Middle English Literature (1066 – 1485)

• 1066 – Battle of Hastings and Norman conquest => 12th century – strict feudal system under king William of Normandy
• William's successors had problems maintaining control over BRI+FRA territories – Henry I, Henry II (wanted to control the
  church and had Thomas Beckett assassinated), Richard the Lionhearted (spent much time on crusades), John Lackland
• 13th century – conflict between king and aristocracy – Parliament (sup. by church and middle class) was gaining influence
• 1249 – Oxford; 1280 - Cambridge
• 14th century – feudal system was disintegrating – there is social unrest and attempts at reformation of the church
• 1327-1453 – 100 Years' War with FRA + 1348-1350 – The Black Death
• 15th century – Wars of the Roses and end of feudalism (1485 – battle of Bosworth where king Richard III. died)
• language – official French was exchanged by a new form of English = Middle English (spoken by the lower classes)
  - Latin – language of the church and science

M.E. POETRY
Verse romances – adventurous stories in verse about battles and heroes; brought to ENG from FRA
Many romances were based on Celtic legends, esp. about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
=> Arthurian legends (boomed esp. in 12th ©) – they were popular because the Norman conquest renewed interest in British history; scholars debate about his existence; if he really existed, he is presumed to rule in 5th or 6th century in Wales, Cornwall or West Country.
- in 1485 Sir THOMAS MALORY published LE MORTE D’ARTHUR – the 1st modern and most complete Arthurian text

Ballads – simple, anonymous poems flourished mainly in the period from 1450 to 1550

• for the country people – often accompanied by music and group dance – most of them were not written
• the plot is often tragic, they are often written in dialogue and have a lot of repetition
• most famous ballads deal with Robin Hood – they expressed the social protest against the oppression of the poor by the rich

GEOFFREY CHAUCER (1340-1400)

• the most prominent poet of the Middle English period – considered the founder of the English language of the time
• his works are realistic, ironic and humoristic, but also contain social criticism and satire
• married into the royal family => later entrusted with the diplomatic mission to FRA, ITA, and NED => this influenced his work
  • influenced by French lit. (via translating); and by Dante and Boccaccio (ITA) and by Vergil and Ovid (LAT)
• buried as the 1st in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey

THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS – elegy on the death of his friend’s, John of Gaunt’s, wife
PARLIAMENT OF FOWLS – a fable where birds acting like people help to advise a female eagle whom to marry. (It was written for the marriage of Richard II with Anne of Bohemia, the daughter of Emperor Charles IV!)
CANTERBURY TALES (1387-1400) – unfinished collection of comic and moral stories – a masterpiece of narrative poetry
- pilgrims tell stories while traveling to a religious shrine in Canterbury – illusion that the individual
pilgrims tell the stories, rather than Chaucer, gave him freedom to explore various genres
(pious legend, fabliau, chivalric romance, beast fable)
31 pilgrims, the author among them, agree that each of them shall tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back to entertain the rest on the journey. All the pilgrims are vividly described in the Prologue. There are representatives of nearly all classes: a knight, nun, friar, lawyer, clerk of Oxford, merchant, miller, ploughman…

WILLIAM LANGLAND

• a great poet, poor priest, follower of John Wycliffe, a professor of Oxford University
• in his Latin works he attacked the secular spirit and wealth of the clergy
  THE VISION CONCERNING PIERS THE PLOWMAN – long poem about a series of visions he had as he slept by a brook in the Malvern Hills => the visions contain allegorical figures (e,g, Falsehood), and real people. They represent the society of the 14th century better than any chronicle

JOHN GOWER (poet, contemporary of Langland and friend of Chaucer)

• his primary mode of writing is allegory and his primary theme is morality
• wrote in French, Latin and English – 1 major work in each language
  CONFESSIO AMANTIS – in ENG – a 33'000-line poem dealing with courtly love – collection of tales
  VOX CLAMANTIS – in LAT – about Richard´s II suppression of the Peasant Revolt
  SPECULUM MEDITANTIS – in FRA – on religion and morality

THE PEARL POET (also known as the Gawain Poet) – contemporary of Langland, Chaucer and Gower

• the author of PEARL (religious allegory about a poet mourning the loss of a pearl (stands for his deceased 2-year-old daughter))
• also the author of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
• his poetry shows interest in technical vocabulary about hunting and the court => he shows the tendency to refer to legendary or mythological materials from the past (the Arthurian legends, stories from the Bible), uses some French words as well as words from Old Norse and Latin

DREAM VISION – a literary genre or device, in which the narrator falls asleep and dreams => in the dream there is usually a guide, who gives knowledge, often about religion or love, that the dreamer could not have learned otherwise. After awaking, the narrator usually decides to share this knowledge with other people
- EXAMPLES: Langland’s Piers Plowman, Chaucer’s The Parliament of Fowls

ALLEGORY – figurative mode conveying a meaning other than the literal
- it is a story, play, picture…, in which each character or event is a symbol representing and idea or a quality, such as truth, evil, death
- EXAMPLES: Langland’s Piers Plowman, Pearl

M.E. PROSE
JOHN WYCLIFFE

• a theologian – wrote most of his works in Latin => he was against the Roman Catholic church's control of the English church
• he and his followers (the Lollards) wrote some significant prose works => but because they were regarded by the
  Catholic church as heretics, most of their writings are anonymous
• from this time comes also the first English vernacular Bible translation

EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PROSE (12th & 13th ©)

• for more than a century after the Norman conquest, Old English prose continued without major changes
• the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was still popular
• English had to compete with French and Latin => English prose started to decline => it was written mainly for those who
  could read only English, especially women

LATER MIDDLE ENGLISH PROSE (15th ©)

• religious prose with Bible themes and principles of how to live a just life - religious texts in Latin were translated into ENG
• in the 15th century English prose became a more serious writing – several chronicles, political writings were written