New conditions were imported into the learning and literature of England
by the Norman Conquest. Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, referred to
above, was continued until 1154, the native language practically ceased
for a time to be employed in literature. For nearly a century and a half
the old language was supplanted, Latin being employed in law, history,
and philosophy, French in the lighter forms of literature. Monastic
chronicles were the order of the day, and these were only of real value
as they drew near to, and actually dealt with, contemporary events. The
Norman _trouvère_ displaced the Saxon _scop_, or gleeman, introducing
the _Fabliau_ and the Romance.
English literature was not greatly influenced by the _Fabliau_ until the
time of Chaucer; but the Romance attained an early and striking
development in the Arthurian cycle, founded upon the legends of Geoffrey
of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, who wrote the _History of British
Kings_.
Much of this Latin chronicle is imaginative. It began with a mythical
Brutus of Troy, and ended with Cadwallader. King Arthur was a prominent
figure in the book, and from this time the romantic legends concerning
him and his court became a prominent feature in the Anglo-Norman
literature. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _Chronicle_ was abridged by Alfred of
Beverley, and rewritten in French verse by Geoffrey Gaimar and “Maistre”
Wace, the latter version becoming permanent as the _Roman de Brut_.
Wace, who died in 1184, was also the author of the _Roman de Rou_.
Walter Map or Mapes, poet and prose writer, gave form and substance to
the Arthurian legends, uniting them into a harmonious whole as the
spiritual allegory of the Holy Grail. Map attacked the abuses and
corruptions of the Church in a series of witty and vigorous Latin poems.
Hitherto there had been no man of such genius among the early writers.
Two of the most important of the monastic chroniclers were Ordericus
Vitalis, who wrote the _Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy_,
a conscientious if disorderly record, and William of Malmesbury, who
flourished at the same time and wrote a _History of English Kings_. The
latter writer has been placed by Milton next to Bede.
Early in the thirteenth century English began to recover its position,
and Layamon’s _Brut_ was the first important piece of literature in
transition English. Layamon, who was “a priest of Ernleye-upon-Severne,”
wrote in English verse, and he interpolated many things into Wace’s
narrative. His work was completed about 1205. A St. Augustine canon,
named Ormin, was the author of _Ormulum_, a metrical paraphrase, with
expositions, of the Gospel of the day. To the same period belong the
early ballads of the Robin Hood type and the rendering into English
verse of _Havelok the Dane_ and other metrical romances.
Roger Bacon, the great scientific investigator, was a Franciscan who
settled at Oxford. Bacon enshrined the results of his knowledge in his
_Opus Majus_, _Opus Minus_, and _Opus Tertium_. Robert of Gloucester was
a monk in the time of Henry III. and Edward I. who wrote in English
rhyme a chronicle from the siege of Troy to the death of Henry III.
PERIOD OF CHAUCER.--The first great era of English literature may be
said to begin about the year 1300, and to extend to the introduction of
printing by Caxton in 1477. The overshadowing name in this period is
that of Chaucer, who has been styled the Father of English Poetry.
The accounts of Chaucer’s early life are uncertain, but he acquired the
favor of Edward III. through John of Gaunt. In the reign of Richard II.,
however, he fell upon evil times, and he died in the year 1400 at the
age of seventy-two. His _Canterbury Tales_ are immortal, alike for their
poetic qualities, their unrivaled delineations of character, and their
pictures of the middle-class English life of the period. Although the
poet was influenced in his style and choice of subject by Dante and
Boccaccio, he infused into his creations a dramatic force and a breath
of sympathy which are the characteristics of the highest genius. His
earlier and minor poems--such as _The Romaunt of the Rose_, _The Court
of Love_, and _The House of Fame_--were the fruit of his French and
Italian studies. Hallam classes Chaucer with Dante and Petrarch in the
mighty poetic triumvirate of the Middle Ages.
John Gower, next in contemporary importance to Chaucer, wrote the
_Confessio Amantis_, an English poem, which included a number of tales
that were moralized to illustrate the seven deadly sins.
Langlande, or Longlande, author of _The Visions of Piers Plowman_--a
poem which stands out for its graphic force--“sought to animate men to
the search for Christ, and battled vigorously with Church corruptions.”
Langlande is more distinctly English in his language than Chaucer, and
his poem was a representative one as showing the workings of the
national mind in religion and politics.
James I. of Scotland takes high rank for _The King’s Quhair_, and
Lawrence Minot for his series of poems on the victories of Edward III.
Barbour’s heroic poem of the _Bruce_ also calls for mention. Thomas
Occleve, author of a poem on the duty of kings, and John Lydgate, to
whom we owe the _Falls of Princes_, and other compositions, were
likewise considerable poets.
For a long period Sir John de Mandeville was regarded as “the father of
English prose,” but this claim is now abandoned. The larger portion of
his _Travels_ was borrowed from a worthy Friar Odoric and from other
writers, while the whole narrative is more entertaining than veracious.
John Wyclif, who gave to his countrymen the first English version of the
whole Bible, has been not inaptly styled the “Morning Star of the
English Reformation.” Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice in the reign of
Henry VI., was the author of a fine legal treatise, _De Laudibus Legum
Angliæ_, and of an admirable constitutional work on the _Difference
Between Absolute and Limited Monarchy_, in which he contrasted the
French rule with the English to the disparagement of the former.
INFLUENCE OF CAXTON.--William Caxton, who introduced the art of printing
into England, gave an impetus to literature whose effects have been of
incalculable value. The earliest work which can with certainty be
maintained to have been printed in England was the _Dictes and Sayings
of the Philosophers_, published in 1477. In 1474, however, Caxton had
issued at Bruges the first book printed in the English tongue, the
_Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye_, and soon after this he printed the
_Game and Playe of the Chesse_. Caxton was a most assiduous workman, and
produced editions of Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, and Sir Thomas Mallory’s
_King Arthur_, translations of Cicero’s _De Senectute_ and _De
Amicitia_, and other works.
William Dunbar, the Chaucer of the North, is placed by Sir Walter Scott
at the head of the roll of Scottish poets. Dunbar led a checkered life,
and his works are remarkable for their strong human lights and shadows.
His allegorical poem, _The Thistle and the Rose_, was written in
celebration of the marriage of James IV. with Henry VII.’s daughter
Margaret. _The Golden Terge_, another of his poems of fantasy, is very
descriptive and rhetorical. _The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins_
powerfully depicts--under the lead of Pride--a procession of the seven
deadly sins in the infernal regions. Dunbar was equally remarkable in
the comic as in the serious vein.
At the close of the fifteenth century many of the best spirits of the
age were drawn to Oxford for the study of Greek. It was taught by
William Grocyn and the physician Linacre. Erasmus came over from Paris
to acquire it, and while at Oxford he made the acquaintance of young
Thomas More, who wrote a defense of the new branch of learning. More
afterwards entered upon the thorny paths of statecraft, and paid for his
opposition to Henry VIII. with his head. More was the leading prose
writer of his time, and his _Life and Reign of Edward V._--in which he
draws a somber picture of the usurper Richard--is the earliest specimen
of classical English prose; but his real fame rests upon the _Utopia_,
in which he imagines an ideal commonwealth in the New World, discovered
by a supposed companion of Amerigo Vespucci. The root idea was borrowed
from Plato.
When William Tyndale completed his famous translation of the New
Testament in 1525, More adversely criticized it on the ground of its
Lutheran bias in the choice of words. Tyndale replied with spirit,
however, and also defended against More the exposition of the Lord’s
Supper published by John Frith. In 1530 Tyndale completed, with the help
of Miles Coverdale, his translation of the Pentateuch, and six years
later he was put to death for heresy in Belgium. Coverdale’s translation
of the whole Bible appeared in 1535.
Many Church writers and reformers flourished at this time. To Cranmer
was largely due _The Book of Common Prayer_, a work which contains some
of the noblest specimens of English in our literature. He was also
responsible for a book of _Twelve Homilies_ and a revised translation of
the Scriptures, known as _Cranmer’s Bible_. The martyr Latimer was the
author of sermons which are rare specimens of vigorous eloquence, while
Bishop Fisher preached and wrote trenchantly on the other side. John
Knox, the great Scottish reformer, wrote a _History of the Scottish
Reformation_, and he was so indignant at the fact that three ruling
sovereigns were women that just before the accession of Elizabeth he
issued from Geneva his _First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous
Regiment of Women_. John Foxe, the martyrologist did much for
Protestantism by his work on the _Acts and Monuments of the Church_; and
Roger Ascham, classical tutor to Queen Elizabeth, and author of
_Toxophilus_ and _The Schoolmaster_, was the first writer on education
in the language. Mention must not be omitted here of the unfortunate
Earl of Surrey, who was the first writer of blank verse in England, and
who did much to invest English poetry with accuracy, polish, and a
general spirit of refinement. Surrey used the medium of blank verse in
translating two books of the _Æneid_. With his friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt,
he also transplanted the sonnet into the garden of English verse.