This begins with the reading of a section from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original Old English. It's always fascinating to listen to Old English read aloud: it's almost intelligible, but -- without training and study -- just beyond comprehension. Middle English often is comprehensible if read aloud, but our modern language depends so much on the French influence from the Norman period that the Old English escapes us.
You can get a closer look at some of those beautiful manuscripts at the exhibition's website. If you happen to be in Oxford, the exhibition is free to attend; but alas, I imagine I will not be able to go.
5 comments:
I like how "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" gets brought up.
You know, over time, I've come to really hate that movie. :)
I'm almost completely ignorant of medieval literature. I thought I'd better start with something transitional, so I just downloaded "The Well at the World's End" for $1 to my Kindle. I've been listening to a bunch of downloaded lectures lately, trying to fill in the giant hole in my historical education between ancient and modern history. I have almost no idea what people were up to in Europe for about 1,300 years there. I've even been listening to Gibbon on my weekly drives to San Antonio, though I find I have to play each section at least three times to get it. What wonderful sentences. If I listened to them carefully enough to understand them fully the first time through, I'd drive right off the road.
". . . as the cavalry was drawn, for the most part, from Phrygia and Cappadocia, we may conceive a more favourable opinion of the beauty of the horses than of the courage and dexterity of their riders."
A good (but not necessarily cheap) audio introduction to the middle ages would be Chaucer's unabridged Canterbury Tales. There's an abridged version of Malory available on audio as well that is pretty good.
Those are both somewhat late, though; Malory is almost early modern English rather than Middle English as such. Still, they are also quite accessible to the modern listener -- in fact, a bit too accessible. People relate to the characters so well that they often miss some of the important social issues that were particular to the age, such as how the specifics of an honor culture work, or how England's medieval treason law interacted with the punishment of Guinevere.
If you like those and want to go back earlier, let me know. :) I'll be happy to guide you along.
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