The Different Works Of A Medieval Author


By Mattie Knight


Medieval literature has been extremely influential to the literature the world has today. For those who do not know, literature of this kind came from the continent of Europe and developed sometime in the middle ages which was one thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire. A medieval author was extremely respected during that age as writers were often seen as very intellectual individuals who possessed much knowledge.

During that time, the most popular type of literature that the authors would often work on would be religious works. The reason for this is simply because the church was the biggest entity of influence that the land of Europe. Naturally majority of authors during that time incorporated a lot of religious themes and concepts into their works.

Now if one would read some religious texts, then he would probably find the names of Thomas Aquinas, Peter Abelard, or Anselm of Canterbury. Specifically Saint Thomas Aquinas was known to be the most noteworthy religious writers because not only was he a good writer but he also had a very good understanding of the Bible. He was an extremely intelligent and wise man that had a lot of knowledge when it came to the scriptures.

Now aside from the theological works, there would be the secular books from secular authors. A lot of authors of this particular genre would revolve around some fictional material as well as historical material. Two very famous secular authors that existed during that time were of course John Mallory and John Mandeville.

Other than that, there are also many poets that lived during the medieval time period. One extremely influential poet during the late middle ages would be none other than Geoffrey Chaucer and was one of the most important writers before Shakespeare lived. Some of his works would include the Roman de la rose, and the allegorical Book of the Duchess.

Now most people would think that all the authors that existed during that time were all men but there were in fact a lot of women authors during that time. Of course it was stated above that religious works were the most popular during that time. It was because of this that women authors used this venue to be able to spread their works to the people.

Now one of the most famous of all female authors was Julian of Norwich. Julian of Norwich was actually a psychic who had visions of certain places, people, and events that would become the inspiration of her books. She was probably the most famous author in all of England because she was the first woman in England that had a book published.

So basically, those are some of the things that one should know about the medieval literature and its authors. As one can see, works from this time period were very influential to the modern day literature. Many modern day works were actually influenced by works from this time period.




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