2. Comment briefly upon the style of the following prose extract. How does it compare with modern English prose?

t

books. God loveth good deeds and

will have them at our hands [of us].

ELFRIC, Introduction to the Old Testament

3. What appears to you to be the reasons why in Old English poetry appears before prose?

4. Mention some of the effects of translation upon both the poetry and the prose of the Old English.

5. "Old English prose is much nearer modern English prose than Old English poetry is to modern English poetry." Discuss this statement.

CHAPTER II

THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1050-1350)

The extensive period covered by this chapter saw many developments in the history of England: the establishment of Norman and Angevin dynasties; the class-struggle between king, nobles, clergy, and people; and the numerous wars against France, Scotland, and Wales. But, from the literary point of view, much more important than definite events were the general movements of the times: the rise of the religious orders, their early enthusiasm, and their subsequent decay; the blossoming of chivalry and the spirit ? of romance, bringing new sympathy for the poor and for womankind; the Crusades, and the widening of the European outlook which was gradually to expand into the rebirth of the intellect known as the Renaissance. All these were only symptoms of a growing intelligence that was strongly reflected in the literature of the time.

STATE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

This period witnesses the disappearance of the pure Old English language and the emergence of the mixed AngloFrench or Middle English speech that was to be the parent of modern English. As a written language Old English disappears about 1050, and, also as a written language, Middle English first appears about the year 1200. With the appearance of the Brut about 1200 we have the beginning of the numerous Middle English texts, amply illustrating the changes that have been wrought in the interval: the loss of a great part of the Old English vocabulary; a great and growing inrush of French words; the confusion, crumbling, and ultimate loss of most of the old inflections;

and the development of the dialects. There are three main dialects in Middle English: the Northern, corresponding to the older Northumbrian; the Midland, corresponding to Mercian; and the Southern, corresponding to the Old English Kentish or Southern. None of the three can claim the superiority until late in the period, when the Midland gradually assumes a slight predominance that is strongly accentuated in the period following.

LITERARY FEATURES OF THE AGE

The latter part of the three hundred years now under review provides a large amount of interesting, important, and sometimes delightful works. It is, however, the general features that count for most, for there is hardly anything of outstanding individual importance.

1. The Transition. The period is one of transition and experiment. The old poetical methods are vanishing, and the poets are groping after a new system. English poets had two models to follow-the French and the Latin, which were not entirely independent of each other. For a time, early in the period, the French and Latin methods weighed heavily upon English literature; but gradually the more typically native features, such as the systematic use of alliteration, emerge. It is likely that all the while oral tradition had preserved the ancient methods in popular songs, but that influence was slight for a long period after the Norman Conquest.

2. The anonymous nature of the writing is still strongly in evidence. A large proportion of the works are entirely without known authors; most of the authors whose names appear are names only; there is indeed only one, the Hermit of Hampole, about whom we have any definite biographical detail. There is an entire absence of any outstanding literary personality.

3. The Domination of Poetry. The great bulk of the surviving material is poetry, which is used for many kinds of miscellaneous work, such as history, geography, divinity,

and rudimentary science. Most of the work is monastic hack-work, and much of it is in consequence of little merit. Compared with poetry of the period, the prose is meager in quantity and undeveloped in style. The common medium of the time was Latin and French, and English prose was starved. Nearly all the prose consists of homilies, of the nature of the Ancren Riwle; and most of them are servile translations from Latin, and destitute of individual style.

POETRY

For the sake of convenience we can classify the different poems into three groups, according to the nature of their subjects.

1. The Rhyming Chronicles. During this period there is an unusual abundance of chronicles in verse. They are distinguished by their ingenuous use of incredible stories, the copiousness of their invention, and in no small number of cases by the vivacity of their style.

(a) The Brut. This poem was written by a certain Layamon about the year 1205. We gather a few details about the author in a brief prologue to the poem itself. He seems to have been a monk in Gloucestershire; his language certainly is of a nature that corresponds closely to the dialect of that district. The work, thirty thousand lines in length, is a paraphrase and expansion of the AngloNorman Brut d'Angleterre of Wace, who in turn simply translated from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin history of Britain. In the Brut the founder of the British race is Brutus, great-grandson of Æneas of Troy. Brutus lands in England, founds London, and becomes the progenitor of the earliest line of British kings. In style the poem is often lifeless, though it has a naïve simplicity that is attractive. The form of the work, however, is invaluable as marking the transition from the Old English to the Middle English method.

Alliteration, the basis of the earlier types, survives in a casual manner; at irregular intervals there are rudely

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