Britské studie - seminář-zápisky

22. 2.

- Zápočet – test – 10 otázek – minimálně 7 bodů

- Readings – for the test – we can choose 1 play – The Tempest, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, Winter Tale

- 1 absence

Geoffrey Chaucer

• He lived in 14th century

• English writer – first English writer (people before him wrote but not in English – Celts → celtic language [now it is Irish language, in Scotland too])

• His father was a merchant at wine

• He became a page

• He was a soldier

• King appreciate him for his reliability

• He travelled to Spain, Italy, France

• He spoke also Latin, French, Italian

• He had very busy life

• He knew works of Dante, Boccaccio (Decameron) and Francesco Petrarch

• He lived in Kent

• It is unclear how he died

• The upper class spoke French

• The lower class spoke Anglo-Saxon

• Canterbury Tales – only 24 tales from 120 he planned

• Book of the Dutchess – his first work – a poem

• Parliament of Foules (divoká kuřata)

• Characters – those who pray – nun, monk, priest; those who fight – page (páže); those who work

• There are also prostitutes

Renaissance [renejsns] = rebirth of antics

• During the middle ages a human being was appreciated for its mind and soul

• Antics and Greeks thought that the human is a whole – body and soul

• Middle ages were obsessed with afterlife

Canterbury – location of the highest clergy in England – people went there to ask St. Thomas for help, a group of Pilgrims decided to go there

Thomas Beckett

• He became the head of Church of England

The wife of bath’s prologue

• She was married at age of 12

• She was married 5 times (but she could have another “husbands” = lovers)

• She is proud of it

• Her men weren’t poor

• “Lo and behold” – look and hear – she wants attention

• Nobody ever said how many husbands she can have as a Christian

8. 3.

Sonnet 18 – Shakespeare

• Poem addressed to a woman he loved and admired

• About love, about relationship, the importance of the writer, because he can defeat time

• The first, second and third quatrain – ABAB – temperate + date – eye rhyme

• The last couplet – see + thee

• Thou [dau] – second person, singular, nominative

  • Thee - Second person, singular, accusative → it means “you”

• Most of the rhymes are masculine

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? → comparison, rhetorical question

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: → hyperbole – more lovely, temperate = calm

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, → rough – strong, stormy, buds = pupenec

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: → hath = has, lease = nájem – lease of summer is a metaphor for summer which is too short, date – could be replaced by deadline

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, - eye of heaven = sun – metaphor

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; → dim – adjective dark/ , complexion = skin

And every fair from fair sometime declines, → fair – honest – fair play/beautiful – my fair lady/light – fair skimmed, declines – beauty declines after some time