SESSION 6 Middle English

THE MIDDLE AGES

1096

was launched in a series of holy wars that profoundly affected the ideology and culture of Christian Europe. Preached by Pope Urban II, the aim of the crusade was to unite warring Christian factions in the common goal of liberating the Holy Land from its Moslem rulers. The chronicle of Robert the Monk is one of several versions of Urban's address.

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1154

which for centuries had recorded the history of the English people, recorded its last entry. But, despite the shake-up the Normans had given English, it showed its resilience once again, and, two hundred years after the Norman Conquest, it was English not French that emerged as the language of England.

MIDDLE ENGLISH AFTER THE NORMANS

1167

The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded,and general literacy continued to increase over the succeeding centuries, although books were still copied by hand and therefore very expensive.

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1204

The English, of necessity, had become “Normanized”, but, over time, the Normans also became “Anglicized”, particularly when King John’s ineptness lost the French part of nobles were forced to look more to their English properties.

Norman Conquest

1204

The differences between these dialects became even more marked after the Norman invasion of Britain, particularly after King John and England lost the French part of Normandy to the King of France and England became even more isolated from continental Europe.

MIDDLE ENGLISH AFTER THE NORMANS

1209

Over time, the commercial and political influence of the East Midlands and London ensured that these dialects prevailed (London had been the largest city for some time, and became the Norman capital at the beginning of the 12th Century), and the other regional varieties came to be stigmatized as lacking social prestige and indicating a lack of education.

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1337

The Hundred Year War against France had the effect of branding French as the language of the enemy and the status of English rose as a consequence.

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1349

The Black Death, killed about a third of the English population (which was around 4 million at that time), including a disproportionate number of the Latin-speaking clergy.

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1350

The Black Death, After the plague, the English-speaking labouring and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance and, within the short period of a decade, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over.

THE MIDDLE AGES

1356

Edward, the Prince of Wales, who took the king of France prisoner at the battle of Poitiers, had culturally more in common with his royal captive than with the common people of England. And the legendary King Arthur was an international figure. Stories about him and his knights originated in Celtic poems and tales and were adapted and greatly expanded in Latin chronicles and French romances even before Arthur became an English hero.

THE MIDDLE AGES

1360

Chaucer was certainly familiar with poetry that had its roots in the Old English period. He read popular romances in Middle English, most of which derive from more sophisticated French and Italian sources. But when he began writing, he turned directly to French and Italian models as well as to classical poets (especially Ovid).

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1362

The Statute of Pleading, which made English the official language of the courts and Parliament (although, paradoxically, it was written in French).and in that same year Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English, a crucial psychological turning point.

THE MIDDLE AGES

1370

English poets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries looked upon Chaucer and his contemporary John Gower as founders of English literature, as those who made English a language fit for cultivated readers. In the Renaissance, Chaucer was referred to as the "English Homer." Spenser called him the "well of English undefiled."
Nevertheless, writing in the latter third of the fourteenth century — are heirs to classical and medieval cultures that had been evolving for many centuries.

THE MIDDLE AGES

1381

The tenth-century English Benedictine monk Aelfric gives one of the earliest formulations of the theory of three estates — clergy, nobles, and commoners — working harmoniously together. But the deep- seated resentment between the upper and lower estates flared up dramatically in the Uprising nd is revealed by the slogans of the rebels, which are cited here in selections from the chronicles of Henry Knighton.

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1385

English had become the language of instruction in schools.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST

1399

Anglo-Norman French became the language of the kings and nobility of England for more than 300 years (Henry IV, who came to the English throne, and was the first monarch since before the Conquest to have English as his mother tongue). While Anglo-Norman was the verbal language of the court, administration and culture, though, Latin was mostly used for written language,
especially by the Church and in official records.

RESURGENCE OF ENGLISH

1453

The Hundred Year War against France the effect of branding French as the language of the enemy and the status of English rose as a consequence.