Kerendahan Hati

Taufik Ismail

Kalau engkau tak mampu menjadi beringin
yang tegak di puncak bukit
Jadilah belukar, tetapi belukar yang baik,
yang tumbuh di tepi danau

Kalau kamu tak sanggup menjadi belukar,
Jadilah saja rumput, tetapi rumput yang
memperkuat tanggul pinggiran jalan

Kalau engkau tak mampu menjadi jalan raya
Jadilah saja jalan kecil,
Tetapi jalan setapak yang
Membawa orang ke mata air

Tidaklah semua menjadi kapten
tentu harus ada awak kapalnya….
Bukan besar kecilnya tugas yang menjadikan tinggi
rendahnya nilai dirimu
Jadilah saja dirimu….
Sebaik-baiknya dari dirimu sendiri

Middle English

Brief Introduction

—  Extending from 1066 to 1485, this period is noted for the extensive influence of French literature on native English forms and themes.

—  From the Norman-French conquest of England in 1066 until the 14th century, French largely replaced English in ordinary literary composition, and Latin maintained its role as the language of learned works.

—  By the 14th century, when English again became the chosen language of the ruling classes, it had lost much of the Old English inflectional system, had undergone certain sound changes, and had acquired the characteristic it still possesses of freely taking into the native stock numbers of foreign words, in this case French and Latin ones.

—  Thus, the various dialects of Middle English spoken in the 14th century were similar to Modern English and can be read without great difficulty today.

Poetry

Themes, characteristics, and famous works and authors:

—  Religious teaching; “Ormulum”, “Ancren Riwle”, “the Owl and the Nightingale”.

—  History; “Brut” (the history of “England”) èLayamon

—  Heroes, great manè Ballads (tales told from mouth to mouth, which the origin and the authors were unknown); Robin Hood, King Arthur and His Knights

—  Love, knight èRomance (tales of extra-ordinary deeds and events, which be possibly happened only on imaginative world, adopted from French literature); “Chanson de Roland”,  Alexander, the Pearl (mostly by unknown authors).

—  Realistic (unlike the previous themes, in the 14^th C the themes of the poems were ordinary man, such as Oxford scholar up to common farmer)è Geoffrey Chaucer (the pioneer)è “Canterbury Tales”; William Langlandè  “Piers Plowman”(alliteration).

Prose

—  Prose in Middle English was also dominated by a large number of religious works.

—  John Wyclif, religionist and scholar, known as the translator of Bible, which has great influence not only in the teaching of moral values but also the style of language, through his language prose style represented in his work “Mandeville’s Travels” helped much the organizing of Standard English language used by the society.

—  Strongly influenced by French not only in terms of lexicons, many borrowed terms from French language found, and the language style used, romance, but also in terms of the atmospheres, styles, and forms.

Drama

—  Its first appearance was used as a media to teach Christianity doctrines, which was usually delivered by the religionist to the people orally by using Latin language (mostly the people did not understand about it).

—  The themes for the first time concerned with stories told in the bible such as: the birthday of Christ (Christmas day), the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ (Easter day), in which all the actors were the religionist them selves and it was played in the church (the language introduction was Latin then replaced by English) .

—  The themes developedè “Miracles” (the stories of Saints) and “Mysteries” (themes adopted from the bible).

The Old English (Anglo-Saxon)

Old English (Anglo-Saxon)

The indigenous of Britain isles was Celt (under protection of Roman Empire since 50 A.D, in which in 410 A.D withdrawn) was overran in 5th A.D. by North Germanic tribes: Jutes, Angles, and Saxons (Anglo-Saxon: the predecessor of English language). In 6^th C, the Christianity scattered in the land of England (important moment in this era).

Poetry

Theme: religious (Christianity), Often bold and strong, but also mournful and elegiac in spirit, this poetry emphasizes the sorrow and ultimate futility of life and the helplessness of humans before the power of fate.

Characteristics

• Much of Old English poetry was probably intended to be chanted, with harp accompaniment, by the Anglo-Saxon scop, or bard.
• Almost all this poetry is composed without rhyme, in a characteristic line, or verse, of four stressed syllables alternating with an indeterminate number of unstressed ones. This line strikes strangely on ears habituated to the usual modern pattern, in which the rhythmical unit, or foot, theoretically consists of a constant number (either one or two) of unaccented syllables that always precede or follow any stressed syllable. Another unfamiliar but equally striking feature in the formal character of Old English poetry is structural alliteration, or the use of syllables beginning with similar sounds in two or three of the stresses in each line.

The famous literary arts

-          Beowulf (the greatest)

The epic poem Beowulf, written sometime between the 8th century and the late 10th century. Beginning and ending with the funeral of a great king, and composed against a background of impending disaster, it describes the exploits of a Scandinavian cultural hero, Beowulf, in destroying the monster Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a fire-breathing dragon.

-          Caedmon

Caedmon (650?-680?), considered the earliest of the Anglo-Saxon Christian poets. The only information concerning Caedmon is in the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (731), by the English theologian Saint Bede the Venerable.

In the end of 8^th C, the Scandinavian attacked the Northern England destroying the culture including the literary arts. The remaining inscriptions were translated by the King Alfred the Wessex’s scholars into West Saxon dialect. The extinction of northern England’s literature brought the end of the era of poetry; and the appearance of King Alfred the Wessex signed the beginning of the new era in Anglo-Saxon literature, the era of prose.

Prose

Prose in Old English is represented by a large number of religious works. The imposing scholarship of monasteries in northern England in the late 7th century reached its peak in the Latin work Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 731) by Bede. The great educational effort of Alfred, king of the West Saxons, in the 9th century produced an Old English translation of this important historical work and of many others, including De Consolatione Philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), by Boethius. This was a significant work of largely Platonic philosophy easily adaptable to Christian thought, and it has had great influence on English literature.

References:

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

 Samekto. 1976. Ikhtisar Sejarah Kesusastraan Inggris. Jakarta: GM

  

History of Engish Literature

1. the Old English (Anglo-Saxon)
2. the Middle English
3. the Renaissance (Elizabethan)
4. the Restoration
5. the Romantic
6. the Victorian
7. the 20th C up to the Present