The Middle English period is essentially a transitional period in the history of the English language
between the basically Germanic character of OLD
ENGLISH and the language of the earliest printed
books that record what is essentially modern English in the early 16th century. It was a period of
tremendous change in the language, sparked by developments that had begun in late Old English
times (particularly the influence of Old Norse) and
new, cataclysmic transformations brought by the
Norman Conquest of 1066. It was also a period of
tremendous variety of creative activity in literature,
as writers drew from the influence of French and
Latin texts as well as from the old native tradition.
When considering anything as fluid as the history of a language, precise dates separating one
“period” from another must be somewhat arbitrary. However, when William the Conqueror, the
duke of Normandy, defeated Harold, the last
Anglo-Saxon king, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066
and brought to England a new French-speaking
noble class, it began a period of significant developments in the language of the conquered English.
A huge influx of French vocabulary was the most
obvious direct result of the conquest. The grammar of English also underwent major changes,
when the vowels of unstressed final syllables—
whether a, e, o, or u—all came to be pronounced in
the same way, as an unstressed schwa ( ). Thus the
distinct inflections of Old English were lost, and
ultimately inflected endings disappeared almost
completely in Middle English, leaving a number
of words with an unstressed final –e. English became a language that depended more on word
order and function words like prepositions than
on word endings or inflections, as it had in the Old
English period. Other extensive changes occurred
in pronunciation: A process known as the “Great
Vowel Shift” took place at the end of the Middle
English period, through which the vowels of English lost their former “European” pronunciation,
and came to be pronounced as we say them in
modern English. By the time the Middle English
period ended—after the Tudor monarchs established a strong central government and William
CAXTON had brought the printing press to England
in the late 15th century—the language would have
been unrecognizable to King Harold.
After the Norman Conquest, England was in effect a trilingual country, with the nobility speaking
their dialect of French (called Anglo-Norman), the
clergy speaking the Latin characteristic of the medieval church, and the common people speaking
English. Since for the most part the nobility and the
clergy were the literate classes, written literature in
English all but disappeared for some time, though a
native English literary tradition must have been
kept alive orally. A few English texts appear in the
13th century, but the 14th century saw a great outpouring of literary texts in English. By this time, the
Hundred Years’ War (begun in 1337) was loosening
the English ties to France and creating more of a
sense of English nationalism, so that by the early
14th century, most of the noble class was bilingual,
and by mid-century children of the nobility and the
merchant class were studying French as a second
language. The BLACK DEATH, which killed nearly half
the English population, created a labor shortage that
the nobles tried to counter by keeping wages at preplague levels, ultimately causing the PEASANTS’ REVOLT of 1381. International trade was increasing at
the same time, giving the merchant class more income and therefore more power, and King EDWARD
III, to fund his French war, found himself having to
negotiate with the House of Commons to enact
taxes—and addressing Parliament in English by
1363. The reformer John WYCLIFFE, questioning
some of the secular powers of the church in a manner that foreshadowed the Protestant Reformation,
was responsible for an English translation of the
Bible by 1384.
The time was ripe, therefore, for an upsurge of
literature written in English. At the court, Geoffrey CHAUCER (ca. 1342–1400), the most important
and influential poet in medieval England, established English as a courtly language, writing at first
in imitation of French poets like Guillaume de
MACHAUT and JEAN DE MEUN, but later influenced
by the great Italian poets of the 14th century—
DANTE, PETRARCH, and especially BOCCACCIO, who
inspired Chaucer’s great love story TROILUS AND
CRISEYDE (1385). Chaucer’s friend John GOWER (ca.
1330–ca. 1408), whose first two major poems had
been in Latin and in French, chose to write his
CONFESSIO AMANTIS in English, in part at least because of Chaucer’s success in the medium. The influence of Chaucer and of Gower on poets of the
15th century was profound and enduring, so that
John LYDGATE and Thomas HOCCLEVE, for example, are to a large extent imitators of Chaucerian
verse, and the “Scottish Chaucerians” like HENNRYSON and DUNBAR, though more admired by
modern readers, are no less inspired by the court
poetry of Chaucer and Gower.
The theme of COURTLY LOVE apparent in
Chaucer’s Troilus was one of the most important
general influences on Middle English literature. A
significant number of ROMANCES, usually dealing
with a knight who proves himself worthy of his
beloved by accomplishing a quest of some kind,
often to save his lady, abound in Middle English
literature. Some of these texts may have been written for the provincial courts of English-speaking
nobles; others (in particular those called TAILRHYME ROMANCES) were part of the repertoire of
traveling MINSTRELS, and so may have been intended for a middle-class audience. Many such romances are concerned with the court of King
ARTHUR, and often have the traditional English
hero GAWAIN as their protagonist, rather than a
French knight like Sir LANCELOT. Ultimately these
romances culminate in the late 15th-century text
of Le MORTE DARTHUR by the knight Thomas MALORY (and published by Caxton in 1485), though for
the most part Malory relied on French sources for
his definitive compilation of the medieval legend
of King Arthur.
One of the most significant literary developments of the late 14th century was the phenomenon known as the ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL: a
movement in the west and north of England to
create poetry in the old Anglo-Saxon style of ALLITERATIVE VERSE—a tradition that must have been
kept alive orally through the years. Some of these
texts also dealt with Arthurian subjects, like the ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE, a poem on the tragic
downfall of Arthur that was one of Malory’s
sources. William LANGLAND’s PIERS PLOWMAN,
which exists in three versions and scores of manuscripts, was the most popular of all these texts: It is
a poetic ALLEGORY that ranges across the social and
religious landscape of the late 14th century and depicts the turmoil of Langland’s society. But generally the most admired poet of the alliterative
revival is the “Pearl poet,” author of the four poems
of the Cotton Nero A.x. manuscript (including SIR
GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT and PEARL). The
poet’s technical virtuosity, brilliant detail, and thematic emphasis on “courtesy” in both its chivalric
and moral senses make this author the alliterative
poet most admired among modern readers.
It is essential to remember that religion, specifically the Roman Catholic Church, was at the center of people’s lives throughout the Middle English
period, and that the majority of writers were in
some way connected professionally with the
church. Therefore much of the literature from this
period is religious in tone and substance. The middle to late 14th century was a period of flowering
for the English mystical tradition, and a number of
mystical writers flourished during this time, including Richard ROLLE, Walter HILTON, JULIAN OF
NORWICH (the first known woman writer in the
English language), and the anonymous author of
the treatise The CLOUD OF UNKNOWING. Margery
KEMPE, the author (or narrator) of the first autobiography in English, was also active at this time
(late 14th and early 15th centuries) and speaks of
herself as a mystic. The cycle of MYSTERY PLAYS, produced by craft guilds for the common citizens of
English cities in the late 14th and 15th centuries,
were also religious in intent, depicting the story of
human salvation from Creation to Doomsday.
MORALITY PLAYS, more likely professional dramatic
productions, were concerned with salvation within
the individual human psyche, and were often presented in the form of an allegorical PSYCHOMACHIA.
These dramatic productions formed the foundation from which developed the great English dramatic tradition of the Renaissance.
There were five dialects of Middle English:
Northern (spoken north of the Humber River), East
Midland (the area that included East Anglia, Essex,
and bordering areas to the west), West Midland (essentially the western half of what had been called
Mercia in Old English times), Southern (corresponding to ALFRED THE GREAT’s kingdom of Wessex),
and Kentish. The reader of Middle English literature
will note that Middle English authors all wrote in
their own dialects, so that, for example, Langland
and the Pearl poet write in the West Midland dialect, while John BARBOUR, author of The BRUCE,
writes in a distinctly Northern dialect. The author of
the ANCRENE WISSE composes in a Southern dialect,
while Dan Michel of Northgate’s AYENBITE OF INWYT
is in Kentish. The so-called “London standard”—
the East Midland dialect—did not become standard
English until the end of the Middle English period,
probably because it was the language of the country’s largest population center, of the center of government, and of the two major seats of higher
learning (Oxford and Cambridge). The fact that
Chaucer, the greatest writer in the language, had
written in the East Midland dialect was probably
no coincidence.
Bibliography
Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed.
Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987.
Burrow, J. A., and Thorlac Turville-Petre. A Book of
Middle English. 3rd ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell,
2004.
Dalrymple, Roger. Middle English Literature: A Guide
to Criticism. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004.
Horobin, Simon, and Jeremy Smith. An Introduction
to Middle English. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
Iglesias-Rabade, Luis. Handbook of Middle English.
Munich: Lincom, 2003.
Lambdin, Laura Cooner, and Robert Thomas Lambdin. A Companion to Old and Middle English.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Machan, Tim William. English in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.