/lit/ - Literature

And in case you don't believe he actually said that, you can read it here. >>>/int/5007734

>This thread is full of Christians, trolls, or both. They are called the Dark Ages for a reason. Christianity ruled over Europe for 1000 years and forbidded anything intellectuel. Christianity also started pointless bloody numerous wars against muslims and failed miserably. Look up the crusades on wikipedia. What good literature came out of Europe during those years? Beowulf? THATS ONE BOOK WHO GIVES A FUCK. The only thing Europe was good at for 1000 years was VIOLENCE and its the christians' FAULT.

>SOMETIMES I wish /int/ would just pick up an history book and read some factual information for once.

Off the top of my head (minus Beowulf):

The Wanderer
The Wife's Lament
Judith
Piers Plowman
Everyman
The Book of Margery Kempe
Julian of Norwich (I forget what her work was called)
Sir Gawain and The Green Knight
History of the Kings of Britain
Le Morte Darthur
Marie De France's Lais
Roman de Tristan
Roman de Brut
Caedmon's Hymn
Dream of the Rood

He's right that there's a very deep Christian strain to most of the literature, but they're quite intellectual nonetheless.

>>2611260
Sir Orfeo
Pearl
The Song of Rolund
The Divine Comedy

>>2611260

Shit I forgot one of the most obvious and one of the most virtuous.

Motherfucking Canterbury Tales. I was thinking too hard and it just totally left my mind.

The Canterbury Tales will shut him up quick.

What's the name of that collection of stories written during the Black Death?

It was Italian wasn't it? It was about a bunch of nobles holed up in the country telling fables and whatnot. Was that already listed?

found thread OP is referring to:
>>>/int/5007488

6 replies and no one mentions Paradise Lost.

SHAME ON YOU ALL!!!

>>2611301
silly goose it was linked to here >>2611248

>>2611307

By 1677 we're pretty solidly out of the middle ages. Even if you pushed it back 100 years we're still pretty solidly out of the middle ages.

>>2611328

Balls, I need to brush up on my history then.

>>2611294
Bocaccio's Decameron

>>2611313
That person is really angry at Europe and Christianity.

I wonder if he's aware of some of the parallels that can be drawn between that time and nowadays.

>>2611307
lol this dumbass thinks paradise lost was medieval

lol

lol

There was a lot of pulpy romance stories from the medieval period too right? Chivalrous romance and all that.

I don't want to go into that thread because it's long as hell - but anyone who has that opinion is a damn fool. Shit, Dante was writing in the period he's referring to as the "Dark Ages". Chaucer was writing. You gotta be dumb as hell to think that Europe wasn't producing any culture. A lot of it is in forms that are not native to us any more, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist. From Boethius, to Roland and Arthur, to Chaucer.

For a super interesting book on medieval literature and especially its close ties to classical antiquity, I recommend Ernst Robert Curtius' magisterial "European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages." It is a magnificent book - and reading it should single-handedly dispel any notions about "dark ages" that idiots have.

>>2611431
Not as much as you would think, very few people could read and those who could were mostly clergy.

>>2611439
That's what I was wondering. Were those stories mostly told orally? By minstrels and whatnot.

>>2611328
I think you're pushing it saying England in 1577 wasn't medieval.

>>2611449
A lot of popular literature and shit like troubadours, chansons, etc was mostly oral, yeah. But it did get written down. Obviously, since we have it.

>>2611454
1577 is well after the period classically considered Medieval. 1577 is well into the Reformation, dude. The high middle ages is like the 1200s.

>>2611433
Like many people his impression of the dark ages is "no culture, no science, just religious persecution" instead of "relatively few writings survive from this time period."

Scholars need to let go of the term "Dark Ages" completely.

J. MANDEVILLE FUCKING JOURNEYS

FUCK YEAH DOGHEAD PEOPLE

>>2611467
Scholars have let go of it. Scholars pretty much let go of it decades ago. It only survives in the popular usage. Despite being dumb, wrong, & totally rhetorical.

>>2611449
Most popular knowledge, folklore if you will, was passed orally, they survived to this day. Some minstrels already had some sort of training or minor education in that age though certainly not all of them.

Flip his narrow presumptions of Christianity on his head. Talk about the scholastic and monastic traditions, renaissances unto themselves in art and science. Sure they are driven by divine impulses, but intellectual pursuits of discovery and wonder no less.

>>2611523
Yeah I tried. It's hard to get that far when someone clings to the notion that nothing good has ever, ever come from Christianity.

There are people on /int/ who say that Christianity is directly responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire, and that if it weren't for Christianity "we'd be in spaceships right now" on account of how far Christianity set the whole world back scientifically, and so forth.

And I remember a neo-pagan there bitching about how Christians persecuted his Pagan Scottish ancestors, even though he had no Pagan Scottish ancestors. He of course hadn't realized that Christianity was one of the things separating the Scots from the earlier cultures living in the same area, the Picts and whatnot.

And worst of all no one there knows what "Aryan" means. They have literally never been introduced to the concept that every European culture in existence with the exception of the Basques came to Europe form Asia, and that all European languages and whatnot are originally Asian.

Does Beowulf even count as Medieval literature just because that's when it was finally written down?

>>2611555
Well, all of those people are idiots. And what they say is true - you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

God all that shit is dumb.

>>2611663
??? Beowulf dates from the medieval period... note that the early Medieval period pretty much goes back to the fall of Rome.

>>2611663
It would count if you don't ignore the overt Christian references shoehorned in everywhere.

Which, to be fair, most people do ignore.

>>2611679
>Beowulf dates from the medieval period

I thought that it was told orally all the way back to Roman times.

Or am I thinking of the Saga of the Volsungs? Maybe?

No mention of Divine Comedy? I am very disappointed.

>>2611555

>implying the Roman Empire wasn't just another shit empire that weren't in need of some bizarre
>implying traditional European polytheism wasn't overshadowed by silly warrior veneration cults by the time Christianity showed up
>implying pagan Euros were all forced to convert by some shadowy Christian tyranny

These are bad people.

>>2611663
>>2611686

Beowulf is Old English a.k.a. Anglo-Saxons.

800 is not medieval times. It's right before early middle ages.

Check Wikipedia guys. It can be your friend.

>>2611702
>implying pagan Euros were all forced to convert by some shadowy Christian tyranny

That is what they have said. I have literally heard people say that Christianity was spread through Europe by military conquest.

They believe that Paganism was replaced with Christianity because Pagans were the victims of bloody purges.

I once asked such a person how a few monks and priests traveling around Europe managed to force entire populations to convert and they honestly told me that those monks and priests had "armies at their backs."

I must have missed all that in my history classes /lit/, how about you? The Christian conquest of Europe? Led by Jesus the Conqueror?

There are Illuminated Manuscripts, histories, letters, treatises, egg cetera.

Give him a copy of Baudolino and tell him it was written in 1351 AD.

>>2611711
>800 is not medieval times. It's right before early middle ages. Check Wikipedia guys. It can be your friend.

Quoth Wikipedia: "The Middle Ages (adjectival form: medieval, mediaeval or mediæval) is a period of European history encompassing the 5th to the 15th centuries." lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism

That's it. Thats all you have to paste for a reply. Not just Medieval and "intellectuel", but Christian as well.

http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

jesus fucking christ

>>2611749
also this

>Aucassin and Nicolette.

One caveat though--good luck finding a copy.

so /lit/ whaddaya think about the Jesuits