One Age, Three Different Literatures; Medieval Age

The Middle Ages

The middle Ages is somewhere between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance and Reformation. The adjective “medieval,” coined from Latin medium (middle) and aevum (age), refers to whatever was made, written, or thought during the Middle Ages.  Medieval authors, of course did not think of themselves as living in the ‘middle’.  The date 1485, the year of the accession of Henry VII  and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, is to mark  the end of the Middle Ages in England. This period was one of enormous historical, social, and linguistic change. The period might be divided into three primary sections;

1. Anglo-Saxon Literature
2. Anglo-Norman Literature
3. Middle English Literature in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.

Around the 450, The Anglo-Saxon invaders, who began their conquest of the south eastern part of Britain and the spoke an early form of the language that we call OLD ENGLISH, now. This language and the words which is used in the works, are clearly related its kinship with other Germanic languages (German or Dutch etc.)  Old -Saxon poems was transliterated into the West Saxon dialect of Old English. In form and content, Old English literature is so like the Germanic literature which is based on the concept of heroism as well as Christian stories. Moreover, for instance, in Beowulf which is the oldest of the great long poems written in English, the major characters in Beowulf are pagan Danes and Geats, and the only connection to England is obscure allusion to the ancestor of one of the kings of the Angles.

With the Norman Conquest,1066, the language and the culture of Anglo- Saxon England were greatly accelerated. When you analyse or when you read the some works of that period, you can easily see a vast number of French words are used.  In the twelfth century, there was a legendary hero who fascinated to the all Europe. He is, of course, King Arthur who makes his earliest appearances in Celtic literature. King Arthur and his knights became a staple subject of medieval French, English, and German literature. Literature in English was both performed orally and written throughout the Middle Ages. There was a war between the Edward III and the throne of the France. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, English finally began to displace French as the language for conducting business in Parliament and much official correspondence. Some of the high nobility continued to speak French by preference and they were regarded as the bilingual, and some of the Norman kings didn’t know the English at all.  Thus,

(Manuscript illimunation of pilgrims leaving Canterburry, ca. 1420)

Chaucer’s works were greatly to enhance the prestige of English as a vehicle for literature of high ambition. He was acclaimed by fifteenth- century poets as the embellisher of the English tongue; later writers called him the English Homer and the father of the English poetry.

The last and longest one  of the three primary sections, Middle English Literature.( 14^th and 15^th century) It is not only a chronological and linguistic division but implies a new sense of English as a literary medium that could compete with French and Latin in elegance and seriousness.

Book production throughout the medieval period was an expensive process. Until the invention of movable type, medieval books were reproduced by hand in manuscripts. These manuscripts were written on carefully prepared animal (usually calf or sheep) skin, known as parchment or vellum.

Texts in Old English, Early Middle English, the more difficult texts in later Middle English (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman).  Chaucer and the other Middle English works may be read in the original, even by the beginner, with the help of marginal glosses and notes. These texts have been spelled in a way that is intended to aid the reader.

The Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful Feelings