THE MIDDLE AGES: ENGLAND
Literature in Latin, in Anglo-Saxon, and in French. The Ancestor of
English Literature: Chaucer.
THE THREE LITERATURES.--In England, prior to the Norman invasion, that is
before 1066, England possessed Saxon bards who sang of the prowess of
forbears or contemporaries, and monks who wrote in Latin the lives of
saints or even lay histories.
From 1066 must be distinguished in England three parallel literatures:
the Latin literature of the cloister, the Anglo-Saxon literature, and the
French literature of the conquerors.
Latin literature, so far as prose is regarded, was devoted exclusively to
philosophy and history; in verse the subjects are more diversified,
satire more especially flourished.
The poets of the French tongue wrote more particularly _chansons de
geste_, and those of such songs which form what is termed the _Cycle
of Artus_ are for the most part the work of poets born in England.
Finally, in the different popular dialects, Saxon, Western English, etc.,
epic poems were written in verse, or romances, discourses, homilies,
different religious work in prose. The Normans, ardent, energetic, and
practical, had founded universities whence issued, endowed and equipped,
those who by patriotic sentiment or taste were destined to write in
Anglo-Saxon or in English.
CHAUCER; GOWER.--The greatest name of the period and the one which
radiates most brilliantly is that of Chaucer in the fourteenth century,
author of _The Canterbury Tales_ and a crowd of other works. He
possessed very varied imagination, sometimes vigorous, sometimes
humorous, an extraordinary sense of reality, much spirit, and a fertility
of mind which made him the ancestor and precursor of Shakespeare. To his
illustrious name must be added that of his friend and pupil Gower, who is
curious because he is representative of the three literatures still in
use in his day, having written his _Speculum Meditatus_ in French,
his _Vox Clamantis_ in Latin, and his _Confessio Amantis_ in
English. So far as I am aware this phenomenon was never repeated.