The concept of "Middle Ages" was first proposed by the famous Renaissance historian Biondo in the book "A Thousand Years History Since the Fall of Rome", and since then, it has been used by Western academic circles. Another term corresponding to the Middle Ages is "Renaissance". The earliest coiner of this term was Giorgio Vasari. "Renaissance" means that literature has died in the Middle Ages and is served in the resurrection. This shows what people thought about the Middle Ages at that time. It can be said that since then, people have regarded the Middle Ages as a "dark age". But is it really so?
It is undeniable that the dominant philosophical thought in the Middle Ages was philosophy serving theology, advocating religious belief, and "knowledge is the slave of belief". Therefore, in order to understand the literature of the Middle Ages and this period, we must first recognize and recognize the dominant ideology at that time—Christian thought. At the same time, perhaps more importantly, give it an objective and fair evaluation.
The European Middle Ages began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century and ended with the British bourgeois revolution in the mid-17th century. But the Middle Ages we are talking about here do not include the history after the Renaissance in the 15th century. At that time, the entire European society was shrouded in the spiritual halo of Christianity, and literature was no exception. But this does not mean that medieval literature in Europe was useless, as traditionally believed. In fact, the Middle Ages, between the two peaks of European literature and culture, between the two splendors, were not "an optional threshold". Engels once said: "The Middle Ages developed from a crude primitive state. It swept away ancient civilization, ancient philosophy, politics and law, so that everything could be made from scratch. The only thing it inherited from the fallen ancient world The things are Christianity and some broken and lost cities." This passage of Engels is mainly aimed at the destruction of the ancient Western civilization caused by the barbarian invasion. At that time, the barbarians represented by the Germans invaded the Western Roman Empire, and they destroyed the city, the concentration of ancient culture, and the splendid ancient culture created by the ancient Greeks was severely damaged. American scholar Will Duran considered this change in his "World Civilization History: The Age of Faith": in terms of economy, it means re-ruralization; in terms of race, it means the mixing of races, which This mixed result means the restoration of simple living; in politics, the weakening of the authority and protection of the law, the increase of individualism and riots. However, Christianity, which was dominant in the ideological field at that time, did not completely deny the ancient Greek civilization for its ideological reasons, but gave it considerable respect. In a word, the spirit of ancient Greek and Roman culture, as a ideological undercurrent, has always existed in the ideological field of the whole medieval period. The most typical example is the "Carolingian Renaissance" in the 8th century. The Carolingian Renaissance was during the reign of Charlemagne, who introduced many policies and took many measures to encourage literature and art. He encouraged people at that time to excavate, organize, study and preserve the ancient Greek and Roman culture and civilization, and at the same time inevitably integrate Christian thoughts, emotions and philosophical concepts. Thus, it was Charlemagne who brought about the first large-scale fusion of Germanic culture with Greco-Roman and Christian cultures. Another medieval Renaissance occurred in the twelfth century, and the famous scholar Charles Haskins named it the "Twelfth Century Renaissance". This Renaissance had its external causes as well as its internal Christian causes. The external reason is to establish an ideological and cultural system for the consolidation and development of the feudal system. The internal reason is There is a strong enthusiasm for reinterpreting Christian doctrine and constructing a new system of Christian interpretation within Christianity. In this reinterpretation of Christian teachings, Christian culture and many other cultures are organically integrated, and people have shifted from focusing on "souls saved by Christ" to "the unity of Christ's salvation and man's own salvation." It can be seen that people at that time have begun to pay attention to the subjectivity of human beings. The status of man is gradually highlighted from the aura of God. At that time, various main literary styles played a certain positive role in it, and also had a positive impact on the literature of later generations.
Ecclesiastical literature (also known as monastic literature) dominated the history of European literature in the Middle Ages. The so-called church literature mainly refers to the literature created by the priests and monks at that time, mostly written in Latin. Church literature is mostly based on the Bible, or an interpretation of the Bible. This kind of creation starts from the Christian doctrine, and finally takes the doctrine as its logical conclusion, and its purpose is mainly to popularize and publicize the religious doctrine. Therefore, these works are full of Christian consciousness, and although there is a serious conceptualization and formulaic tendencies in art, we must also see the positive aspects of this literary style.
Most of the literary works of the church are illusory, mostly in the form of fantasy stories in art, and have symbolic meanings. Although this symbolism is often mystical, its characteristics make some excellent church literature without losing the essence of literature. In the past, people thought that the function of literature was: to cultivate sentiments, purify the soul, and at the same time make people obtain emotional pleasure. Christianity, on the other hand, positions the purpose of literature and art as: to publicize the happiness of communicating with God and the happiness of expressing devotion to God, so as to obtain the liberation of man's own spirit. This is a fundamental shift in the perception of literature in which it acquires the legitimacy of its actual existence. And there will be no more situations like being expelled from the Utopia by Plato. Another objective result is that literature no longer only pays attention to reality and human emotions, but extends its exploration tentacles to the realm of human spirit and belief, and obtains the legitimacy of it. The attention to the spiritual world has greatly expanded the field of literary expression.
The two types of chivalry literature, chivalry lyric poetry and chivalry narrative poetry, are the products of medieval chivalry. The basic tenets of knights in these works are loyalty to the king, apologetics and warriors. Therefore, these works are often full of worship of Christianity, and most of them are dyed with strong religious colors. Among the knightly lyric poems, the most famous is of course the song of the daybreak, which mainly describes the scene of a knight and a lady saying goodbye at dawn after a nightly tryst. Zhirmensky said: "In the feudal society, the knight served the beloved woman, and the adventure of the knight was popular as an ideal projection of the common world view of the medieval knight class." These poems not only show the delicate and complex The warmth and beauty of emotion and love, and the color of anti-religious asceticism, has become the origin of modern European humanistic literary love. The main content of knight epics (also known as knight legends) is to write about the journeys and adventures of knights in order to win love, gain honor, or defend their religious beliefs. Although most of these works are fictional works by the author, their plots are mostly absurd, and the chivalry they show is unrealistic. But its fiction provided experience for the creation of later novels and laid the foundation for the development of later fictional works.
The heroic epics of the Middle Ages in Europe were formed on the basis of folk creations. There are two main categories. One is the heroic epics in the early Middle Ages, that is, the end of the clan society, and the other is the middle and late Middle Ages, that is, the heroic epics in the feudal society. But no matter which period the epics are formed on the basis of folk literature. Especially the latter, due to the characteristics of the circulation of medieval manuscripts - the scribes arbitrarily changed the author's original text to some extent, shortened, expanded, often added endings to the original work, and processed the original work rhetorically and sometimes ideologically. , so that the copyist becomes, to varying degrees, a co-author of the original author. The thoughts and emotions of the scribes are added to many epics. Christian thought and secular ideas are mixed in it.
Urban literature, also known as civic literature, developed after the 12th century with the rise of industrial and commercial cities. Most of these works are folk creations, with a strong realistic and optimistic spirit. They describe the lives of citizens and reflect the ideological state and interests of the citizens. Its main content is to expose and criticize the brutality, greed, and stupidity of the upper classes and monks in feudal society, and praise the bravery, wit, and intelligence of the citizens, with a clear anti-feudal and anti-religious tendency. At that time, some urban cultures hoped to use reason to limit religious authority, and came up with the slogan "understand and then believe," ideas and propaganda rejected by the church as heretical. Civic literature is closely related to this "heretic" thought. But this does not mean that these works fundamentally deny religious belief, but only against blind faith. Therefore, in these works, there is no lack of influence of Christian ideas, and there are also shadows of church literature flashing from time to time.
It can be seen that under the influence of Christian ideology, the literature of the Middle Ages was not without propaganda of Christian ideology, but objectively it had the breath of the new era and gave birth to the seeds of literature of the new era.
In view of this, the Renaissance was not born from the ashes of the dark ages of the Middle Ages, as some historians have said: in fact, any singing on the ruins will not be a joyful, hopeful ballad, And what about on ashes? Someone once said that Boccaccio's "Decameron" is a wonderful flower blooming on the garbage heap of the Middle Ages, a representative work of free thought in the early Renaissance, and it can also be said to be the first bourgeois realist work in Europe. ". There is some truth to this statement, but it is hard to believe that the Middle Ages are considered garbage, and a strange flower grows on the garbage. Through the facts analyzed above, we know that the Middle Ages provided rich nutrition for the occurrence of the Renaissance, and also provided a huge space for development possibilities.
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