library of Belgium.

Medieval Spanish literature

Medieval Spanish literature consists of the corpus of literary works written in medieval Spanish between the beginning of the 13th and the end of the 15th century. Traditionally, the first and last works of this period are taken to be respectively the Cantar de Mio Cid, an epic poem whose manuscript dates from 1207, and La Celestina (1499), a work commonly described as transitional between the medieval period and the Renaissance.

Literature in the other languages of Britain

In addition to English, literature has been written in a wide variety of other languages in Britain, that is the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This includes literature in Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Latin, Cornish, Anglo-Norman, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Manx, and Irish. Literature in Anglo-Saxon is treated as English literature and literature in Scots as Scottish literature.

References

  1. ↑ Jan M. Ziolkowski. Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1150. Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Pp. viii, 354. ISBN   0-8122-3161-9.

See also

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