Critical Comparison of Literature from Medieval and Modern literature

Thesis statement

One can easily recognize the cultural diference shown in the drama in medieval and Modern era.

Introduction

This paper discusses the comparison of the two drama play in the light of the medieval and modern literature. The Medieval period, or Middle Ages, is also called the Dark Ages. It lasted nearly 1,000 years, from the fifth to the 15th century, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance It can be compared and contrasted with modern times.

In the modern literature, movement known as English literary modernism grew out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and objective truth. The movement was greatly influenced by the ideas of Romanticism, Karl Marx's political writings, and the psychoanalytic theories of sub conscience - Sigmund Freud. The continental art movements of Impressionism, and later Cubism, were also important inspirations for modernist writers. (Greenblatt: 45-71)

Medieval theatre is the theatre of Europe that created between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance period. In addition to demonstrating a popular demand for theatre at all levels of society, the Medieval theatre had a strong influence on Elizabethan theatre, which includes Shakespeare's influence. Medieval literature encompasses essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages, was comprised of religious writings as well as secular works. Since Latin was the language of the Catholic Church, which dominated Western and Central Europe, and because the Church was virtually the only source of education, Latin was a common language for Medieval writings, even in some parts of Europe that were never Romanized. However, in Eastern Europe, the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Orthodox Church made Greek and Old Church Slavonic the dominant written languages. The common people continued to use their respective vernaculars. For example, the poem, "Beowulf" was penned in Old English and was based on older oral traditions. As with regard to "Beowulf," a notable amount of medieval literature was anonymously written. Medieval authors were often overawed by the classical writers and the Church Fathers and tended to re-tell and embellish stories they had heard or read, rather than invent new stories. Thus, names of the individual authors seemed much less important in the Medieval world, and therefore many important works were never attributed to any specific person.

Whereas in modern times, although literary modernism reached its peak between the First and Second World Wars, the earliest examples of the movement's attitudes appeared in the mid to late nineteenth century. Gerard Manley Hopkins, A. E. Housman, and the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy represented a few of the major early modernists writing in England during the Victorian period.

On the othe hand , in the medieval era, the various dramatic forms from the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth at which we have thus hastily glanced--folk-plays, mummings and disguisings, secular pageants, Mystery plays, Moralities, and Interludes--have little but a historical ...