and timid touches of humor. It is a dialogue between the owl and the nightingale, in which each claims to be superior to the other. In some pretty word pictures the nightingale explains his inspiration. The blossoms in the trees and on the mead bid him sing and The rose also mid hire rude,1 That cumeth ut 2 of the thornewude, With the close of the Anglo-Norman period, a new nation had been created, with a new national life and language, and the ground was ready for the foundations of a national literature. The people were no longer Saxons and Normans, but Englishmen. Edward's struggle for supremacy in France was ended in 1362 by the treaty of Bretigny, and England settled down to the peaceful development of an independent life. The Union The diversities of speech had gradually disappeared. Norman and Saxon each contributed characteristic elements to the new language. From the Saxon the grammatical foundations survived, the articles, pronouns, prepositions, and of Languages conjunctions; the substantial every-day words, short and forcible words expressing concrete things -the warp of the language. To this the Norman added courtly words of refinement and luxury, abstract words expressing subtleties of intellect and sentiment, smooth rhythmical manysyllabled words-the soft, glossy filling or woof of the language. Even fashionable people were forgetting their French, or laughing at its provincial character, as Chaucer laughed at the Prioress's "French of Stratford-at-the-Bow." About the year 1385, according to John of Trevisa, "in alle the gramerescoles of Engelond, children leveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth an Englische," indeed, they "conneth no more Frensche than can hir lift heele ." In 1362 the king for the 1 her redness 6 merry song 2 out 7 know 3 biddeth 8 4 I 5 for 8 than their left heel knows 7 first time opened Parliament with an address in English, and in the same year official sanction was given to this language by a statute of the realm, ordering English to be used in the pleadings of the law courts, for the reason that "the French tongue is much unknown." The Union of With the union of speech came the union of literary interests. We have found two streams of literary expression flowing alongside and gradually approaching each other; the Saxon literature, limited in range, religious in theme and didactic in purpose, rude and homely in form; the Norman literature, gay, secular, varied, polished and graceful in form, ministering to a cultivated aristocracy. Each absorbed by contact the other's qualities; the Norman became more serious and religious, and the Saxon became more elastic and refined. The native seriousness culminated in Wyclif and Langland, the foreign joyousness in Chaucer and Gower. Henceforth there was only one great current, flowing in an ever-deepening and widening channel. PROGRAM OF WORK CLASS READING. Selections from Layamon's Brut, Ormulum, Handlyng Synne, Owl and Nightingale, Cursor Mundi (Bronson, P. and S., Manly, Weston, Cook); A Love-Rune, A Song of the Passion, A Bestiary (Weston); The Pearl (Jewett, Weir Mitchell, Mead, Weston, Gollancz). LYRICS: Cuckoo Song, Alysoun, Lenten is Come, Blow, Winter Wind (Bronson, Weston, Morris, Manly, P. and S., Cook). ROMANCES: Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight (Weston, Oxford Treasury, Bronson); Stories of Arthur (Newell, Howard Pyle, Lanier); Legend of the Holy Grail (Lawrence, ch. v); Song of Roland (Butler's prose translation, Lawrence, ch. iii, King's Classics); King Horn (Weston); Aucassin and Nicolete (Lang). LITERARY HISTORY. Schofield's English Literature from the Conquest to Chaucer; Cambridge History; Jusserand; Ten Brink; Morley's English Writers; Ker's Epic and Romance; Saintsbury's Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Allegory; Preston's Troubadours and Trouvères, 151-280; Lawrence's Medieval Story; Weston's Romance Cycle of Charlemagne and His Peers; Weston's King HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. Green; Gardiner; Cheyney; Freeman's Short History of the Norman Conquest; Freeman's William the Conqueror; Green's Henry II; Tout's Edward I (Eng. Statesmen Series); Traill's Social England; Jewett's Story of the Normans; Jusserand's Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century; Newell's King Arthur and the Round Table; Archer and Kingsford's The Crusades; Scott's Ivanhoe; Kingsley's Hereward the Wake. TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH 1. Trace the progress of the Normans from their original home (consult Jewett). 2. Compare the Norman with the Saxon characteristics. 3. Suppose there had been no Battle of Hastings? 4. Effect of the Conquest upon the language (Cambridge History, vol. 1, ch. xix; Lounsbury; Champneys). 5. Account for the condition of literature during the first half of this transition period. 6. Indebtedness of English literature to Geoffrey of Monmouth. 7. Growth of the Arthurian romances in France and England. 8. The "Matter of Britain" (Saintsbury's Flourishing of Romance, ch. iii). 9. Compare a typical romance, Guy of Warwick, for example, with one of Scott's or of Stevenson's. 10. Compare Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight with Beowulf. 11. Explain the transitional character of Layamon's Brut. 12. Compare the passage beginning, "And I will fare to Avilion," with the corresponding passage in Tennyson's Passing of Arthur. 13. Evidence. in the Ormulum of the uncertain state of pronunciation. 14. Compare, in respect to language and versification, The Pricke of Conscience, c. 1330, with Layamon's Brut, c. 1205. 15. Read and discuss The Pearl. 16. The Troubadours in France, their life and poetry. 17. Read some of the dainty revivals of Troubadour minstrelsy by Gosse, Dobson, Lang, and others (Gleeson White's Ballades and Rondeaus). 18. Study the forms of these lyrics (Alden's Introduction to Poetry, 332-339). 19. Account for the lyrical outburst at the end of the thirteenth century. 20. Importance of the date, 1362, in respect to English history, literature, and language. Reign of CHAPTER III THE AGE OF CHAUCER 1360-1400 EDWARD III came to the throne in 1327 and ruled fifty years. During this long reign modern England was established, and the characteristics of the Englishman of to-day are the product of the blending of diverse elements that was completed in that period. The feeling of a distinct nationality was increased by foreign war, and patriotic enthusiasm was aroused by the glorious victories of Cressy and Poitiers. Parliament, first convened in 1295, was cementing the different classes of society into political unity and giving form to a representative government. Wealth increased rapidly, commerce was established, and already the sovereign was called "King of the Sea." The Flemish weavers were invited to the island, and England's vast woollen industry began. The great merchants became powerful, loaned money to the king, and many, like Whittington with his famous cat, were made lord mayors, dukes, and earls. With wealth came luxury, art, and extravagant pleasures. One of the Princess Margaret's wedding gifts was a rope of two thousand pearls. Women wore rich silks, embroideries, and jewels brought from the Orient. Architecture became more beautiful; castles were less military and more domestic and habitable, and the living Life of the was more sumptuous and civilized. Chivalry as a social in stitution began to give way to more practical theories of life, but its glamour still remained, and life was sacrificed for a ribbon in gorgeous tournaments. Knights and fair ladies rode gaily to the hunt with falcon and sleek greyhound. Men began to travel for pleasure. "They are great walkers and great horsemen," says the chronicler Higden in his Polychronicon. "They roam over all lands, are curious, and like to tell the wonders they have seen and observed. They spread over the earth; every land they inhabit becomes as their own country." Thus the seeds of colonial wealth and power were already planted. But there were strongly contrasted elements in this new and progressive civilization. The pomp and pageantry of war and the grand sports of an idle aristocracy imposed heavy burdens of taxation upon the laboring classes. Added to this was the calamity of the Black Death, which appeared four times between 1348 and 1375, sweeping off half of the population. And worst of all were the burdens of the church. Parliament Life of the complained that five times the taxes paid to the king were paid to Rome, a grievous wrong, since "God gave his sheep to be pastured, not to be shaven and shorn." For the rich, religion was no longer an effective restraint upon vice, and for the poor its sustaining and consoling power was fading away. Out of such conditions would naturally arise the voice of satire and reform. Langland and Wyclif expressed the bitter murmurings and stern protests of the people. The elusive figure of William Langland can be made out only by scholarly guesswork, applied to the personal allusions in his great poem, The Vision of Piers Plowman. Indeed the three principal versions of the poem differ so widely in many important respects as to lead to the belief that three or four authors had a hand in the making of the poem. But we may continue to believe that the original author was born about 1332 near Malvern, not far from Ernley, where Layamon lived and wrote his Brut. Evidently he was a man of the soil, intimate |