EARLY AND MIDDLE ENGLISH

LITERATURE CA 700–1480

Malik Inna
■ The Norman Conquest worked no immediate transformation on
either the language or the literature of the English. Older poetry
 continued to be copied during the last half of the 11th century;
two poems of the early 12th century—“Durham,” which praises
that city’s cathedral and its relics, and “Instructions for
Christians,” a didactic piece—show that correct alliterative verse
 could be composed well after 1066. But even before the
conquest, rhyme had begun to supplant rather than supplement 
alliteration in some poems, which continued to use the older
four-stress line, although their rhythms varied from the set types
used in classical Old English verse. A postconquest example is
“The Grave,” which contains several rhyming lines; a poem
from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the death of William the
Conqueror, lamenting his cruelty and greed, has more rhyme
than alliteration.
■ By the end of the 12th century, English poetry had been so heavily influenced by French
models that such a work as the long epic Brut (c. 1200) by Lawamon, a Worcestershire priest,
seems archaic for mixing alliterative lines with rhyming couplets while generally eschewing
 French vocabulary. The Brut draws mainly upon Wace’s Anglo-Norman Roman de
Brut (1155; based in turn upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae [History
of the Kings of Britain]), but in Lawamon’s hands the Arthurian story takes on a Germanic
and heroic flavour largely missing in Wace. The Brut exists in two manuscripts, one written
shortly after 1200 and the other some 50 years later. That the later version has been
extensively modernized and somewhat abridged suggests the speed with which English
language and literary tastes were changing in this period. The Proverbs of Alfred was written
somewhat earlier, in the late 12th century; these proverbs deliver conventional wisdom in a
mixture of rhymed couplets and alliterative lines, and it is hardly likely that any of the
material they contain actually originated with the king whose wisdom they celebrate. The
early 13th-century Bestiary mixes alliterative lines, three- and four-stress couplets, and
septenary (heptameter) lines, but the logic behind this mix is more obvious than in
the Brut and the Proverbs, for the poet was imitating the varied metres of his Latin source.
More regular in form than these poems is the anonymous Poema morale in septenary
couplets, in which an old man delivers a dose of moral advice to his presumably younger
audience.
■ By far the most brilliant poem of this period is The Owl and the
Nightingale (written after 1189), an example of the popular
debate genre. The two birds argue topics ranging from their
hygienic habits, looks, and songs to marriage, prognostication, and
the proper modes of worship. The nightingale stands for the
joyous aspects of life, the owl for the sombre; there is no clear
winner, but the debate ends as the birds go off to state their cases
to one Nicholas of Guildford, a wise man. The poem is learned in
the clerical tradition but wears its learning lightly as the disputants
speak in colloquial and sometimes earthy language. Like
the Poema morale, The Owl and the Nightingale is metrically
regular (octosyllabic couplets), but it uses the French metre with
an assurance unusual in so early a poem.
 Didactic poetry
■ The 13th century saw a rise in the popularity of long didactic poems presenting biblical narrative,
saints’ lives, or moral instruction for those untutored in Latin or French. The most idiosyncratic of
these is the Ormulum by Orm, an Augustinian canon in the north of England. Written in some
20,000 lines arranged in unrhymed but metrically rigid couplets, the work is interesting mainly in
that the manuscript that preserves it is Orm’s autograph and shows his somewhat fussy efforts to
reform and regularize English spelling. Other biblical paraphrases are Genesis and Exodus, Jacob
and Joseph, and the vast Cursor mundi, whose subject, as its title suggests, is the history of the
world. An especially popular work was the South English Legendary, which began as a
miscellaneous collection of saints’ lives but was expanded by later redactors and rearranged in the
order of the church calendar. The didactic tradition continued into the 14th century with Robert
Mannyng’s Handling Sin, a confessional manual whose expected dryness is relieved by the
insertion of lively narratives, and the Prick of Conscience, a popular summary of theology
sometimes attributed to the mystic Richard Rolle.
 Verse romance

■ The earliest examples of verse romance, a genre that would remain popular through the Middle Ages, appeared in the
13th century. King Horn and Floris and Blauncheflour both are preserved in a manuscript of about 1250. King Horn,
oddly written in short two- and three-stress lines, is a vigorous tale of a kingdom lost and regained, with a subplot
concerning Horn’s love for Princess Rymenhild. Floris and Blauncheflour is more exotic, being the tale of a pair of
royal lovers who become separated and, after various adventures in eastern lands, reunited. Not much later than these
is The Lay of Havelok the Dane, a tale of princely love and adventure similar to King Horn but more competently
executed. Many more such romances were produced in the 14th century. Popular subgenres were “the matter of
Britain” (Arthurian romances such as Of Arthour and of Merlin and Ywain and Gawain), “the matter of Troy” (tales
of antiquity such as The Siege of Troy and King Alisaunder), and the English Breton lays (stories of otherworldly
magic, such as Lai le Freine and Sir Orfeo, modeled after those of professional Breton storytellers). These relatively
unsophisticated works were written for a bourgeois audience, and the manuscripts that preserve them are early
examples of commercial book production. The humorous beast epic makes its first appearance in Britain in the 13th
century with The Fox and the Wolf, taken indirectly from the Old French Roman de Renart. In the same manuscript
with this work is Dame Sirith, the earliest English fabliau. Another sort of humour is found in The Land of
Cockaygne, which depicts a utopia better than heaven, where rivers run with milk, honey, and wine, geese fly about
already roasted, and monks hunt with hawks and dance with nuns.
 The lyric
■ The lyric was virtually unknown to Old English poets. Poems such as “Deor” and “Wulf and Eadwacer,” which have
been called lyrics, are thematically different from those that began to circulate orally in the 12th century and to be
written down in great numbers in the 13th; these Old English poems also have a stronger narrative component than
the later productions. The most frequent topics in the Middle English secular lyric are springtime and romantic love;
many rework such themes tediously, but some, such as “Foweles in the frith” (13th century) and “Ich am of
Irlaunde” (14th century), convey strong emotions in a few lines. Two lyrics of the early 13th century, “Mirie it is
while sumer ilast” and “Sumer is icumen in,” are preserved with musical settings, and probably most of the others
were meant to be sung. The dominant mood of the religious lyrics is passionate: the poets sorrow for Christ on the
cross and for the Virgin Mary, celebrate the “five joys” of Mary, and import language from love poetry to express
religious devotion. Excellent early examples are “Nou goth sonne under wod” and “Stond wel, moder, ounder rode.”
Many of the lyrics are preserved in manuscript anthologies, of which the best is British Library manuscript Harley
2253 from the early 14th century. In this collection, known as the Harley Lyrics, the love poems, such as “Alysoun”
and “Blow, Northern Wind,” take after the poems of the Provençal troubadours but are less formal, less abstract, and
more lively. The religious lyrics also are of high quality; but the most remarkable of the Harley Lyrics, “The Man in
the Moon,” far from being about love or religion, imagines the man in the Moon as a simple peasant, sympathizes
with his hard life, and offers him some useful advice on how to best the village hayward (a local officer in charge of
a town’s common herd of cattle).
■ A poem such as “The Man in the Moon” serves as a reminder that, although the poetry of the early Middle English
period was increasingly influenced by the Anglo-Norman literature produced for the courts, it is seldom “courtly.”
Most English poets, whether writing about kings or peasants, looked at life from a bourgeois perspective. If their
work sometimes lacks sophistication, it nevertheless has a vitality that comes from preoccupation with daily affairs.
 Prose
■ Old English prose texts were copied for more than a century after the Norman Conquest; the homilies of Aelfric were especially popular, and King  
Alfred’s translations of Boethius and Augustine survive only in 12th-century manuscripts. In the early 13th century an anonymous worker at Worcester
supplied glosses to certain words in a number of Old English manuscripts, which demonstrates that by this time the older language was beginning to pose
difficulties for readers.
■ The composition of English prose also continued without interruption. Two manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle exhibit very strong prose for years
after the conquest, and one of these, the Peterborough Chronicle, continues to 1154. Two manuscripts of about 1200 contain 12th-century sermons, and
another has the workmanlike compilation Vices and Virtues, composed about 1200. But the English language faced stiff competition from both Anglo-
Norman (the insular dialect of French being used increasingly in the monasteries) and Latin, a language intelligible to speakers of both English and
French. It was inevitable, then, that the production of English prose should decline in quantity, if not in quality. The great prose works of this period were
composed mainly for those who could read only English—women especially. In the West Midlands the Old English alliterative prose tradition remained
very much alive into the 13th century, when the several texts known collectively as the Katherine Group were written. St. Katherine, St. Margaret, and St.
Juliana, found together in a single manuscript, have rhythms strongly reminiscent of those of Aelfric and Wulfstan. So to a lesser extent do Hali
Meithhad (“Holy Maidenhood”) and Sawles Warde (“The Guardianship of the Soul”) from the same book, but newer influences can be seen in these
works as well: as the title of another devotional piece, The Wohunge of Ure Lauerd (“The Wooing of Our Lord”), suggests, the prose of this time often has
a rapturous, even sensual flavour, and, like the poetry, it frequently employs the language of love to express religious fervour.
■ Further removed from the Old English prose tradition, though often associated with the Katherine Group, is the Ancrene Wisse (“Guide for Anchoresses,”
also known as the Ancrene Riwle, or “Rule for Anchoresses”), a manual for the guidance of women recluses outside the regular orders. This anonymous
work, which was translated into French and Latin and remained popular until the 16th century, is notable for its humanity, practicality, and insight into  
human nature but even more for its brilliant style. Like the other prose of its time, it uses alliteration as ornament, but it is more indebted to new fashions
in preaching, which had originated in the universities, than to native traditions. With its richly figurative language, rhetorically crafted sentences, and
carefully logical divisions and subdivisions, it manages to achieve in English the effects that such contemporary writers as John of Salisbury and Walter
Map were striving for in Latin. Little noteworthy prose was written in the late 13th century. In the early 14th century Dan Michel of Northgate produced
in Kentish the Ayenbite of Inwit (“Prick of Conscience”), a translation from French. But the best prose of this time is by the mystic Richard Rolle, the
hermit of Hampole, whose English tracts include The Commandment, Meditations on the Passion, and The Form of Perfect Living, among others. His
intense and stylized prose was among the most popular of the 14th century and inspired such later works as Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Julian of
Norwich’s Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, and the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing.
G. Chaucer’s life and works.
■ Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The
Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was
the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame
as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He
maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
■ Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and 
Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary
languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the
firste fyndere of our fair langage". Almost two thousand English words are first attested to in Chaucerian manuscripts.
■  
■ Chaucer was born in London most likely in the early 1340s (by some accounts, including his monument, he was born in 1343),
though the precise date and location remain unknown. The Chaucer family offers an extraordinary example of upward mobility.
His great-grandfather was a tavern keeper, his grandfather worked as a purveyor of wines, and his father John Chaucer rose to
become an important wine merchant with a royal appointment. Several previous generations of Geoffrey Chaucer's family had
been vintners and merchants in Ipswich. His family name is derived from the French chaucier, once thought to mean
'shoemaker', but now known to mean a maker of hose or leggings.
■ In 1324, his father John Chaucer was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the 12-year-old to her daughter in an
attempt to keep the property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and fined £250, now equivalent to about £200,000, which
suggests that the family was financially secure.
■ John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who inherited properties in 1349, including 24 shops in London from her uncle Hamo de
Copton, who is described in a will dated 3 April 1354 and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer", said to be a moneyer at
the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum
Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie, which translates as: "Geoffrey Chaucer, son of the vintner John
Chaucer, London".
■ While records concerning the lives of his contemporaries William Langland and the Gawain Poet are practically non-existent, since Chaucer was a
public servant his official life is very well documented, with nearly five hundred written items testifying to his career. The first of the "Chaucer Life
Records" appears in 1357, in the household accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster, when he became the noblewoman's page through
his father's connections, a common medieval form of apprenticeship for boys into knighthood or prestige appointments. The countess was married to 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of the king, Edward III, and the position brought the teenage Chaucer into the close court circle,
where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for the king from 1389
to 1391 as Clerk of the King's Works.
■ In 1359, the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, Edward III invaded France and Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence,
Elizabeth's husband, as part of the English army. In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims. Edward paid £16 for his ransom, a
considerable sum equivalent to £12,261 in 2021, and Chaucer was released.
■  
■ After this, Chaucer's life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain, and Flanders, possibly as a messenger and perhaps even going
on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa (de) Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward III's queen, 
Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford, who later (c. 1396) became the third wife of John of Gaunt. It is uncertain how many
children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited. His son, Thomas Chaucer, had an illustrious career, as chief butler to
four kings, envoy to France, and Speaker of the House of Commons. Thomas's daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk. Thomas's great-grandson
(Geoffrey's great-great-grandson), John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed.
Geoffrey's other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey, Agnes, an attendant at Henry IV's coronation; and another
son, Lewis Chaucer. Chaucer's "Treatise on the Astrolabe" was written for Lewis.
■ According to tradition, Chaucer studied law in the Inner Temple (an Inn of Court) at this time. He became a member of the royal court of Edward III
as a valet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail a wide variety of tasks. His wife also received a pension for
court employment. He travelled abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet. In 1368, he may have attended the wedding of  Lionel
of Antwerp to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, in Milan. Two other literary stars of the era were in attendance: Jean Froissart and 
Petrarch. Around this time, Chaucer is believed to have written The Book of the Duchess in honour of Blanche of Lancaster, the late wife of John of
Gaunt, who died in 1369 of the plague.
■ Chaucer travelled to Picardy the next year as part of a military expedition; in 1373 he visited Genoa and Florence. Numerous scholars such as Skeat,
Boitani, and Rowland suggested that, on this Italian trip, he came into contact with Petrarch or Boccaccio. They introduced him to medieval Italian
poetry, the forms and stories of which he would use later. The purposes of a voyage in 1377 are mysterious, as details within the historical record
conflict. Later documents suggest it was a mission, along with Jean Froissart, to arrange a marriage between the future King  Richard II and a French
princess, thereby ending the Hundred Years' War. If this was the purpose of their trip, they seem to have been unsuccessful, as no wedding occurred.
 Literature works
■ Chaucer's first major work was The Book of the Duchess, an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster who died in 1368.
Two other early works were Anelida and Arcite and The House of Fame. He wrote many of his major works
in a prolific period when he held the job of customs comptroller for London (1374 to 1386). His 
Parlement of Foules, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde all date from this time. It is
believed that he started The Canterbury Tales in the 1380s.
■ Chaucer also translated Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose by 
Guillaume de Lorris (extended by Jean de Meun). Eustache Deschamps called himself a "nettle in Chaucer's
garden of poetry". In 1385, Thomas Usk made glowing mention of Chaucer, and John Gower also lauded
him.
■ Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe describes the form and use of the astrolabe in detail and is sometimes
cited as the first example of technical writing in the English .language, and it indicates that Chaucer was
versed in science in addition to his literary talents. The equatorie of the planetis is a scientific work similar to
the Treatise and sometimes ascribed to Chaucer because of its language and handwriting, an identification
which scholars no longer deem tenable.