English Literature in the XIII and XIV centuries

English Literature in the XIII and XIV centuries

The appearance of Laymon's Brut is an important landmark in the history of English literature. It proves that, one century and a half after the Norman Conquest, the English tongue, despite the supremacy of French at the court, in the schools, in the churches and even in poetry, had no lost its vitality. From the beginning of the XIIIth century the literary production in English is continuous; it is either religious or romantic. Under the first head come a vast number of devotional treatises and pious poems; the Ormulum, a metrical paraphrase of the Gospel of each day, a new Genesis and Exodus, homilies, Saints' lives, hymns to the Virgin, etc.; this religious literature culminates in William Langland's Vision of Piers Ploughman (it seems to have been written between 1360 e 1399), an allegorical poem given, after the fashion of the Roman de la Rose, in the form of a dream. Langland's Vision is written in alliterative and unrhymed verse, identical with the verse which had been extensively used in Anglo-Saxon poetry until the Conquest. There is in each line no fixed number of syllables: the harmony of the verse depends entirely on the accents and on alliteration. Every line is divided into two half lines by a pause; in each half line there are two accents, and the two half lines are linked together by alliteration (i.e. the two accented syllables of the first half line and one of the accented syllables of the second half line begin with the same consonant which is the "rhyme letter"). The opening lines of the Vision of Piers Ploughman are a perfect example of this metrical device which has a musical ring not altogether devoid of charm, but lacks variety and suppleness. (= I shope me into a shroud / a sheep as I were; In habit of an hermite / unholy of werkes.)

Just at the same time as Piers Ploughman was composed and published, Wyclif, the well-known scholar ad reformer, was engaged on the considerable task of translating the Bible into English. This work did much to fix the language which, from this time onward, ceased to be a dialect and rose to dignity of a national tongue, the King's English. In that period, there were also some romances in imitation of French Literature. These romances: Tristram and Iseult, Floriz and Blanchefleur, Havelok the Dane, Arthur and Merlin, Richard Coeur de Lion, Charlemagne and Roland, are adaptations from the Frech. A reaction against this literature of imitation set in about the middle of the fourteenth century; then some poems more English in spirit and mostly written in alliterative verse began to appear. The best of them is Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. But the "King's English" still needed, to become a standard literary language, worthy to be placed on a level with French and Italian, the consecration which a true masterpiece alone can bestow. The masterpiece was to be written by Geoffrey Chaucer.