Notes taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature (6) Middle English Literature

 

 

 

Middle English Literature:

 

 

 

  • continuation of the oral tradition : from the century and a half after the conquest only oral tradition
  • the first considerable Middle English poem:    Layamon's Brut(1205)
  • Alliterative revival in written form :    the 14th century
  • works showing the culmination of alliterative form:   Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • the significance of Layamon's Brut: using alliterative prosody, the first treatment of the Arthurian legend in English
  • Layamon 's source:    Wace's Norman work
  • Wace's source:     Monmouth 's History of the Kings of Britain in Latin
  • the fullest development  of King Arthur's legend:            in France
  • other Arthurian writers :                Gawain-poet and Malory,( maybe only translators)

 

 

 

  • similarities and differences of Beowulf and Brut:    similarity: using legendry materials to show history,  difference:  Beowulf as an epic   but Brut  as a romance
  • the typical features of romance:   story of the Knights and their fights and their love affairs all liberal use of the improbable or the supernatural, standardized characterization, lots of events in plots, recurrence of the same event in the same romance, easy and colloquial style, loose and repetitious

 

 

 

  • modern readers: disappointed with Middle English romance:  they were the works of weak versifiers or minstrels
  • the only exceptions:  the Gawain-poet and Chaucer
  • the great age of medieval romance:      the 12th and early 13th centuries
  • the origin of the romances:   the aristocratic society of France and poets like Chretien de Troyes
  • introduction of the French romances into English: for non- aristocratic audiences in the second half of the 13th and in the 14th century
  • changes taken place in the English romances:   French aristocratic ideals of behavior replaced by patterns of behavior; understandable for bourgeois and lower class Englishmen
  • reasons of the changes :   The lag in time and change in audience
  • the result of the changes:   crudest behavior of the chivalrous knights and heroes
  • the reason of the weakness of the English romances:  deteriorated because of translation
  • one very charming exception to the rule that translation brings deterioration: Sir Orfeo

 

 

 

  • surviving Middle English Literature mostly religious: because of the influence of the Church as a large producer of books
  • existence of the secular stories:   only in oral stories of minstrels ,professional storytellers 
  • St. Paul's precept about writings:      everything that is written ought to express specific Christian doctrine

 

 

 

  • kind of literature and writings of Middle English Literature: sermons, homilies, Saints 'lives, penitential tracts, manuals for priests, mystical writings, lyric poems, moral allegories, stories of miracles
  • quality of the literature of the time:  no good literature
  • the exceptions: Ancrene Riwle(Rule for Anchoresses) ,A later lyric like  (I Sing of a Maiden)
  • secular literature:           apart from the romances very little secular literature
  • the most original and Chaucer like secular poem before Chaucer himself:     Owl and the Nightingale

 

 

 

  • date of the flourishment of Middle English Literature:               late 14th century
  • three great poets:    Sir Gawain and the Green Knight author, the best romance and religious poetry, Patience, Pearl __William Langland's Piers Plowman, weaving together all sorts of genres of religious literature , its role in the reformation of the church___the greatest of all :Geoffrey Chaucer's achievement, rooted in the soil of the Middle Ages but using medieval genres, therefore standing out of the Middle Ages

 

 

 

  • reason for the development of literature in the period : patronage of literature
  • Chaucer's patrons: John of Gaunt and his father-Edward III,   Richard II, Henry IV( of the same family and relatives)
  • the patrons of the two other great poets :    not known  for certain

 

 

 

  • An example of the failure of patronage:  John Gower 
  • a far more typically medieval writer than Chaucer:  John Gower because his works summarize the English Middle Ages
  • John Gower's works:     in Latin, Norman French, English( Confessio Amantis: The Lover 's Confession)
  • The most Chaucerian of Chaucer's followers: Scotsmen like Robert Henryson and William Dunbar belonging to the Renaissance, reflecting Chaucer's satirical spirit and liveliness

 

 

 

  • the only great name of the 15th century :   Thomas Malory
  • Characteristics of the literature of the 15th century:   flourishing popular literature , religious and secular lyrics , many ballads and much activity in drama , performance of the mystery plays coming from the previous century, development of the morality plays like Everyman
  • unknown authors of the plays, ballads and lyrics:   following oral tradition and then being written
  • the last great medieval work of literature:    Mallory's Morte Darthur printed in 1485 by William Caxton,
  • Mallory's sources:    French sources