2 The Middle English Period

The Middle English Period

1066 - 1500

General Backgroung

The Duke of Normandy's victry over King Harold in 1066 meant radican painful changes for Anglo-Saxon culture and custums. The new masters, the Normans, were descendants of the Vikings, and spoke Norman-French.

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The normans did not trouble to learn the language of their subjects. Therefore, until the fourteenth century, 3 languges (and many dialects) were spoken in England.

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The 3 languages were:

• French among the nobility and at court.
• Latin among the learned clergy.
• English among the ordinary people, nine tenths of the population.

The mixed character of the English language as spoken today, with its Latin and Germanic bases, goes back to this period.The better sort of people called the meats on their

tables "beef, veal, pork and mutton." They came from the French "boeuf, veau, pork, mouton". The meats came from farms where the respective animals were called ox, calf, swine/pig, and sheep.

In LITERATURE, they brought new models and subjects from France and changed the Anglo-Saxon system of versification, so the end-rhyme baceme the standard.

The Normans not only forced their French language upon the English but also introduced the feudal system and martial rule.

While the old English language gradually discarded most of the flexional endings, Norman-French added new lexical and grammatical elements to what became MIDDLE ENGLISH, the language of the great poet GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

In 1205 England lost Normandy, and a new nation began to take shape in England.

The Kingdoms of England and Normandy became a powerful force in Europe

Toward 1400 a language had developed that was neither Norman-French nor Anglo-Saxon.

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So, here english come

There were also a number of historical and political events with far-reaching consequences, like the crusades.

LATIN AND FRENCH LITERATURE IN ENGLAND

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

But no poet writing in the English tongue in the fourteenth century could surpass the work of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The first truly English literature emerged in the fourteenth century, when Middle English developed. William Langland represents the religious literature with the allegorical poem titled Piers Plowman.

It records much of the indignation the common people felt at the many abuses in church and state.

One of the first prose works willian caxton (1422-91) printed was

The work of Sir Thomas Malory (d. 1471): Morte d'Arthur that is a long cycle of Arthurian Legends divided into 21 books. It is a free translation in prose from the French and from other sources and records the major romances of Chivalry of the Middle Ages: those of King Arthur, the adventures of the Knights of the Round Table, and the legend of the Holi Grial. The collection is one of the most important prose works in English written and published before the sixteenth century.

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