The term Dark Ages are often applied to the Middle Ages. Do you think this is a fair analysis of the time period? Why or why not?
This is a very interesting question that has sparked a lot of curiosity in me. Once I saw this question I became very intrigued and interested. What really interests me is that it’s one of those kind of questions that makes you contemplate it for a while. For me, I had this question in my mind for a few days. Whenever I would randomly think about it, I always got new questions, which I love. For example, I started thinking more about why it was called the dark ages to begin with. Then, I got into more complicated questions, such as: how different were the people back then, did they know about the history of previous civilizations, and also what did the people in this time period think about their age. I really tried
…show more content…
Take the epic of Beowulf for instance. The epic of Beowulf is a magnificent story about a hero facing a monster named Grendel and his mother. Beowulf is a very important primary source for history. First of all, it is an amazing story and it is one of if not the oldest epic written in old English that we still have now. The epic of Beowulf was an amazing story that was written around 1000AD. The story tells of a hero fighting off monsters to save people. The monsters in this book could have possibly been an allegory to show the hardships of this time. If that was the case, than it also shows that Beowulf (who could’ve represented someone or a group of people) fought off the monsters and restored happiness and restored peace. If that’s how you want to look at it, than that could mean that there was hardship of course, but there was also a resolution to their problems, making it so that the dark times were met with light. So to label the times “dark”, just doesn’t fit because, like any time period, there are “dark” times and also “not so dark”