1. Works of archaic epic are characterized by mythologization of the past, i.e. the narration of historical events is combined with the magic of myths

2. The main theme of the epic cycles of this period is the struggle of man with the forces of nature hostile to him, embodied in fairy-tale images of monsters, dragons, and giants.

3. The main character is a fairy-tale-mythological character endowed with wonderful properties and qualities (flying through the air, being invisible, growing in size).

4. Epic generalization is achieved in works by means of mythological fiction.

Lecture: The mythological epics of the barbarians are usually classified as archaic epics. Irish, Scandinavian, etc.

They were formed within the framework of a long oral tradition. Records from the 11th – 13th centuries have reached us. All archaic epics are characterized by this sign as a developed formulaic technique . Epic formulas testify to a long tradition. The connection with folklore remains. The fairytale and mythological element dominates the historical one, or so it seems to us, since we do not know the history of these countries well. Main semantic center - not so much feats as the collapse and collapse of tribal relations, tribal strife, which is interpreted as the cause of the collapse of the world and as this collapse itself . At this stage the epic consists of short songs or prose tales, sagas, which were composed, performed and preserved by professional storytellers (felida) and semi-professional squad singers. During their early development, these songs and epics were subject to cyclization. The oldest of the medieval epics: the Celtic epic. Feudal layers on it are invisible and insignificant. It is customary to refer to the Britons, Gauls, etc. Celtic expansion in Europe spans from the 6th to the 2nd century BC. Then in mainland Europe they were supplanted by the Romans and local barbarian tribes. The Celtic culture, a highly developed culture, is best preserved on the islands: Ireland, Britain, and the Scottish Highlands. Ireland in the Middle Ages became the main center of Celtic culture. This culture was not destroyed either by the invasions of the Vikings and Normans or by fairly early Christianization. Irish monks preserved their work.

Details (details). Skela is a story, history, legend, epic. Still, there is a slight Christianization there. The most obvious evidence: the chronological correlation of the life of King Conchobar with the life of Christ. Even this correlation is of a framework nature. In the story of the death of Conchabar, it is said that he believed in Christ even before coming true faith. The tale of the death of Cuchulainn also reveals motifs relating to the death of Christ, but this does not give reason to think that his death is modeled on the death of Christ. The records of Celtic legends that have reached us date back to the 11th-12th centuries, but they were created in the first centuries of our era; they have existed in the manuscript tradition since at least the 7th century.

The structure of the Irish saga: this is a prose story with the inclusion of poetry, in part the poetic stakes duplicate prose, with so-called rhetoric, short phrases that are omitted in most Russian translations (this is a prophecy, predictions connected by alliteration, the content of which is lost). In color symbolism, red light is associated with that world; it is also the color of the goddess of discord Morigan. For Cuchulainn, the color red is a sign of the presence of powerful otherworldly forces on the side of the enemy. A little further on, the bloody sword of Cuchulain himself will be mentioned.

Skela structure: prose + poetry + rhetoric. In poetry and verse there is often a rhyme; through them the speeches of the heroes and dialogues at the decisive moment for the hero are conveyed. In prose - mainly descriptions and sometimes dialogues. Prose is the most ancient layer.

It is customary to distinguish three types of legends: about gods (very few), tales about heroes (the Ulad cycle and the cycle of Finn, the leader of the Athenians, and there is also a royal cycle), fairy-tale and fantasy sagas. This division is modern.

Plot division: swimming, kidnapping, matchmaking, destruction.

Hierarchical feature: the main legend that precedes the story.

Division by plot opens the way to a religious and mystical understanding of the meaning of history, and clarifies human life (marriage, birth, hunting, etc.) from a functional point of view. The fantasy of the Celts is bottomless. This was especially evident in the legends about the introduction of the mortal world to the world of immortals (this is the plot of imram - voyage). The plot of the imram is the voyage of a mortal to the land of eternal bliss (the voyage of Bran, the voyage of Mailduin, which was created under the influence of Homer's Odyssey). Bran's voyage contains a specific time motif that would be adopted from the Celtic tradition by European chivalric romance. In fairy-tale spaces, time stops for the heroes, but for others it continues to flow. The contact of mortals with the world of immortals always brings sadness, misfortune, and death. Such a persistent plot of love between a mortal and Sida (supernatural beings of both sexes who live under the hills). Such is the love affair between Cuchulainn and Sida Fran. The Seeds were considered the creators of the love potion, another common motif in European literature. The Celtic epic gives a unique development of love: passionate love is an obsession, a disease. The Celts have a common motif of a love spot, whoever saw it fell in love (mainly among women). This explains the belief in the supernatural power of love. The motif of love, which is stronger than death, first appears in the Celtic epic, from there it finds its way into the chivalric romance. So in the novel about Tristan and Isolde, which developed in Britain in the 12th century, love in it is courteous, it is the fruit of magic, witchcraft, and it is invincible. The Celtic epic contains two probable sources of the legend of Tristan and Isolde, perhaps these are two stories of a parallel epic of the history of the archetype: the saga “The Expulsion of the Sons of the Oral” (the bloody feud occurs because of the tremulous beauty Deirdre), the saga “The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne” from Finn's cycle. The active role of women in the Celtic epic, which is a close connection with matriarchy.

Heroic tales have been preserved in three versions: “Brown Cows” book, the oldest about 1100; "Book of Leicester" mid-12th century. The events narrated in the sagas of the Ulak cycle are attributed by storytellers to the turn of our era. Archaeological legends show that it really corresponded to that time. The king of the Ulads Cakhabar, Cuchulainn and the events of the saga of the abduction of the bull are quite accurately placed in time in the annals. At the same time, the archaic epic never reproduces the events of history as a certain truth; the goal is a general understanding of events. The essential is revealed through the actions of the heroes in the perspective of a long time, this is the reason for the presence of the main dimension of the epic (the absolute epic past). The absolute epic past needs an ideal epic hero, such a hero in the Irish epic is Cuchulainn (too young, too brave, too beautiful). His death turns out to be predetermined by his best qualities. The sagas about Cu Chulainn tend to form a separate cycle. The main act of the hero, which gives meaning to all his other exploits, was undoubtedly the protection of the greatest treasure of the Ulads, the sacred bull. This feat correlates with the name of the hero and fully reveals the image of the ideal hero, correlates with his name (the fact is that the name Cu Chulainn was given to him because at the age of 6 he kills the formidable dog of the blacksmith Kulin and takes an oath to protect his lands for the time being; Cuchulainn is the dog of the kulan, the blacksmith). The name becomes the fate of Cuchulainn. All the heroism and courage that other wars lack are concentrated in Cuchulainn alone. Throughout the long earth he fights wars at the ford. The spell cast by Cuchulainn allows one to cross the ford only one by one. This is called the Irish Iliad: the fight for the most beautiful woman, the fight for the most beautiful bull. The structure itself is rather the opposite of the Iliad: there the anger of Achilles forces him to leave the battle, here it is the other way around: Cuchulainn alone fights until he helps other wars. "The fight between Cuchulainn and Ferdiad." A number of legends reveal the humanity of Cuchulainn, whose image also contains features of mythical demonism. According to one version, he is the son of God. The description of Cuchulainn is contradictory: he is either a beautiful young man or a small black man. On the one hand, he is marvelous and meek, as he appears to women, on the other hand, he has a dark, magical, distorted appearance that he did not respect. The distortion of Cuchulainn before the battle is a plastic expression of military courage and rage, an internal, psychological change in the character, the mood for battle. Many features of a classic hero. Folklore fiction is realistic fiction.

The epic does not know how to reveal the internal change of a person’s soul, except in external manifestations. The Saga of the Death of Cuchulainn. It reveals a cognitive element that is similar to an internal monologue. It is generally accepted that the internal monologue appears only in the 19th century in the novel; modern authors strive to capture the stream of consciousness of the characters as accurately as possible, which is usually associated with the modern level of development of psychology. An archaic epic, by definition, should not have an internal monologue , but in the episode of the death of the faithful charioteer Cuchulainn there are words torn off from ordinary words. From the point of view of semantics and structure, we are observing a person’s stream of consciousness or a monologue of the soul. At least the last two lines of the inner speech of Laek, the charioteer, are later insertions by the monk. Laek dies as a Christian on the day of the death of the epic hero Cuchulainn. The epic is characterized by anachronisms (erroneous, intentional or conditional attribution of events, phenomena, objects, personalities to another time, era relative to the actual chronology) : character epic epic dies as a true Christian during the life of Christ and before his death. This anachronism is quite natural for an epic. Celtic heroic tales will become the main arsenal of the British cycle of chivalric romance and the French romance.

Heroic epic 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. Cuchulainn's duel with his illegitimate son Konlaikhom, 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 rudeness of morals and even cruelty and treachery, which are not condemned but extolled, are inherent in the pre-Christian epic of different nations and the sagas and the Edda are related to 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 this popular belief around the year 1000? beginning of VIII V. 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.

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. Further processing and the epics underwent a rethink when they were recorded by monks: the didactic element in them intensified, 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).
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. Her main character Count Roland, nephew of Charlemagne, dies along with his detachment 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

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 Sid, who particularly distinguished himself in the war against the Moors. The loving, personal attitude towards this hero is expressed already in the very title of the famous monument 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.
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.

8. Novel “Tristan and Isolde”

This is a true example of a chivalric romance, which became widespread in Europe in the 11th-14th centuries, in the conditions of the formation of feudal society and the formation of its class structure. The novel is based on an ancient legend popular among the Celts. This plot has existed in Europe for centuries, and in different versions was included in the novels that were part of the Round Table series.

The success of the story of Tristan and Isolde is associated primarily with the touching interpretation of love, which is perceived by the reader not as the fruit of a magical drink, but as an expression of natural, irresistible human feeling. The drama of the novel is that the love of the heroes comes into irreconcilable conflict with the laws and norms of the feudal world. His victims are not only Tristan and Isolde, but also King Mark himself.

In 1902, the French scientist Jean Bedier published a consolidated text of the novel based on various plot options. The legend of Tristan and Isolde was extremely popular in various national literatures and was processed by many writers (Gottfried of Strasbourg, Walter Scott, Thomas Mann, etc.). On its basis, Richard Wagner's opera Tristan (1865) was created.

Speaking about the Renaissance, we are talking directly about Italy, as the bearer of the main part of ancient culture, and about the so-called Northern Renaissance, which took place in the countries of northern Europe: France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.

The literature of the Renaissance is characterized by the above-mentioned humanistic ideals. This era is associated with the emergence of new genres and with the formation of early realism, which is called “Renaissance realism” (or Renaissance), in contrast to the later stages, educational, critical, socialist.

The works of such authors as Petrarch, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Cervantes express a new understanding of life as a person who rejects the slavish obedience preached by the church. They represent man as the highest creation of nature, trying to reveal the beauty of his physical appearance and the richness of his soul and mind. Renaissance realism is characterized by the scale of images (Hamlet, King Lear), poeticization of the image, the ability to have great feelings and at the same time the high intensity of the tragic conflict (Romeo and Juliet), reflecting the collision of a person with forces hostile to him.

Renaissance literature is characterized by various genres. But certain literary forms prevailed. The most popular genre was the short story, which is called Renaissance novella. In poetry, the sonnet (a stanza of 14 lines with a specific rhyme) becomes the most characteristic form. Dramaturgy is receiving great development. The most prominent playwrights of the Renaissance are Lope de Vega in Spain and Shakespeare in England.

Journalism and philosophical prose are widespread. In Italy, Giordano Bruno denounces the church in his works and creates his own new philosophical concepts. In England, Thomas More expresses the ideas of utopian communism in his book Utopia. Authors such as Michel de Montaigne (“Experiments”) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (“In Praise of Folly”) are also widely known.

Among the writers of that time were crowned heads. Duke Lorenzo de' Medici writes poetry, and Margaret of Navarre, sister of King Francis I of France, is known as the author of the collection Heptameron.

The beginning of the reform movement in Germany was in 1517 Luther's speech against the abuses of papal power. “...Luther,” writes Engels, “gave a signal in Wittenberg for a movement that was supposed to draw all classes into the whirlpool of events and shake the entire edifice of the empire. The theses of the Thuringian Augustinian had a flaming effect, like a lightning strike on a keg of gunpowder. Diverse, mutually the intersecting aspirations of knights and burghers, peasants and plebeians, those who sought the sovereignty of princes and lower clergy, secret mystical sects and literary - scientific and burlesque-satirical - opposition found in these theses at first a common, comprehensive expression and united around them with amazing speed

The medieval Catholic Church, as the main ideological instrument of feudal coercion, occupied a dominant position in all areas of ideology. Therefore, the revolutionary struggle against feudalism should not only lead to a conflict with the church - the most politically powerful feudal institution - but at the same time it inevitably took the form of a theological heresy directed against church teaching. As Engels points out, “in order to make it possible to attack existing social relations, it was necessary to strip them of their halo of sanctity.” Therefore, the bourgeois revolutions of the 16th-17th centuries. act under the banner of church reformation.

In Germany early XVI V. opposition to the Catholic Church had particularly deep roots. In other countries of Western Europe, national-political unification led to a certain liberation of the national church from the direct power of the Roman Curia and to its subordination to the tasks of local government authorities. On the contrary, in politically fragmented Germany, with its numerous spiritual principalities, subordinated more to the pope than to the emperor, the Roman Church could rule completely uncontrollably, exposing the country to predatory exploitation with the help of all kinds of church taxes, jubilee fees, trade in relics and indulgences, etc. "Privolnaya The life of well-fed bishops, abbots and their army of monks aroused the envy of the nobility and the indignation of the people, who had to pay for all this, and this indignation became the stronger the more striking the glaring contradiction between the lifestyle of these prelates and their sermons was. Therefore, the opposition against the papacy acquires a national character in Germany, although different classes societies put different political content into it. If the major princes were not averse to enriching themselves through the secularization of spiritual possessions and thereby strengthening their independence from the imperial power, then the burghers fought against church feudalism as a whole, for the elimination of the Catholic hierarchy and church property, for a “cheap church” without monks, prelates and the Roman Curia , demanding the restoration of the democratic church system of early Christianity. The peasants sought the abolition of feudal duties, corvee, quitrents, taxes

The sonnet appeared in Italian literature at the beginning of the 13th century and became the leading genre of Renaissance poetry. Sonnets were written by Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Ronsard, Camões, Cervantes, Shakespeare and many others.

The sonnet owes much of its popularity to Petrarch. In his collection “Canzoniere,” which includes 366 poems of different genres, 317 sonnets. Most of Petrarch's sonnets are dedicated to Laura, the theme of love. The image of the beloved in Petrarch’s sonnets is idealized, which is expressed with the help of the leit-image Laura - the sun (sonnets No. 77, No. 219). But the feeling of love that the lyrical hero experiences is devoid of convention, conveyed psychologically authentically, in all its complexity and inconsistency, as in the famous sonnets No. 132 and No. 134. Love in Petrarch's lyrics appears as a feeling that transforms a person. During her life, Laura aroused in the hero “a thirst to be better” (Sonnet No. 85) and after her death “leads to the heights where the light shines” (Sonnet No. 306).

Shakespeare's book of sonnets, containing 154 sonnets, appeared at the end of the Renaissance. Shakespeare's sonnets differ from Petrarch's sonnets in form. They consist of 14 lines, but are combined differently: into three quatrains and one couplet. Such sonnets are called English or Shakespearean. Shakespeare's sonnets also differ in content. The ideals of humanism at the end of the Renaissance are experiencing a crisis, hence the greater tragedy of Shakespeare's sonnets. This is sonnet No. 66, which in ideological content is very close to Hamlet’s monologue “To be or not to be.” The image of the beloved Dark Lady of the sonnets is depicted differently. He is devoid of any idealization and is polemical in relation to Petrarch's Laura (Sonnet No. 130).

J. Chaucer's innovation lies in the synthesis of genres within one work. Thus, almost every story, having a unique genre specificity, makes The Canterbury Tales a kind of “encyclopedia” of medieval genres.

G. Boccaccio in his work “The Decameron” brings to high perfection one genre - a short prose story-short story, which existed in Italian literature even before him.

In his Decameron, Boccaccio relies on medieval Latin collections of stories, bizarre oriental parables; sometimes he retells small French stories with a humorous content, the so-called “fabliaux”.

“The Decameron” is not just a collection of a hundred short stories, but an ideological and artistic whole, thought out and built according to a specific plan. The short stories of The Decameron follow one another not arbitrarily, but in a certain, strictly thought-out order. They are held together by a framing story, which is an introduction to the book and gives it a compositional core. With this construction, the narrators of individual short stories are participants in the introductory, framing story. In this story, which gives the entire collection internal integrity and completeness, the author tells how the short stories of the Decameron arose.

Thus, we can conclude that, perhaps, when creating his work, J. Chaucer borrowed a compositional technique that Boccaccio had previously used when creating the Decameron. However, in Chaucer one can note a closer connection between individual stories and the narrative that frames them. He strives for greater naturalness and significance of the main plot framing the “inserted” stories, which cannot be noted in the work of Boccaccio.

Despite the identical composition and several random plot coincidences, Chaucer's work is completely unique. It should be noted that in stories comparable in plot, Chaucer's narration is almost always more detailed, more extensive and detailed, in many moments it becomes more intense, more dramatic and significant. And if in relation to “The Canterbury Tales” we can talk about the genre diversity of this work, then “The Decameron” is a work in which only the short story genre is presented to perfection. However, this does not mean that Boccaccio’s work is of less value for world literature. With his work, Boccaccio deals a crushing blow to the religious-ascetic worldview and gives an unusually complete, vivid and versatile reflection of modern Italian reality. In his short stories, Boccaccio depicts a huge variety of events, images, motives, and situations. He displays a whole gallery of figures taken from various strata of modern society and endowed with features typical of them. It is thanks to Boccaccio that the short story is established as a full-fledged independent genre, and the Decameron itself, imbued with the spirit of advanced national culture, has become a model for many generations of not only Italian, but also European writers

A picaresque novel appeared in Spain in the late Renaissance. The heroes of picaresque novels were swindlers, adventurers, and scoundrels, who, as a rule, aroused the sympathy of the reader.
"Lazarillo of Tormes". This is a story about the fate of a man who successively serves as a kitchen boy, acts as a street messenger, becomes a soldier, becomes a beggar, becomes a page to a cardinal, becomes a gambler, temporarily serves as a French envoy, robs people who trusted him several times, and marries for money. , becomes a rich merchant, then goes bankrupt, prepares for the clergy, commits a crime again, but thanks to chance he receives complete forgiveness and gets away with it. The novel is written very vividly, the personality of the main character is depicted in bright colors, and at the same time, an unusually interesting picture of Spanish life of that time is revealed to us.
The meaning of a picaresque novel is that it opened the way to real romance; outlining the adventures of his heroes, depicting along the way the diversified social strata and moral traits, he accustomed to the reproduction of unadorned reality by literature.
In American literature, the closest to the tradition of the picaresque novel is Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The pastoral novel is not an organic link in the evolutionary process leading from the epic to the novel of modern times, but a secondary form, partly ideologically associated with Renaissance utopianism. In the pastoral novel, the background of life opposing the hero, which, albeit in a fantastically transformed form, was present in the knightly novel, is actually removed. The conventionally idyllic background of a pastoral novel is internally empty, except for the symbolic association with nature and “naturalness.” The main subject of the novel - “private life” - appears in the pastoral novel in complete isolation from any “epism”, in an absolutely artificial and conditional context; love relationships turn out to be the only type of relationship and manifestation of personality. Love conflicts and the internal experiences generated by them unfold as if in an airless space and are subject only to their own internal logic. Their rather elementary “psychologism” is in a complementary relationship with the late chivalric romance, in which the element of external adventure predominates.

In the middle of the 16th century. One of the main genres of Spanish Renaissance literature is being formed - the picaresque novel (a novel about the adventures of rogues and scoundrels), the appearance of which is associated with the collapse of old patriarchal ties, the decomposition of class relations, the development of trade and the accompanying trickery and deception. The author of one of the most striking works of this genre - the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibey (1499) - Fernando de Rojas (about 1465–1541). The tragicomedy is better known under the name Celestine, after the name of the most striking character - the pimp Celestine, whom the author simultaneously condemns and pays tribute to her intelligence and resourcefulness. In the novel, the glorification of love is combined with a satire on Spanish society and clearly shows character traits genre - an autobiographical form of narration, the hero's service with different masters, allowing him to notice the shortcomings of people of different classes and professions.

Second half of the 16th century. marked by the flourishing of the pastoral romance. The founder of the genre in Spain was the Portuguese Jorge de Montemayor (c. 1520–1561), who wrote the Seven Books of Diana (1559), followed by many sequels, for example, Diana in Love (1564) by Gaspar Gil Polo (?–1585), as well as Galatea (1585) by Cervantes and Arcadia (1598) by Lope de Vega.

At the same time, “Moorish” novels appeared, dedicated to the life of the Moors: the anonymous History of Abencerrach and the beautiful Kharifa and Civil wars in Granada (part I – 1595, part II – 1604) by Ginés Perez de Ita (c. 15 – c. 1619).

The features of a picaresque novel were most clearly expressed in the novel by an unknown author, The Life of Lazarillo from Tormes, His Fortunes and Misadventures, which became widely known. In 1559, the Inquisition added it to the list of prohibited books due to its anti-clerical content. The first volume of the Life of Guzmán de Alfarace, the watchtower of human life by Mateo Aleman (1547–1614?) was published in 1599, the second in 1604. Along with a realistic story about the antics of the picaro, philosophical and moral reasoning in the spirit of Catholicism occupies an important place in the novel.

17 monologues.

The prince conducted a kind of “investigative experiment.” “The spectacle is a noose to lasso the king’s conscience,” says the prince. Facing a choice himself, Hamlet puts King Claudius in the same situation. If the killer repented, the prince might forgive him. Claudius is alarmed, but he is far from repentance. Claudius is confident that the true cause of his predecessor’s death is unknown to anyone. This is how Hamlet is convinced of the correctness of his suspicions and receives confirmation of the ghost’s words. This takes the revenge plan one step further.

The early epic of Western European literature combined Christian and pagan motifs. It was formed during the period of the decomposition of the tribal system and the formation of feudal relations, when paganism was replaced by Christian teaching. The adoption of Christianity not only contributed to the process of centralization of countries, but also to the interaction of nationalities and cultures.

Celtic tales formed the basis of medieval chivalric romances about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; they were the source from which poets of subsequent centuries drew inspiration and plots for their works.

In the history of the development of Western European epic, two stages are distinguished: the epic of the period of decomposition of the tribal system, or archaic(Anglo-Saxon - "Beowulf", Celtic sagas, Old Norse epic songs - "Elder Edda", Icelandic sagas), and epic of the feudal era, or heroic(French - “The Song of Roland”, Spanish - “The Song of Cid”, German - “The Song of the Nibelungs”).

In the archaic epic there remains a connection with archaic rituals and myths, cults of pagan gods and myths about totemic ancestors, demiurge gods or cultural heroes. The hero belongs to the all-encompassing unity of the clan and makes a choice in favor of the clan. These epic monuments are characterized by brevity, formulaic style, expressed in the variation of some artistic tropes. In addition, a single epic picture arises by combining individual sagas or songs, while the epic monuments themselves developed in a laconic form, their plot is grouped around one epic situation, rarely combining several episodes. The exception is Beowulf, which has a completed two-part composition and recreates a complete epic picture in one work. The archaic epic of the early European Middle Ages developed in both poetic and prose forms (Icelandic sagas) and in poetic and prose forms (Celtic epic).

Characters going back to historical prototypes (Cuchulainn, Conchobar, Gunnar, Atli) are endowed with fantastic features drawn from archaic mythology. Often archaic epics are presented as separate epic works (songs, sagas) that are not combined into a single epic canvas. In particular, in Ireland such associations of sagas were created already during the period of their recording, at the beginning of the Mature Middle Ages. Archaic epics, to a small extent, sporadically, bear the stamp of dual faith, for example, the mention of the “son of error” in “The Voyage of Bran, son of Phebal.” Archaic epics reflect the ideals and values ​​of the era of the clan system: thus, Cuchulainn, sacrificing his safety, makes a choice in favor of the clan, and when saying goodbye to life, he calls the name of the capital Emain, and not his wife or son.

Unlike the archaic epic, where the heroism of people fighting for the interests of their clan and tribe, sometimes against infringement of their honor, was glorified, in the heroic epic a hero is glorified, fighting for the integrity and independence of his state. His opponents are both foreign conquerors and rampaging feudal lords, who with their narrow selfishness inflict great damage national business. There is less fantasy in this epic, there are almost no mythological elements, replaced by elements of Christian religiosity. In form, it has the character of large epic poems or cycles of small songs, united by the personality of the hero or an important historical event.

The main thing in this epic is its nationality, which is not immediately realized, since in the specific situation of the heyday of the Middle Ages, the hero of the epic work often appears in the guise of a warrior-knight, seized with religious enthusiasm, or a close relative, or an assistant to the king, and not a person from the people. Depicting kings, their assistants, and knights as heroes of the epic, the people, according to Hegel, did this “not out of preference for noble persons, but out of a desire to give an image of complete freedom in desires and actions, which is realized in the idea of ​​royalty.” Also, the religious enthusiasm, often inherent in the hero, did not contradict his nationality, since the people at that time gave their struggle against the feudal lords the character of a religious movement. The nationality of the heroes in the epic during the heyday of the Middle Ages is in their selfless struggle for the national cause, in their extraordinary patriotic inspiration in defense of their homeland, with the name of which on their lips they sometimes died, fighting against foreign enslavers and the treasonous actions of anarchist feudal lords.

3. "Elder Edda" and "Younger Edda". Scandinavian gods and heroes.

A song about gods and heroes, conventionally united by the title "Elder Edda" preserved in a manuscript that dates back to the second half of the 13th century. It is not known whether this manuscript was the first or whether it had any predecessors. There are, in addition, some other recordings of songs also classified as Eddic. The history of the songs themselves is also unknown, and on this score a variety of points of view and contradictory theories have been put forward ( Legend attributes the authorship to the Icelandic scientist Samund the Wise. However, there is no doubt that songs originated much earlier and were passed down through oral tradition for centuries). The range in dating of songs often reaches several centuries. Not all songs originated in Iceland: among them there are songs that go back to South German prototypes; in the Edda there are motifs and characters familiar from the Anglo-Saxon epic; a lot was apparently brought from other Scandinavian countries. It can be assumed that at least some of the songs arose much earlier, even in the unwritten period.

Before us is an epic, but a very unique epic. This originality cannot but strike the eye when reading the Elder Edda after Beowulf. Instead of a lengthy, slowly flowing epic, here we have before us a dynamic and concise song, in a few words or stanzas, outlining the fate of heroes or gods, their speeches and actions.

Eddic songs do not form a coherent unity, and it is clear that only a part of them has reached us. The individual songs feel like versions of the same piece; Thus, in the songs about Helgi, Atli, Sigurd and Gudrun, the same plot is interpreted differently. The "Speeches of Atli" are sometimes interpreted as a later, expanded reworking of the more ancient "Song of Atli."

In general, all Eddic songs are divided into songs about gods and songs about heroes. Songs about the gods contain a wealth of material on mythology; this is our most important source for knowledge of Scandinavian paganism (albeit in a very late, so to speak, “posthumous” version of it).

The artistic and cultural-historical significance of the Elder Edda is enormous. It occupies one of the honorable places in world literature. The images of the Eddic songs, along with the images of the sagas, supported the Icelanders throughout their difficult history, especially during the period when this small people, deprived of national independence, was almost doomed to extinction as a result of foreign exploitation, and from famine and epidemics. The memory of the heroic and legendary past gave the Icelanders the strength to hold out and not die.

Prose Edda (Snorr Edda, Prose Edda or simply Edda)- a work by the medieval Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson, written in 1222-1225 and intended as a textbook on skaldic poetry. Consists of four parts containing a large number of quotes from ancient poems based on scenes from German-Scandinavian mythology.

The Edda begins with a euhemeristic prologue and three separate books: Gylfaginning (approx. 20,000 words), Skáldskaparmál (approx. 50,000 words) and Háttatal (approx. 20,000 words). The Edda survives in seven different manuscripts, dating from 1300 to 1600, with textual content independent of each other.

The purpose of the work was to convey to contemporary Snorri readers the subtlety of alliterative verse and to grasp the meanings of the words hidden under the many kennings.

The Younger Edda was originally known simply as the Edda, but was later given its name to distinguish it from the Elder Edda. The Younger Edda is associated with many verses quoted by both.

Scandinavian mythology:

Creation of the world: initially there were two abysses - ice and fire. For some reason they mixed, and from the resulting frost the first creature arose - Ymir, the giant. Afterwards, Odin appears with his brothers, kills Ymir and creates a world from his remains.

According to the ancient Scandinavians, the world is the ash tree Yggdrasil. Its branches are the world of Asgard, where the gods live, the trunk is the world of Midgard, where people live, the roots are the world of Utgard, the kingdom of evil spirits and the dead who died an improper death.

Gods live in Asgard (they are not omnipotent, they are mortal). Only the souls of heroically dead people can enter this world.

The mistress of the kingdom of the dead, Hel, lives in Utgard.

The appearance of people: the gods found two pieces of wood on the shore - ash and alder and breathed life into them. This is how the first man and woman appeared - Ask and Elebla.

The Fall of the World: The gods know that the world will end, but they do not know when this will happen, for the world is ruled by Fate. In the "Prophecy of Volva" Odin comes to the soothsayer Volva and she tells him the past and the future. In the future, she predicts the day of the fall of the world - Ragnarok. On this day, the world wolf Fenrir will kill Odin, and the serpent Ermungard will attack people. Hel will lead the giants and the dead against gods and people. After the world will burn, its remains will be washed away by water and a new life cycle will begin.

The gods of Asgard are divided into Aesir and Vanir. ( Aces - the main group of gods led by Odin, who loved, fought and died, because, like people, they did not have immortality. These gods are contrasted with the vanirs (gods of fertility), giants (etuns), dwarfs (miniatures), as well as female deities - diss, norns and valkyries. Vanir - a group of fertility gods. They lived in Vanaheim, far from Asgard, the abode of the aesir gods. The Vanirs had the gift of foresight, prophecy, and also mastered the art of witchcraft. They were attributed to incestuous relationships between brothers and sisters. The Vanir included Njord and his offspring - Frey and Freya.)

One- First among the aces, One god of poetry, wisdom, war and death.

Thor- Thor is the god of thunder and one of the most powerful gods. Thor was also the patron of agriculture. Therefore, he was the most loved and respected of the gods. Thor is the representative of order, law and stability.

Frigga- As Odin's wife, Frigga is the first among the goddesses of Asgard. She is the patroness of marriage and motherhood; women call upon her during childbirth.

Loki- God of fire, creator of trolls. It is unpredictable, and represents the opposite of a fixed order. He is smart and cunning, and can also change his appearance.

Heroes:

Gylvi, Gylfi- the legendary Swedish king who heard Gytheon’s stories about the Aesir and went in search of them; after long wanderings, as a reward for his zeal, he got the opportunity to talk with three aces (High, Equally High and Third), who answered his questions about the origin, structure and fate of the universe. Gangleri is the name given to King Gylfi, who was accepted for conversation by the Asami.

Groa- the sorceress, wife of the famous hero Aurvandil, treated Thor after the duel with Grungnir.

Violectrina- appeared to Tohru before his escape.

Volsung- the son of the king of the Frans Rerir, given to him by the Aesir.

Kriemhilda- Siegfried's wife.

Mann- the first man, the progenitor of the Germanic tribes.

Nibelungs- the descendants of the miniature who collected countless treasures, and all the owners of this treasure, which carries a curse.

Siegfried (Sigurd)

Hadding- a warrior hero and wizard who enjoyed the special patronage of Odin.

Högni (Hagen)- the hero is the killer of Siegfried (Sigurd), who flooded the Nibelungen treasure in the Rhine.

Helgi- a hero who accomplished many feats.

Ask- the first man on earth whom the aces made from ash.

Embla- the first woman on earth made by the Ases from willow (according to other sources - from alder).

4. German heroic epic. "Song of the Nibelungs."

"The Song of the Nibelungs" written around 1200 is the largest and the oldest monument German folk heroic epic. 33 manuscripts have survived, representing the text in three editions.
The “Song of the Nibelungs” is based on ancient German legends dating back to the events of the period of barbarian invasions. The historical facts to which the poem goes back are the events of the 5th century, including the death of the Burgundian kingdom, destroyed in 437 by the Huns. These events are also mentioned in the Elder Edda.
The text of the “Song” consists of 2400 stanzas, each of which contains four paired rhyming lines (the so-called “Nibelung stanza”), and is divided into 20 songs.
In terms of content, the poem is divided into two parts. The first of them (songs 1 - 10) describes the story of the German hero Siegfried, his marriage to Kriemhild and the treacherous murder of Siegfried. Songs 10 to 20 talk about Kriemhild's revenge for her murdered husband and the death of the Burgundian kingdom.
One of the characters that most attracts researchers is Kriemhild. She enters the picture as a tender young girl who does not show much initiative in life. She is pretty, but her beauty, this beautiful attribute, is nothing out of the ordinary. However, at a more mature age, she achieves the death of her brothers and beheads her own uncle with her own hands. Has she gone crazy or was she cruel to begin with? Was it revenge for her husband or a thirst for treasure? In the Edda, Kriemhild corresponds to Gudrun, and one can also be amazed at her cruelty - she prepares a meal from the meat of her own children. In studies of the image of Kriemhild, the theme of treasure often plays a central role. The question of what prompted Kriemhild to action, the desire to take possession of the treasure or the desire to avenge Siegfried, and which of the two motives is older, is discussed again and again. V. Schröder subordinates the theme of treasure to the idea of ​​revenge, seeing the importance of the “Rhine gold” not in wealth, but in its symbolic value for Kriemhild, and the motive of the treasure is inseparable from the motive of revenge. Kriemhild is a useless mother, greedy, a devil, not a woman, not even a person. But she is also a tragic heroine who lost her husband and honor, an exemplary avenger.
Siegfried is the ideal hero of the "Song of the Nibelungs". The prince from the Lower Rhine, the son of the Dutch king Siegmund and Queen Sieglinde, the conqueror of the Nibelungs, who took possession of their treasure - the gold of the Rhine, is endowed with all the virtues of knighthood. He is noble, brave, courteous. Duty and honor are above all for him. The authors of the “Song of the Nibelungs” emphasize his extraordinary attractiveness and physical strength. His very name, consisting of two parts (Sieg - victory, Fried - peace), expresses the national German identity at the time of medieval strife. Despite his young age, he visited many countries, gaining fame for his courage and power. Siegfried is endowed with a powerful will to live, a strong belief in himself, and at the same time he lives with passions that awaken in him by the power of foggy visions and vague dreams. The image of Siegfried combines the archaic features of the hero of myths and fairy tales with the behavior of a feudal knight, ambitious and cocky. Offended at first by the insufficiently friendly reception, he is insolent and threatens the King of the Burgundians, encroaching on his life and throne. He soon resigns himself, remembering the purpose of his visit. It is characteristic that the prince unquestioningly serves King Gunther, not ashamed to become his vassal. This reflects not only the desire to get Kriemhild as a wife, but also the pathos of faithful service to the overlord, invariably inherent in the medieval heroic epic.
All the characters in “The Nibelungenlied” are deeply tragic. The fate of Kriemhild is tragic, whose happiness is destroyed by Gunther, Brunhild and Hagen. The fate of the Burgundian kings who perish in a foreign land, as well as a number of other characters in the poem, is tragic.
In “The Song of the Nibelungs” we find a true picture of the atrocities of the feudal world, which appears before the reader as a kind of gloomy destructive principle, as well as a condemnation of these atrocities so common to feudalism. And in this, first of all, the nationality of the German poem, closely connected with the traditions of the German epic epic, is manifested.

5. French heroic epic. "The Song of Roland"

Of all the national epics feudal Middle Ages The most flourishing and diverse is the French epic. It has come down to us in the form of poems (about 90 in total), of which the oldest are preserved in the records of the 12th century, and the latest date back to XIV century These poems are called "gestures" (from the French "chansons de geste", which literally means "songs of deeds" or "songs of exploits"). They vary in length - from 1000 to 2000 verses - and consist of unequal length (from 5 to 40 verses) stanzas or "tirades", also called "laisses". The lines are interconnected by assonances, which later, starting from the 13th century, are replaced by precise rhymes. These poems were intended for singing (or, more precisely, recitation). The performers of these poems, and often their compilers, were jugglers - traveling singers and musicians.
Three themes make up the main content of the French epic:
1) defense of the homeland from external enemies - Moors (or Saracens), Normans, Saxons, etc.;
2) faithful service to the king, protection of his rights and the eradication of traitors;
3) bloody feudal strife.

Of all the French epics, the most remarkable is “The Song of Roland,” a poem that had a European resonance and represents one of the peaks of medieval poetry.
The poem tells of the heroic death of Count Roland, Charlemagne's nephew, during the battle with the Moors in the Roncesvalles Gorge, the betrayal of Roland's stepfather, Ganelon, which was the cause of this disaster, and Charlemagne's revenge for the death of Roland and twelve peers.
The Song of Roland originated around 1100, shortly before the First Crusade. The unknown author was not devoid of some education (to the extent available to many jugglers of that time) and, no doubt, put a lot of his own into the reworking of old songs on the same topic, both in plot and stylistically; but his main merit lies not in these additions, but precisely in the fact that he preserved the deep meaning and expressiveness of the ancient heroic legend and, connecting his thoughts with living modernity, found a brilliant way to express them art form.
Ideological plan the legend about Roland is clarified by comparing the “Song of Roland” with the historical facts that underlie this legend. In 778, Charlemagne intervened in the internal strife of the Spanish Moors, agreeing to help one of the Muslim kings against the other. Having crossed the Pyrenees, Charles took several cities and besieged Zaragoza, but, having stood under its walls for several weeks, he had to return to France with nothing. When he was returning back through the Pyrenees, the Basques, irritated by the passage of foreign troops through their fields and villages, set up an ambush in the Roncesval Gorge and, attacking the French rearguard, killed many of them; according to the historiographer Charlemagne Eginhard, among other nobles, “Hruotland, Margrave of Brittany” died. After this, Eginhard adds, the Basques fled, and it was not possible to punish them.
A short and fruitless expedition to northern Spain, which had nothing to do with the religious struggle and ended in a not particularly significant, but still annoying military failure, was turned by singer-storytellers into a picture of a seven-year war that ended with the conquest of all of Spain, then a terrible catastrophe during the retreat of the French army, and here the enemies were not the Basque Christians, but the same Moors, and, finally, a picture of revenge on the part of Charles in the form of a grandiose, truly “world” battle of the French with the united forces of the entire Muslim world.
The epic song at this stage of development, expanding into the picture of an established social structure, turned into an epic. Along with this, however, it preserved many common features and techniques of oral folk poetry, such as constant epithets, ready-made formulas for “typical” positions, direct expression of the singer’s assessments and feelings about what is depicted, simplicity of language, especially syntax, coincidence the end of a verse with the end of a sentence, etc.
Main characters poems - Roland and Ganelon.
Roland in the poem is a powerful and brilliant knight, impeccable in fulfilling his vassal duty, formulated by the poet as follows:
The vassal serves his lord, He endures the winter cold and heat, He is not sorry to shed blood for him.
He is, in the full sense of the word, an example of knightly valor and nobility. But the deep connection of the poem with folk songwriting and the popular understanding of heroism is reflected in the fact that all the knightly traits of Roland are given by the poet in a humanized form, freed from class limitations. Roland is alien to selfishness, cruelty, greed, and the anarchic self-will of the feudal lords. One can feel in him an excess of youthful strength, a joyful belief in the rightness of his cause and in his luck, a passionate thirst for selfless achievement. Full of proud self-awareness, but at the same time alien to any arrogance or self-interest, he devotes himself entirely to serving the king, people, and homeland.
Ganelon is not just a traitor, but an expression of some powerful evil principle, hostile to any national cause, the personification of feudal, anarchic egoism. This beginning in the poem is shown in all its strength, with great artistic objectivity. Ganelon is not depicted as some kind of physical and moral monster. This is a majestic and brave fighter. When Roland offers to send him as an ambassador to Marsilius, Ganelon is not afraid of this assignment, although he knows how dangerous it is. But by attributing to others the same motives that are fundamental to himself, he assumes that Roland had the intention of destroying him.
The content of “The Song of Roland” is animated by its national-religious idea. But this problem is not the only one; the socio-political contradictions characteristic of the intensively developing in the X-XI centuries were also reflected with enormous force. feudalism. This second problem is introduced into the poem by the episode of Ganelon's betrayal. The reason for including this episode in the legend could be the desire of the singers-storytellers to explain the defeat of the “invincible” army of Charlemagne as an external fatal cause. In “The Song of Roland,” it is not so much that the blackness of the act of an individual traitor, Ganelon, is revealed, but rather that it exposes the disastrousness for the native country of that feudal, anarchic egoism, the representative of which, in some respects, is brilliant, Ganelon.

6. Spanish heroic epic. "Song of my Sid"

The Spanish epic reflected the specifics of the history of Spain in the early Middle Ages. In 711, Spain was invaded by the Moors, who within a few years captured almost the entire peninsula. The Spaniards managed to hold out only far north, in the mountains of Cantabria, where the kingdom of Asturias was formed. However, immediately after this, the “reconquista” began, that is, the reconquest of the country by the Spaniards.
The kingdoms - Asturias, Castile and Leon, Navarre, etc. - sometimes fragmenting, and sometimes uniting, fought first with the Moors, then with each other, in the latter case sometimes entering into an alliance with the Moors against their compatriots. Spain made decisive progress in the reconquista in the 11th and 12th centuries, mainly thanks to the enthusiasm of the popular masses. Although the reconquista was led by the highest nobility, who received the largest part of the lands conquered from the Moors, its main driving force was the peasantry, townspeople and minor nobles close to them. In the 10th century A struggle unfolded between the old, aristocratic kingdom of Leon and Castile, which was subject to it, as a result of which Castile achieved complete political independence. Submission to the Leonese judges, who applied ancient, extremely reactionary laws, weighed heavily on the freedom-loving Castilian knighthood, but now they had new laws. According to these laws, the title and rights of knights were extended to everyone who went on a campaign against the Moors on horseback, even if he was of very low origin. However, at the end of the 11th century. Castilian liberties suffered greatly when Alfonso VI, who had been King of Leon in his youth and now surrounded himself with the old Leonese nobility, ascended the throne. Anti-democratic tendencies under this king intensified even more due to the influx of French knights and clergy into Castile. The former sought there under the pretext of assisting the Spaniards in their fight against the Moors, the latter, allegedly to organize a church in the lands conquered from the Moors. But as a result of this, the French knights captured the best plots, and the monks captured the richest parishes. Both of them, having arrived from a country where feudalism had a much more developed form, implanted feudal-aristocratic skills and concepts in Spain. All this made them hated to the local population, which they brutally exploited, caused a number of uprisings and for a long time instilled in the Spanish people distrust and hostility towards the French.
These political events and relationships were widely reflected in the Spanish heroic epic, whose three main themes are:
1) the fight against the Moors, with the goal of reconquering their native land;
2) discord between feudal lords, portrayed as the greatest evil for the entire country, as an insult to moral truth and treason;
3) the struggle for the freedom of Castile, and then for its political primacy, which is seen as the key to the final defeat of the Moors and as the basis for the national-political unification of all of Spain.
In many poems these themes are not given separately, but in close connection with each other.
The Spanish heroic epic developed similarly to the French epic. It was also based on short episodic songs of a lyrical-epic nature and oral unformed legends that arose in the druzhina environment and soon became the common property of the people; and in the same way, around the 10th century, when Spanish feudalism began to take shape and for the first time there was a sense of the unity of the Spanish nation, this material, falling into the hands of jugglers-huglars, through deep stylistic processing took shape in the form of large epic poems. The heyday of these poems, which for a long time were the “poetic history” of Spain and expressed the self-awareness of the Spanish people, occurred in the 11th-13th centuries, but after that they continued to live an intensive life for another two centuries and died out only in the 15th century, giving way to a new form folk epic legend - romances.
Spanish heroic poems are similar in form and method of execution to French ones. They stand in a series of stanzas of unequal length, connected by assonances. However, their metric is different: they are written in folk, so-called irregular, meter - verses with an indefinite number of syllables - from 8 to 16.
In terms of style, the Spanish epic is also similar to the French. However, it is distinguished by a drier and more business-like way of presentation, an abundance of everyday features, an almost complete absence of hyperbolism and an element of the supernatural - both fairy-tale and Christian.
The pinnacle of the Spanish folk epic is formed by the tales of Cid. Ruy Diaz, nicknamed Cid, is a historical figure. He was born between 1025 and 1043. His nickname is a word of Arabic origin meaning "lord" ("seid"); this title was often given to Spanish lords who also had Moors among their subjects: Ruy is a shortened form of the name Rodrigo. Cid belonged to the highest Castilian nobility, was the commander of all the troops of King Sancho II of Castile and his closest assistant in the wars that the king waged both with the Moors and with his brothers and sisters. When Sancho died during the siege of Zamora and his brother Alfonso VI, who had spent his youth in Leon, ascended the throne, hostile relations were established between the new king, who favored the Leonese nobility, and the latter, and Alfonso, taking advantage of an insignificant pretext, expelled Sida from Castile.
For some time, Sid served with his retinue as a mercenary for various Christian and Muslim sovereigns, but then, thanks to his extreme dexterity and courage, he became an independent ruler and won the principality of Valencia from the Moors. After this, he made peace with King Alphonse and began to act in alliance with him against the Moors.
There is no doubt that even during Sid’s lifetime, songs and tales about his exploits began to be composed. These songs and stories, having spread among the people, soon became the property of the Khuglars, one of whom, around 1140, composed a poem about him.
Content:
The Song of Sid, containing 3,735 verses, is divided into three parts. The first (called by researchers the “Song of Exile”) depicts Sid’s first exploits in a foreign land. First, he gets money for the campaign by pawning chests filled with sand to Jewish moneylenders under the guise of family jewelry. Then, having gathered a detachment of sixty warriors, he enters the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña to say goodbye to his wife and daughters there. After this he travels to Moorish land. Hearing of his expulsion, people flock to his banner. Cid wins a series of victories over the Moors and after each of them sends part of the booty to King Alphonse.
The second part ("The Wedding Song") depicts the Cid's conquest of Valencia. Seeing his power and touched by his gifts, Alphonse makes peace with Sid and allows his wife and children to move to Valencia with him. Then Sil meets with the king himself, who acts as a matchmaker, offering Sid the noble infantes de Carrion as his son-in-law. Sil, although reluctantly, agrees to this. He gives his sons-in-law two of his battle swords and gives a rich dowry for his daughters. A description of the magnificent wedding celebrations follows.
The third part (“Song of Korpes”) tells the following. Sid's sons-in-law turned out to be worthless cowards. Unable to tolerate the ridicule of Sid and his vassals, they decided to take it out on his daughters. Under the pretext of showing their wives to their relatives, they prepared for the journey. Having reached the Korpes oak grove, the sons-in-law got off their horses, severely beat their wives and left them tied to the trees. The unfortunates would have died if not for Sid's nephew Felez Muñoz, who found them and brought them home. Sid demands revenge. The king convenes the Cortes to try the guilty. Sid comes there with his beard tied up so that no one will insult him by pulling his beard. The case is decided by judicial duel (“God’s court”). Sid's fighters defeat the defendants, and Sid triumphs. He unties his beard, and everyone is amazed at his majestic appearance. New suitors are wooing Sid's daughters - the princes of Navarre and Aragon. The poem ends with a praise to Sid.
In general, the poem is more historically accurate than any other Western European epic known to us.
This accuracy corresponds to the general truthful tone of the narrative, usual for Spanish poems. Descriptions and characteristics are free from any elevation. Persons, objects, events are depicted simply, concretely, with businesslike restraint, although this does not exclude sometimes great inner warmth. There are almost no poetic comparisons or metaphors at all. There is a complete absence of Christian fiction, except for the appearance of the Archangel Michael in Sid's dream on the eve of his departure. There is also no hyperbolism at all in the depiction of combat moments. Images of martial arts are very rare and are of a less brutal nature than in the French epic; Mass fights predominate, with nobles sometimes dying at the hands of nameless warriors.
The poem lacks the exclusivity of knightly feelings. The singer openly emphasizes the importance of booty, profit, and the monetary base of any military enterprise for a fighter. An example is the way in which at the beginning of the poem Sid obtained the money necessary for the campaign. The singer never forgets to mention the size of the war booty, the share that went to each fighter, and the portion sent by the Sid to the king. In the scene of the litigation with the infantes de Carrion, Cid first of all demands the return of swords and dowry, and then raises the issue of insult to honor. He always behaves like a prudent, reasonable owner.
In accordance with everyday motives of this kind, family themes play a prominent role. The point is not only what place is occupied in the poem by the story of the first marriage of Sid’s daughters and the bright ending of the picture of their second, happy marriage, but also by the fact that family, family feelings with all their sincere intimacy gradually come to the fore in the poem.
Sid's image: The Sid is presented, contrary to history, only as an “infanson,” that is, a knight who has vassals, but does not belong to the highest nobility. He is depicted as full of self-awareness and dignity, but at the same time good-natured and simple in his dealings with everyone, alien to any aristocratic arrogance. The norms of knightly practice inevitably determine the main lines of Sid’s activities, but not his personal character: he himself, as free as possible from knightly habits, appears in the poem as a truly folk hero. And all of Sid’s closest assistants are also not aristocratic, but popular - Alvar Fañez, Felez Muñoz, Pero Bermudez and others.
This democratization of the image of Sid and the deeply democratic popular tone of the poem about him are based on the above-mentioned folk character reconquista.

During the classical, or high, Middle Ages, Western Europe began to overcome difficulties and be reborn. Since the 10th century, state structures have been consolidated, which made it possible to assemble larger armies and, to some extent, stop raids and robberies. Missionaries brought Christianity to the countries of Scandinavia, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, so that these states also entered the orbit of Western culture.

The relative stability that ensued provided the opportunity for rapid growth of cities and economies. Life began to change for the better; cities began to have their own culture and spiritual life. The church played a big role in this, which also developed, improved its teaching and organization.

The economic and social rise after 1000 began with construction. As contemporaries said: “Europe has become covered with a new white dress of churches.” Based on artistic traditions Ancient Rome and the former barbarian tribes, Romanesque and later brilliant Gothic art arose, and not only architecture and literature developed, but also other types of art - painting, theater, music, sculpture.

At this time, feudal relations finally took shape, and the process of personality formation was already completed (XII century). The horizons of Europeans expanded significantly due to a number of circumstances (this is the era of the Crusades beyond Western Europe: acquaintance with the life of Muslims, the East, with a higher level of development). These new impressions enriched the Europeans, their horizons expanded as a result of the merchants’ travels (Marco Polo traveled to China and upon his return wrote a book introducing Chinese life and traditions). Expanding your horizons leads to the formation of a new worldview. Thanks to new acquaintances and impressions, people began to understand that earthly life is not aimless, it has great significance, the natural world is rich, interesting, does not create anything bad, it is divine, worthy of study. Therefore, science began to develop.

Literature

Features of the literature of this time:

1) The relationship between church and secular literature is decisively changing in favor of secular literature. New class trends are being formed and flourishing: knightly and urban literature.

2) The sphere of literary use of vernacular languages ​​has expanded: in urban literature the vernacular language is preferred, even church literature turns to vernacular languages.

3) Literature acquires absolute independence in relation to folklore.

4) Drama emerges and successfully develops.

5) The genre of heroic epic continues to develop. A number of pearls of the heroic epic emerge: “The Song of Roland”, “The Song of My Sid”, “The Song of Nebelunga”.

Heroic epic.

The heroic epic is one of the most characteristic and popular genres of the European Middle Ages. In France, it existed in the form of poems called gestures, that is, songs about deeds and exploits. The thematic basis of the gesture is real historical events, most of which date back to the 8th - 10th centuries. Probably, immediately after these events, traditions and legends about them arose. It is also possible that these legends originally existed in the form of short episodic songs or prose stories that developed in the pre-knight milieu. However, very early on, episodic tales went beyond this environment, spread among the masses and became the property of the entire society: not only the military class, but also the clergy, merchants, artisans, and peasants listened to them with equal enthusiasm.

Since these folk tales were originally intended for oral chanting performance by jugglers, the latter subjected them to intensive processing, which consisted of expanding the plots, cyclizing them, introducing inserted episodes, sometimes very large ones, conversational scenes, etc. As a result, short episodic songs became gradually the appearance of plot- and stylistically-organized poems is a gesture. In addition, in the process of complex development, some of these poems were noticeably influenced by church ideology and, without exception, by the influence of knightly ideology. Since chivalry had high prestige for all levels of society, the heroic epic gained wide popularity. Unlike Latin poetry, which was practically intended only for clergy, gestures were created in French and were understandable to everyone. Originating from the early Middle Ages, the heroic epic took a classical form and experienced a period of active existence in the 12th, 13th and partly 14th centuries. Its written recording dates back to the same time. Gestures are usually divided into three cycles:

1) the cycle of Guillaume d'Orange (otherwise: the cycle of Garin de Monglane - named after Guillaume's great-grandfather);

2) the cycle of “rebel barons” (otherwise: the Doon de Mayans cycle);

3) cycle of Charlemagne, King of France. The theme of the first cycle is the selfless service of loyal vassals from the Guillaume family to the weak, hesitant, often ungrateful king, who is constantly threatened by either internal or external enemies, driven only by love for the homeland.

The theme of the second cycle is the rebellion of proud and independent barons against the unjust king, as well as the brutal feuds of the barons among themselves. Finally, in the poems of the third cycle (“Pilgrimage of Charlemagne”, “Board of the Big Legs”, etc.) the sacred struggle of the Franks against the “pagans” - Muslims is glorified and the figure of Charlemagne is glorified, appearing as the focus of virtues and the stronghold of the entire Christian world. The most remarkable poem of the royal cycle and the entire French epic is “The Song of Roland,” the recording of which dates back to the beginning of the 12th century.

Features of the heroic epic:

1) The epic was created in the conditions of the development of feudal relations.

2) The epic picture of the world reproduces feudal relations, idealizes a strong feudal state and reflects Christian beliefs and Christian ideals.

3) With regard to history, the historical basis is clearly visible, but at the same time it is idealized and hyperbolized.

4) Bogatyrs - defenders of the state, the king, the independence of the country and Christian faith. All this is interpreted in the epic as a national matter.

5) The epic is associated with a folk tale, with historical chronicles, and sometimes with a chivalric romance.

6) The epic was preserved in the countries of continental Europe (Germany, France).

PLAN

Archaic epic of the Early Middle Ages. Celtic sagas.

I have not heard the stories of Ossian,

Haven't tried the old wine;

Why do I see a clearing,

Scotland bloody moon?

O. Mandelstam

1. Two stages in the history of Western European epic. General features of archaic forms of epic.

2. Historical conditions for the emergence of the ancient Irish epic.

3. Cycles of ancient Irish sagas:

a) mythological epic;

b) heroic epic:

Ulad cycle;

Finn's cycle;

c) fantastic epic.

4. The importance of the ancient Irish epic for the further development of world literature.

1. In the history of the development of Western European epic, two stages are distinguished: the epic of the period of decomposition of the tribal system, or archaic (Anglo-Saxon - “Beowulf”, Celtic sagas, Old Norse epic songs - “Elder Edda”, Icelandic sagas) and the epic of the feudal era, or heroic ( French - “The Song of Roland”, Spanish - “The Song of Cid”, Middle and High German - “The Song of the Nibelungs”, the ancient Russian epic monument “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”). In the epic of the period of decomposition of the tribal system, a connection is maintained with archaic rituals and myths, cults of pagan gods and myths about totemic ancestors, demiurge gods or cultural heroes. The hero belongs to the all-encompassing unity of the clan and makes a choice in favor of the clan. These epic monuments are characterized by brevity and formulaic style, expressed in the variation of some artistic tropes. In addition, a single epic picture is achieved by combining individual sagas or songs, while the epic monuments themselves were formed in a laconic form, their plot is grouped around one epic situation, rarely combining several episodes. The exception is Beowulf, which has a completed two-part composition and recreates a complete epic picture in one work. The archaic epic of the early European Middle Ages developed both in poetic ("Elder Edda") and prose (Icelandic sagas) and in poetic-prose forms (Celtic epic).

Archaic epics are formed on the basis of myth, characters going back to historical prototypes (Cuchulainn, Conchobar, Gunnar, Atli) are endowed with fantastic features drawn from archaic mythology (the transformation of Cuchulainn during battle, his totemic relationship with a dog). Often archaic epics are presented as separate epic works (songs, sagas) that are not combined into a single epic canvas. In particular, in Ireland, such associations of sagas were created already during the period of their recording, at the beginning of the Mature Middle Ages (“The Bull Rising from Cualnge”). Celtic and German-Scandinavian archaic epics represent both cosmogonic ("Divination of Velva") and heroic myths, moreover, in the heroic part of the epic, interaction with the world of gods or divine beings is preserved (Isles of Bliss, the world of Sid in the Celtic epic). Archaic epics, to a small extent, occasionally bear the stamp of dual faith, for example, the mention of the “son of error” in “The Voyage of Bran, son of Febal”, or the depiction of a picture of the rebirth of the world after Ragnarok in “The Divination of the Völva”, where Balder and his unwitting killer are the first to enter blind god Hed. Archaic epics reflect the ideals and values ​​of the era of the clan system, so Cuchulainn, sacrificing his safety, makes a choice in favor of the clan, and saying goodbye to life, calls the name of the capital of the Ulads Emain (“Oh, Emain-Maha, Emain-Maha, great, greatest treasure !”), and not a spouse or son.