Middle English literary works

ME literature is extremely rich and varied. We find here the most different kinds and genres represented, both in verse and in prose.

In verse, there is, in the 13th century the religiouspoem Ormulum, named after its author the monk Orm, who at great length retells in popular style events of Bible and Gospel history, addressing his narration to his brother, also a monk.

About the same time another monk, Layamon, composed a long poem, Brut, on the early history of Britain. This was partly a translation, or paraphrase, of Wace’s Anglo-Norman poem Brut, and Layamon used some other sources. The origins of the Britons are traced back to Troy and the flight of some Trojans after its fall.

The anonymous poems of King Horn and Havelok tell the stories of young Scandinavian princes, who are deprived of their rights by their enemies but eventually, regain their throne and reign happily.

Then we must mention a series of moralistic poems, such as Handlyng Synne (Manual of Sins), by Robert Mannyng of Brunne, a paraphrase of the French original; Ayenbyt Of Invyt (Remorse of Conscience) by Dan Michel, also adaptation of a French original; The Prick Of Conscience by Richard Rolle de Hampole, and others.

Next comes a series of Romances – the stories about knights and their heroic deeds. These are very numerous, all of them anonymous, and some of first class artistic value, notably the famous stories of Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight; Sir Fyrumbras, the Distruction of Troy, etc.

There are several historical chronicles, such as Robert of Gloucester‘s Rhymed Chronicle, Barbour‘s Bruce, etc.

Invaluable documents of the spoken language of the time are the various collections of Miracle Plays, such as the Towneley Plays, the York Plays, and the Chester Plays.

In addition, of course we must mention the famous Vision Concerning Piers the Plowman by William Langland, a 14th century picture of the social conditions in the country, invaluable as a historical document. And we close this enumeration by the two great names of John Gower, author of the long poem Confessio Amantis (besides Latin and French works), and the greatest of all, Geoffrey Chaucer, author of Troilus and Criseide, The Canterbury Tales, and a number of other poems.

As far as the prose goes, there is perhaps less variety and no prose fiction in the true sense of the word. The two prose pieces of The Canterbury Tales are not really stories but rather religious or philosophical treatises. As an important prose document, we must note Ranulphus Higden’s Polychronicon, translated by John Trevisa with added passages from other sources. This is a history book containing much useful information about the England of his time, with a most valuable passage on the dialects of the 14th century.

In the 15th century, towards the end of the ME period, we come across the first prose fiction in English. Here we have Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d‘Arthur, a long prose work summing up a number of legends about king Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and at about the same time prose translations made by William Caxton, the first English printer, from the French. Owing to this great variety, we are able to obtain a much more complete idea of various speech styles of the ME period than we could of OE. In particular, both Chaucer and Gower's works and the Miracle Plays contain much colloquial language, which seems to reproduce with great exactness the actual colloquial speech of the time. However, much of the material presented by these texts has not been properly made use of. Much remains to be done in this field to obtain a more complete picture of both the written and the colloquial language of those centuries.

Geoffrey Chaucer and His Contribution. Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the most prominent authors of the Middle English Period and he set up a language pattern to be followed. He is considered to be the founder of the literary language of that period. Most authors of the Middle English Period tried to fallow this standard.

Features of Chaucer’s Language:

• Chaucer’s Language was the basis for the national literary language.
• New spelling rules (digraphs) and new rules of reading (1 letter = several sounds) appeared as compared to the Old English.
• New grammatical forms appeared (Perfect forms, Passive forms, “to” Infinitive constructions, etc.).
• Chaucer tried to minimize the number of the French loans in the English Language.
• Chaucer introduced rhyme to the poetry.