klasyki: Germanic heroic legend

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Germanic heroic legend (German: germanische Heldensage) is the heroic literary tradition of the Germanic-speaking peoples, most of which originates or is set in the Migration Period (4th-6th centuries AD). Stories from this time period, to which others were added later, were transmitted orally, traveled widely among the Germanic speaking peoples, and were known in many variants. These legends typically reworked historical events or personages in the manner of oral poetry, forming a heroic age. Heroes in these legends often display a heroic ethos emphasizing honor, glory, and loyalty above other concerns. Like Germanic mythology, heroic legend is a genre of Germanic folklore. Heroic legends…

Evidence: 47 • authority: 72

The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe during Classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include the Roman-era Germani who lived in both Germania and parts of the Roman Empire, and all Germanic speaking peoples from this era, irrespective of where they lived, most notably the Goths. Another term, ancient Germans, is considered problematic by many scholars because it suggests identity with present-day Germans. Although the first Roman descriptions of Germani involved tribes west of the Rhine river, their homeland of Germania was portrayed as stretching east of the Rhine, to southern Scandinavia and the Vistula in the eas…

Evidence: 47 • authority: 72

English literature is a form of literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, are called Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English. Despite being set in Scandinavia, it has achieved national epic status in England. However, following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite s…

Evidence: — • authority: 80

England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages

Evidence: — • authority: 80

Origin Legends in Italy in the Early Middle Ages

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Digenes Akritas (Latinised as Acritas; Greek: Διγενῆς Ἀκρίτας) is a medieval Greek romantic epic that emerged in the 12th-century Byzantine Empire. It is the lengthiest and most famous of the acritic songs, Byzantine folk poems celebrating the lives and exploits of the Akritai, the inhabitants and frontier guards of the empire's eastern Anatolian provinces. The acritic songs represented the remnants of an ancient epic cycle in Byzantium and, due to their long oral transmission throughout the empire, the identification of precise references to historical events may be only conjectural. Set during the Arab-Byzantine wars, the poem reflects the interactions, along with the military and cultura…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Middle High German literature is literature written in German between the middle of the 11th century and the middle of the 14th. In the second half of the 12th century, there was a sudden intensification of activity, leading to a 60-year "golden age" of medieval German literature referred to as the mittelhochdeutsche Blütezeit (c. 1170 – c. 1230). This was the period of the blossoming of Minnesang, MHG lyric poetry, initially influenced by the French and Provençal tradition of courtly love song. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances. again drawing on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material. The third litera…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Early Irish literature, is commonly dated from the 4th or 6th to the 15th century, a period during which modern literature in Irish began to emerge. It stands as one of the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe, with its roots extending back to late antiquity, as evident from inscriptions utilizing both Irish and Latin found on Ogham stones dating as early as the 4th century. The early Irish literary tradition flourished through the Medieval Irish period, and its literary output showcases a blend of indigenous storytelling, myth, and historical narratives. Notably, this period saw the development of a full-scale vernacular written literature expressed in a diverse range of literary…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Japan's medieval period (the Kamakura, Nanbokuchō and Muromachi periods, and sometimes the Azuchi–Momoyama period) was a transitional period for the nation's literature. Kyoto ceased being the sole literary centre as important writers and readerships appeared throughout the country, and a wider variety of genres and literary forms developed accordingly, such as the gunki monogatari and otogi-zōshi prose narratives, and renga linked verse, as well as various theatrical forms such as noh. Medieval Japanese literature can be broadly divided into two periods: the early and late middle ages, the former lasting roughly 150 years from the late 12th to the mid-14th century, and the latter until the…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

In England, the High Middle Ages spanned the period from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the death of King John, considered by some historians to be the last Angevin king of England, in 1216. The disputed succession of the last Saxon king Edward the Confessor led to a Norman invasion, culminating in the victory in the Battle of Hastings of William of Normandy in 1066. This linked the Kingdom of England with Norman possessions in the Kingdom of France. By the time of William's death in 1087, England formed the largest part of an Anglo-Norman empire, though his succession led to a civil war known as the Anarchy. The rule of Henry II of England saw a clash with the church that led to the murder…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to late 15th centuries, comparable with the post-classical period of global history. The medieval period is the middle epoch of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. The Middle Ages began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Modern age during the Renaissance, the Reformation, the European wars of religion, and the Age of Discovery. Early Modernity is a single term adopted to describe this end-stage of the…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Dark Ages is a term, now deprecated by most historians, for the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th centuries), or occasionally the entire Middle Ages (c. 5th–15th centuries), in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which characterises it as marked by economic, intellectual, and cultural decline. The concept of a "Dark Age" as a historiographical periodization originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared with the "light" of classical antiquity. The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's supposed darkness (ignorance and error) with earlier and later periods of lig…