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Focus on Britain today (cultural studies for the language classroom), Clare Lavery, Prentice Hall Elt, chapter 1, 4, 12.SEMINAR 1 HISTORY & ITS INFLUENCE Your task is not so much to know the exact data (though you are to be aware of the major figures, dates and events) but to understand the influence upon the present day Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage. As the seminar goes along you’re to draw a “historical line”: period (people, events) and what traces of the period are found in British life today.
Around 10,000 BC the Ice Age drew to a close, Britain was peopled by small groups of hunters, gatherers and fishers, few had settled homes, and they seemed to have followed herds of deer for food and clothing. By about 5,000 BC Britain had finally become an island, and also heavily forested. For wander-hunter culture it was a disaster, for cold-loving deer and other animals largely died out. Mention other tribes that inhabited the British Isles up to the 1st wave of invasion – that of the Celts.
CELTS - from Greek Keltoi = inhabitants of the forest or people that lived beyond the mountains. This name is given by Greek and Roman writers to fair, tall people whose 1st known territory was an area in the basin of the upper Danube and South Germany. Who were these people? What kind of life did they lead? What were their religious beliefs? What happened to them in the course of history? What have they left behind?
The megalithic ruin known as Stonehenge stands on the open downland of Salisbury Plain two miles west of the town of Amesbury, Wiltshire, in Southern England. It is not a single structure but consists of a series of earth, timber, and stone structures that were revised and re-modelled over a period of more than 1400 years. Who built it? What are the possible reasons for building?
2. Historical invasions:
Make sure that you can interpret such notions: The Romans: pantheon, the Roman calendar or the British calendar, baths, Hadrian wall. The Germans: The Volkerwanderungen, folk, war band, wergild, “Ecclesiastical History of the English People”, “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”, the thanes, the churls, thralls, witenagemot, shire, shiremoot, alderman, shire reeve. The Vikings:Superbus tyrannus or Vortigern, the Danelaw, Dane-geld. The Normans:Edward the Confessor, Harold, Earl of Wessex, William Duke of Normandy, the battle at Hastings, castles the Domesday Book, Plantagenet kings, barons or tenants-in-chief, lords, vassals, Magna Carta, The Hundred Years’ War, Knights, jousting, The Black Death.
3. The 16th century – towards a nation
4. The 17th century
SOURSES: 1. Britain (the country and its people: an introduction for learners of English), James O’Driscoll, Oxford University Press, chapters 1-3. Focus on Britain today (cultural studies for the language classroom), Clare Lavery, Prentice Hall Elt, chapter 1, 4, 12. Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1380
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Britain has not always been an island. It became one only after the end of the last Ice Age (around 5000 BC). The temperature rose and the ice camp melted, flooding the lower-lying land that is now under the North Sea and the English Channel.
The War of the Roses - The Yorkist symbol was the white rose and the Lancastrian symbol was the red rose. Speak about the war and its consequences.