Outside of Beowulf and a few fragments, the recording of Anglo-Saxon heroic story begins with a 9th century entry in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 755 (actually 757). To this can be added a few of the annals devoted to the combats of King Alfred’s son and grandsons in the tenth century. While not a Chronicle poem, The Battle of Maldon has a place in this range, if only as an inspired response to what otherwise the Chronicle (in the Canterbury and Peterborough manuscripts) records for 991 as ealdorman Byrthnoth’s death in battle at Maldon. Typically, guides, translations and readers introducing students to Old English texts highlight three of the stories from this range of years: the story of West Saxon feud are called Cynewulf and Cyneheard (chronicle entry 755), The Battle of Brunanburh, (entry for 937), and The Battle of Maldon (sometime after 991). Traditionally, and here all introductions in Old English readers follow suit, these narratives are seen as enshrining, in some literary intensified way, heroic values reflecting their ancient, Germanic roots.
Hence, the literature of the Old English period was not notable for its diversity of literature genres. The leading place was taken by heroic romances and religious writings. Obviously, heroes of the old times had no time to think of love as in ancient epic romances love did not play any important role. However, the situation considerably changed in the subsequent period [6; 8; 17; 28; 54].
1.2 Linguistic situation in Medieval England
1.2.1 Linguistic situation in England after the Norman Conquest
It hardly can be argued that the Norman Conquest was not only a great event in British political history but also the greatest single event in the history of the English language. Its earliest effect was a drastic change in the linguistic situation.
The Norman Conquerors of England had originally come from Scandinavia. About one hundred and fifty years before they seized the valley of the Scine and settled in what was known as Normandy. They were swiftly assimilated by the French and in the 11th century came to Britain as French speakers and bearers of French culture. They spoke the Northern dialect of French, which differed in some points from Central, Parisian French. Their tongue in Britain is often referred to as ‘Anglo-French’ or ‘Anglo-Norman’, but may just as well be called French, since we are less concerned here with the distinction of French dialects than with the continuous French influence upon English, both in the Norman period of history and a long while after the Anglo-Norman language had ceased to exist.
In the early 13th century, as a result of lengthy and inefficient wars with France King John Lackland lost the French provinces, including the dukedom of Normandy. Among other consequences the loss of the lands in France cut off the Normans in Britain from France, which speeded up the decline of the Anglo-French language.
The most immediate consequence of the Norman domination in Britain is to be seen in the wide use of the French language in many spheres of life. For almost three hundred years French was the official language of administration: it was the language of the king’s court, the law courts, the church, the army and the castle. It was also everyday language of many nobles, of the higher clergy and of many townspeople in the South. The intellectual life, literature and education were in the hands of French-speaking people; French, alongside Latin, was the language of writing. Teaching was largely conducted in French and boys at school were taught to translate their Latin into French instead of English [20; 28; 38].
As A. Baugh states, England never stopped being an English-speaking country. The bulk of the population held fast to their own tongue: the lower classes in the towns, and especially in the country-side, those who lived in the Midlands and up north, continued to speak English and looked upon French as foreign and hostile. Since most of the people were illiterate, the English language was almost exclusively used for spoken communication.
At first the two languages existed side by side without mingling. Then, slowly and quickly, they began to permeate each other. The Norman barons and the French town-dwellers had to pick up English words to make themselves understood while the English began to use French words in current speech. A good knowledge of French would mark a person of higher standing giving him a certain social prestige probably many people become bilingual and had a fair command of both languages [20].
Undoubtedly, these peculiar linguistic conditions could not remain static. The struggle between French and English was bound to end in the complete victory of English, for English was the living language of the entire people, while French was restricted to certain social spheres and to writing. Yet the final victory was still a long way off. In the 13th century only a few steps were made in that direction. The earliest sign of the official recognition of English by the Norman hinges was the famous Proclamation issued by Henry III in 1258 to the councilors in Parliament. It was written in three languages: French, Latin and English.
The three hundred years of the domination of French affected English more than any other foreign influence before or after. The early French borrowings reflect accurately the spheres of Norman influence upon English life; later borrowings can be attributed to the continued cultural, economic and political contacts between the countries. The French influence added new features to the regional and social differentiation of the language. New words, coming from French, could not be adopted simultaneously by all the speakers of English; they were first used in some varieties of the language, namely in the regional dialects of Southern England and in the speech if the upper classes, but were unknown in the other varieties of the language [4; 17; 18; 20].
1.2.2 Dialectal diversity of the Middle English
Apparently, in the Middle English period the language differed almost from county to county, and noticeable variations are sometimes observable between different parts of the same county. The features characteristic of a given dialect do not all cover the same territory; some extend into adjoining districts or may be characteristic also of another dialect. Consequently it is rather difficult to decide how many dialectal divisions should be recognized and to mark off with any exactness their respective boundaries. In a rough way, however, it is customary to distinguish four principal dialects of Middle English: Northern, East Midland, West Midland, and Southern. Generally speaking, the Northern dialect extends as far south as the Humber; East Midland and West Midland together cover the area between the Humber and the Thames; and Southern occupies the district south of the Thames, together with Gloucestershire and parts of the counties of Worcester and Hereford, thus taking in the West Saxon and Kentish districts of Old English. Throughout the Middle English period and later, Kentish preserves individual features marking it off as a distinct variety of Southern English (for counties see APPENDIX 1, p.67) [17; 20; 24].
Middle English Dialects are partly matters of pronunciation, partly of vocabulary, partly of inflection. A few illustrations will give some idea of the nature and extent of the differences. The feature most easily recognized is the ending of the plural, present indicative, of verbs. In Old English this form always ended in th with some variation of the preceding vowel. In Middle English this ending was preserved as eth in the Southern dialect. In the Midland district, however, it was replaced by en, probably taken over from the corresponding forms of the subjunctive or from preterit-present verbs and the verb to be while in the north it was altered to es, an ending that makes its appearance in Old English times. Thus we have loves in the north, loven in the Midlands, and loveth in the south. Another fairly distinctive form is the present participle before the spread of the ending -ing. In the north we have lovande, in the Midlands lovende, and in the south lovinde. In later Middle English the ending ing appears in the Midlands and the south, thus obscuring the dialectal distinction. Dialectal differences are more noticeable between Northern and Southern; the Midland dialect often occupies an intermediate position, tending toward the one or the other in those districts lying nearer to the adjacent dialects. Thus the characteristic forms of the pronoun they in the south were hi, here (hire, hure), hem, while in the north forms with th modern they, their, them early became predominant. In matters of pronunciation the Northern and Southern dialects sometimes presented notable differences. Thus OE ā, was retained in the north, giving such characteristic forms as Southern stone and home, beside stane and hame in Scotland today. Initial f and s were often voiced in the south to v and z. In Southern Middle English we find vor, vrom, vox, vorzoþe instead of for, from, fox, forsope ‘forsooth’. This dialectal difference is preserved in Modern English fox and vixen, where the former represents the Northern and Midland pronunciation and the latter the Southern. Similarly ch in the south often corresponds to k in the north: bench beside benk, church beside kirk. Such a variety fortunately was lessened toward the end of the Middle English period by a general adoption of a Standard written (and later spoken) English [10; 20; 45].
1.3 The Middle English corpus
It is commonly accepted that the Middle English period has a much richer documentation than is found in Old English. This is partly a result of the post-conquest political situation. The newly centralized monarchy commissioned national and local surveys, beginning with the Domesday Book and there is a marked increase in the number of public and private documents – mandates, charters, contracts, tax-rolls, and other administrative or judicial papers. However, the early material is of limited value to those interested in the linguistic history of English because it is largely written in Latin or French, and the only relevant data which can be extracted relate to English and personal names. Most religious publication falls into the same category, with Latin maintaining its presence throughout the period as the official language of the Church [7; 28; 40]
A major difference from Оld English is the absence of a continuing tradition of historical writing in the native language, as in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – a function which Latin supplanted, and which was not revived until the 15th century.
Material in English appears as a trickle in the 13th century, but within 150 years it has become a flood. In the early period, we can see a great deal of religious prose writing, in the form of homilies, tracts, lives of the Saints, and the other aids to devotion and meditation. Sometimes a text was written with a specific readership in mind; the Ancrene Rewle ‘Anchorites Guide’, for example, was compiled by a spiritual director for three noblewomen who had abandoned the world to live as anchoresses. During the 14th century, there is a marked increase in the number of translated writings from French and Latin, and of the texts for teaching these languages. Guild records, proclaims, proverbs, dialogues, allegories, and the letters illustrate the diverse range of new styles and genres. Towards the end of the century, the translations of the Bible inspired by John Wycliff appear amid considerable controversy, and the associated movement produces many manuscripts. Finally, in the 1430es, there is a vast output in English from the office of the London Chancery scribes, which strongly influenced the development of the standard written language [28; 44; 49].
Poetry presents a puzzle. The Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition apparently dies out in the 11th century, to reappear patchily in the 13th. A lengthy poetic history of Britain is known as Lagamon’s Brut as we have mentioned above, one of the earliest to survive from Middle English, and in the 14th century come the important texts of Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What is surprising in that the alliterative Old English style is still present in all these works, despite an apparent break in poetic continuity of at least a hundred years. The conundrum has generated much discussion. Perhaps the alliterative technique was retained though prose: several Middle English prose texts are strongly alliterative, and it is sometimes difficult to tell from a manuscript which genre (poetry or prose) a piece belongs to, because the line divisions are not shown. Perhaps the Old English style survived through the medium of oral transmission. Or perhaps it is simply that most poetic manuscripts have been lost. Middle English poetry was inevitably much influenced by French literary traditions, both in content and style. One of the earliest examples is the 13th century verse-contest known as The Owl and the Nightingale. Later works include romances in the French style, secular lyrics, bestiaries, biblical poetry, Christian legends, hymns, prayers and elegies [28; 35; 50].
The mystical dream vision popular in Italy and France, is well illustrated by the poem modern editors have called Pearl, in which the writer recalls the death of his two-year- old daughter, who then acts as his spiritual comforter. Drama also begins to make its presence felt, in the form of dialogues, pageants, and the famous cycles of mystery plays. Much of the Middle English literature is of unknown authorship, but the end of the period this situation has changed. Among the prominent names which emerge in the latter part of the 14th century are John Gower, William Langland, and some time later John Lydgate, Thomas Malory, William Caxton, and the poets who are collectively known as Chaucerians.
Rather than a somewhat random collection of interesting texts, there is now a major body of literature, in the modern sense. It is this which provides the final part of the bridge between Middle and Early Modern English.
The flourishing of literature, which marks the seconds half of the 14th century, apart from its cultural significance, testifies, to the complete reestablishment of English as the language of writing. Some authors wrote in their local dialect from outside London, but most of them used the London dialect or forms of the language combining London and provincial traits. Towards the end of the century the London dialect had become the principal type of language used in literature a sort of literary pattern to be imitated by provincial authors.
The literary text of the late 14th century preserved in numerous manuscripts, belong to a variety of genres. Translation continued, but original compositions were produced in abundance; poetry was more prolific than prose. This period of literary florescence is known as the “age of Chaucer”; the greatest name in English literature before William. Shakespeare other writers are referred to as “Chaucer’s contemporaries” [6; 11; 7; 28; 39].
1.3.1 Geoffrey Chaucer and his lending support of the London Standard’s diffusion
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) was by far the most outstanding figure of the time. A hundred years later William Caxton, the first English printer, called him the worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our language. In many books on the history of English literature and the history of English Chaucer is described as the founder of the literary language.
His early works more of less imitative of other authors – Latin, French or Italian – though they bear abundant evidence of his skill. He never wrote in any other language than English [28; 38].
However, it is not quite correct to consider his language as a basis for Standard English. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in a dialect which in the main coincided with that used in documents produced in London shortly before his time and for a long time after. Although he did not really create the literary language, as a poet of outstanding talent he made better use of it than contemporaries and set up two patterns to be followed in the 15th century. His poems were copied so many times that over sixty manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales have survived to this day. His books were among the first to be printed, a hundred years after their composition.
According to D. Crystal Chaucer’s literary language, based on the mixed (largely East Midland) London dialect is known as classical Middle English. In the 15th and 16th centuries it became the basis of the national literary English language.
The 15th century could produce nothing worthy to rank with Geoffrey Chaucer. The two prominent poets, Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, were chiefly translators and imitators. The style of Chaucer’s successors is believed to have drawn farther away from everyday speech; it was highly affected in character, abounding in abstract words and strongly influenced by Latin rhetoric, it is also termed aureate language) [28].
The importance of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work to any history of the language can be affirmed with some conviction. It is partly matter of a quantity – one complete edition prints over 43, 000 of a poetry, as well as two of a major prose works – but more crucial is the breadth and variety of his language, which ranges from the polished complexity of high flown rhetoric to the natural simplicity of domestic chat. No previous author has shown such a range, and Chaucer’s writing – in addition to its merits – is thus unique in the evidence it has provided about the state of medieval grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.