What does the term the Dark Ages mean?

Question

In what ways were the Dark Ages dark? In what ways was this society inadvertently preparing to emerge in modernity through the preservation of classical literature and scripture? What particular impact did Ireland have in the world that would emerge from the Dark Ages? Consider the literature produced in early Old English, a Germanic language with a Celtic imagination, expressed in Arthurian legend. What do these breathtaking legends of knights and honor have to do with our modern sense of ethics? What is the chivalric code?

I am having difficulty making an outline and proposal with the above questions. Idk if my brain is fried or what but am usually decent at these types of assignments. Any type of help, advice, or references will be appreciated. The end goal is a 7 page paper for my humanities class but I just don't know much about the topic even after searching for days. Thank you!

Answer 1

Historians have long stopped using the term "Dark Ages" because it is biased and does not reflect the realities of the Middle Ages. Occasionally you might see the term pop up, but it would be used as a selling's pitch rather than as a serious term.



Gigagpie is quite correct. The term "Dark Ages" came about in during the Renaissance and came to mean, in it's simplest term, 'not Roman'. Renaissance historians came to criticize the "Dark Ages" as a period of backwardness whereas the Roman period was seen as "light". So right off the bat, the term is biased. It does not reflect the realities of the Middle Ages. Medieval Europe was no Rome, but it was not backward either. There were education centers, there were scientific experiments, there were technological improvements.

Then some people claim that it is "dark" because of the lack of documentation. But even that is no longer true. We know more about the Middle Ages than we do about certain periods in Antiquity or the Collapse of the Bronze Age.



Paper has this nasty habit of burning, so a lot of Latin texts had been lost, but often, there were Greek copies in the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire was really the Eastern Roman Empire. Though they spoke Greek, they referred to themselves as Romans. Now, most Western Europeans did not speak Greek or could understand it. They knew Latin and their languages. In the mean time, Arabic scholars copied down Greek texts, which, when rediscovered, were translated back into a language Western Europeans could understand.



The chivalric code of honor found a home in Victorian Britain. Victorians made the code of chivalry fit their 19th values rather than to clearly depict what the code was really like. For instance, the "Damsel in distress" was a product of Victorian Britain.

Answer 2

The Dark Ages were so called simply because there was believed to be little written evidence of the history of those times. However, in recent decades much more information has come to light through archaeology, documents found in museums etc, and the "Dark Ages" is now seen as the Early Medieval period.



Your question is rather curious in that the "breathtaking legends of knights and honor" and "chivalric code" actually refer to a later period. The Chivalric Code, for instance, was developed between 1170 and 1220; and interest in the Arthurian legend did not develop until this time - centuries after the Dark Ages.

Answer 3

Dark here means obscure: i.e. the written record is scanty so it is hard for historians to piece together exactly what happened. It relates only to the first three or four centuries after the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and then only to Western Europe, where the barbarian invasions caused social chaos. It was a term invented by the French who saw their own 18th century as the Enlightenment, the age of light and this much earlier epoch as the age of shadows.

Answer 4

The one or two centuries that followed the collapse of the Western Roman Empire (5th - 6th Centuries AD). In places such as Britain, literacy almost totally stopped as it descended into a rural barter economy. As a result, very little history was recorded, so historians started to describe that period as "The Dark Ages", to describe the lack of recorded history.



Archaeology has done so much to illuminate the Dark Ages (which they refer to as the Pagan to Middle Saxon), using material evidence, that they sometimes claim that they are no longer Dark.

Answer 5

It refers to the Middle Ages, although those times weren't even THAT amazingly dark and can be a little insulting.

Answer 6

They weren't "dark," and almost no serious historian uses the phrase "Dark Ages" any more except sarcastically or when discussing earlier scholarship.



They were "dark" only in the sense that they weren't Roman, and calling them "dark" implies that Roman civilization was somehow superior to the civilizations that came after it, which is bullsh*t.