1.The typical features of folklore as reflected in the epic poem Beowulf

Folklore is practically in every nation's cultural development.

The typical features in folklore are:

1)the author is unknown

2)the time of creation is uncertain and can only be guessed from some details in the plot.

3)it originates in the oral tradition and is passed in the word of mouth.

4)Because of being passed by word, the story might exist in several variants and new parts can be added.

There had to be some device for the text to be remembered, such as:

Rhymes, repetitions of sounds, rhythmical pattern, alliteration

(Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables. Ex:Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.)and metaphors. For example joy wood-it means a musical instrument.

Beowulf, the oldest known English epic poem, the foundation-stone of all British poetry possesses all the typical features of folklore. The author drew his story from old pagan legends brought over from the continent. The scene is set among the Geats (Jutes) who lived on the southern coast of Scandinavia and their neighbors across the strait, the Danes.

The character of Beowulf seems to be a blending (смешивание) of a historical figure-he is believed to have been a nephew of the King of the Jutes and later the king himself-with various mythical heroes of an earlier day.

The theme is universal-the age-old story of a great leader who saves or tries to save people in danger. The characters are all people of noble birth. Beowulf, strong, fearless, an advocate of freedom and justice typifies the Anglo-Saxon ideals of personal conduct.

The villains are the fire-drake or dragon and the cannibal-ogre Grendel and his mother a water-witch. The tone of the poem is dark, melancholy and austere.

2. “The Canterbury Tales” of Geoffrey Chaucer as a masterpiece of the medieval English literature (social, literary, historic significance).

The "Canterbury Tales" is the first collection of short stories in English literature. In this masterpiece Chaucer drew on his own times as a setting for his stories and in this way helped to establish a realistic pattern of English writing that was to persist for centuries. Also it gives us a model of what European and English medieval literature was like. It gives us the idea of not only the state of language but also of the literary genres that existed and the social stratification on the medieval English.

Literary significance: The stories which the pilgrims tell don't always correspond in the genre to what the reader can expect from the representatives of this or that layer of society. The literary genres of the pilgrims were: a romance, a fable, a fabliau, a story of a saint.

Social significance: Chaucer's characters, the pilgrims, all brought vividly to life, represent a cross-section of the English medieval society and include three important groups of people: feudal (related to the land): The King, the Squire, the Yeoman; ecclesiastical (belonging to the church): the Parson, the Monk, the Prioress; urban (professional and mercantile laymen who reside in towns): the Cook, the Shipman (the pilgrims came from this social layer)

Linguistic significance: the London dialect that is later formed a bases which is known as "middle English" the predecessor of English nowadays. The "Canterbury Tales" gives us valuable material for the investigation of the history of the English language of the period.