Middle English Period

Middle English PeriodSome Key Events and Features

Some Notes1100-1500CEAlmost at the end of the OE period the Normans invaded and conquered England far-reaching effects on English culture than the earlier Scandinavian incursionsMiddle English is framed at its beginning by the after-effects of the Norman Conquest of 1066at its end by the arrival in Britain of printing (in 1476) and by the important social and cultural impacts of the English Reformation (from the 1530s onwards) and of the ideas of the continental RenaissanceMajor Events in the MEng Period1100-1500CESome events in the MEng Period significantly influenced the development of the English Lg1066- Normans conquered Englandreplace native English nobility w/ Anglo-NormansNorman French becomes the lg of government in England

1204 - King John lost Normandy to the Frenchbegins the loosening of ties between England and the Continent1258 - King Henry IIIissued the first English-lg royal proclamation since the Conquestforced by his barons to accept the Provisions of Oxford (= established a Privy Council to oversee the administration of the government the growth of the English constitution and parliament begins )

1337 The Hundred Years War began and lasted until 1453promoted English nationalism

What Middle English sounded likeBook of the DuchessThe Canterbury Tales Prologue (Or this audio version)The Lords Prayer in Middle EnglishWho were the NormansThe Norman conquest carried out by NorthmenUnder the leadership of William the Conquererdefeated the English and their King Harrold at the Battle of hastings in 1066Harrold and his two brothers were killed in the battleThe NormansWilliam the Conqueror came not immediately from Scandinavia but from Francenorthern coast of France had been invaded and settled as recently as the 9th c by the vikings (around the same time that other vikings were invading the British Isles)Scandinavians who settled in France are commonly designated by an Old French form Northmen, i.e. NormansThe section of France that they settled and governed was called NormandyIn Grammar English came to rely less on inflectional endings and more on word order In more technical terms it became less synthetic and more analytic. Change was gradual, and has different outcomes in different regional varieties of Middle English the ultimate effects were huge: the grammar of English c.1500 was radically different from that of Old English.A brief overview of major changesGrammatical gender lost early in Middle English Range of inflections (particularly in nouns) was reduced drastically (partly as a result of reduction of vowels in unstressed final syllables)The number of distinct paradigms for nouns in most early Middle English texts most nouns have distinctive forms only for singular vs. plural, genitive, and occasional traces of the old dative in forms with final e occurring after a preposition.Verb plurals and infinitives still generally ended in en (at least in writing)Vocabulary English became much more heterogeneous, showing many borrowings from French, Latin, and Scandinavian. Large-scale borrowing of new words often had serious consequences for the meanings and the stylistic register of those words which survived from Old English. Eventually, various new stylistic layers emerged in the lexicon, which could be employed for a variety of different purposes.Contact with other LanguagesMany languages were spoken in Medieval Britain Celtic: English continued to be in contact with Celtic languages on many of the internal frontiers within the British Isles. Scandinavian: until their use of in mainland Britain died out (the precise date is uncertain)Latin and French Languages after the Norman ConquestBefore the Conquest vernacular English used in writing (rather than Latin) EnglandAfter the Norman Conquest England was trilingualFrench and Latin, not English used in a wide range of technical and official functions until very near the end of the Middle English period. French: the ruling elite in England, government, sometimes in churchLatin: predominates in most types of writing in the immediately post-Conquest period; main lg of the church English: became pushed out of its previous functions almost entirely; used by the majority of the countrys populationQuite soon afterwards a flowering of vernacular writing in a number of different text types and genres in French, not English

What French was used in Britain?What to call the French used in Britain in this period is a difficult scholarly question. Traditionally Anglo-Norman (e.g. in the title of The Anglo-Norman Dictionary) In fact, the present-day editors of that dictionary note that in many ways Anglo-French is a more appropriate term, since it better reflects the wide variety of inputs shown by the French used in medieval Britain.

Written English in the MEng PeriodUntil about the middle of the 14th century surviving written records for Middle English of any variety are patchy, and can be characterized as a number of more or less isolated islands of usageThis reflects the English of particular communities or even individuals who felt motivated, for various different reasons, to write something down in English. Some substantial literary textsthe Ormulum and the Ancrene Wissein a very few cases, we can identify mini-traditions of English writing; but what we do not have are clear, well-established, persistent traditions of writing in English (whether for literary or non-literary purposes) from which any sort of standard written variety could grow.Written English in the late MEng PeriodFrom the later 14th century the use of English increased in literary contexts and in a variety of different technical and official functions our records become more plentiful, especially for London, English began more and more to be the default choice for major (broadly metropolitan) literary writers such as, in the late fourteenthe.g. Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, (who still also wrote major poems in French and Latin), and (although his milieu was rather different), William Langland Also still substantial literary works from parts of the country far removed from London, and reflecting very distinct local varieties of English, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.Other texts in MEngIn this period religious writings in English become more and more commone.g. the first complete English translation of the Bible, the Wycliffite Bible, which emerged from the circle of followers of the reformer John Wyclif increasing numbers of scientific and medical texts also written in English. Latin and French and English!English came to share and eventually took over various functions from Latin and FrenchIn doing so, it was hugely influenced by these lgs --> word forms, their meanings, and the phrases and structures in which they were usedspeakers began using English to express technical matters which had previously been the domain of Latin or French ==> the vocabulary of fields such as law, government, business, and religion (among others) became filled with words of Latin or French origin

Variation, variation, variationThe majority of later Old English texts are written in a fairly uniform type of literary language, based on the West Saxon dialect. The linguistic forms used show considerable regularity, as do the spellings used to represent them.The Norman Conquest completely changed this situation (politically and culturally)people who chose to write in English in the early MEng period typically had to improvise (--> they had to find ways of representing a particular local variety of MEng in writing. they often had to draw upon spelling traditions that were more typically used in writing Latin or French. Variation reigns supreme Some groups of manuscripts show very similar language represented in very similar orthography, but this is rare.

The Later MEng PeriodIn later MEng --> spelling becomes more stablewe generally find more consistency in the strategies used for representing particular sounds in writing. BUT there is still a considerable degree of spelling variation, and this is still the rule rather than the exceptionit is quite typical to find the same word spelled in slightly different ways within a single page of a single manuscript. e.g. the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English records around 500 different spellings for through

Stillvariation!Our surviving late Middle English writings show:Variation in how to represent sounds in spellingA wide variety of different regional varieties of English. London its dialect became of increasing importance in official functions and in literary productionand many of the major late Middle English writers were based in or near the capitalBUT the real dominance of a metropolitan variety over all others in literary use comes only in the early modern period.

London EnglishLondon English of the late-14thc and 15thc showed a wide variety of inputs (a number of features from the central and east midlands figured strongly)It is in no way an interrupted continuation of the predominantly south-western Old English literary languagein many key respects it reflects the language of parts of the country for which we have little or no evidence from the Old English period.Still a great deal of variation within London English (in written and spoken forms)A number of Official documents were written in a language often referred to as Chancery English, which had a significant input into the practices of early modern English printersSurviving MEng DocumentsWe have much more surviving Middle English evidence than we have for Old EnglishStill far less than for the developing, London-based standard language of the 16thc and later.The information that we do have is patchy and uneven: we have a pretty good record for London and the surrounding area from about the end of the fourteenth century onwards, but for most parts of Britain throughout the MEng period we have only isolated flashes of evidence.

ChallengesOur surviving evidence for MEng interesting challenges The overwhelming majority of our information comes from hand-written manuscripts. From the last quarter of the 15thc onwards there are also printed books, and of course there is also some written text on coins, paintings, memorials, etc.) Manuscripts can present many difficult challenges for dating and interpretation.

The Texts and the ScribesModern work on the habits of medieval English scribes suggests that their behavior can be divided into three types:scribes who translate consistently into their own dialectscribes who copy more-or-less precisely, letter-for-letter, from their exemplarscribes who translate only partially, replacing some words or forms with those from their own dialect, but leaving others unchangedThe surviving manuscripts sometimes stand at the end of a long chain of copying, in which successive scribes may have adopted different approaches, the possible permutations become very complex indeed.