Written Records in Late Middle English. The Age of Chaucer.

The flourishing of literature, which marks the second half of the 14th c., apart from its cultural significance, testifies to the complete reestablishment of English as the language of writing. Some authors wrote in their local dialect from outside London, but most of them used the London dialect, or forms of the language combining London and provincial traits. Towards the end of the century the London dialect had become the principal type of language used in literature, a sort of literary “pattern” to be imitated by provincial authors.

The literary texts of the late 14th c. preserved in numerous scripts, belong to a variety of genres. Translation continued, but original compositions were produced in abundance; poetry was more prolific than prose. This period of literary florescence is known as the “age of Chaucer”, the greatest name in English literature before Shakespeare. Other writers are referred to as “Chaucer’s contemporaries”.

One of the prominent authors of the time was John de Trevisa of Cornwall. In 1387 he completed the translation of seven books on world history – POLYCHRONICON by R. Higden — from Latin into the South-Western dialect of English.

Of greatest linguistic consequence was the activity of John Wycliff (1324-1384), the forerunner of the English Reformation. His most important contribution to English prose was his (and his pupils’) translation of the BIBLE completed in 1384. He also wrote pamphlet protesting the corruption of the Church. Wyclif’s BIBLE was copied in manuscript and read by many people all over the country in the London dialect, it played an important role in spreading this form of English.

The chief poets of the time, besides Chaucer, were John Gower (in “THE LOVER’S CONFESSION he arranged to illustrate the 7 deadly sins), William Langland (THE VISION CONCERNING PIERS THE PLOWMAN) and, probably, the unknown author of SIR GAWAINE AND THE GREEN KNIGHT.

The romances of chivalry were rather popular in the 14^th c., especially RICHARD COEUR DE LION; in the 15^th c. Thomas Malory’s MORTE D’ARTHUR appeared.

In the 14^th c. a Scottish dialect appeared as a variant of the Northern dialect. THE BRUCE, written by John Barbour between 1373 and 1378 is a national epic, which describes the real history of Robert Bruce, a hero and military chief who defeated the army of Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314 and secured the independence of Scotland.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), called the founder of the literary language, was the most outstanding figure of that time.

Chaucer was born in London about the year 1340 and had the most varied experience as student, courtier, official, and member of Parliament.

His early works were more or less imitative of other authors — Latin, French or Italian — though they bear abundant evidence of his skill. He never wrote in any other language than English. The culmination of Chaucer’s work as a poet is his great unfinished collection of stories THE CANTERBURY TALES.

The Prologue of this poem, the masterpiece of English poetry, describes how the poet found himself at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, bound on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury. There he met twenty-nine other pilgrims, who, at the suggestion of the host, agreed to liven up the journey by story-telling. Chaucer lived to write only twenty-four stories out of the intended sixty, but in the Prologue he managed to give a most vivid picture of contemporary England: he presented in the pilgrims a gallery of life-like portraits taken from all walks of life. In social position they range from knight and prioress to drunken cook and humble ploughman — a doctor, a lawyer, a monk, a sailor, a carpenter, an Oxford scholar and many others.

Although Chaucer did not really create the literary language, as a poet of outstanding talent he made better use of it than his contemporaries and set up a pattern to be followed in the 15th c. His books were among the first to be printed, a hundred years after their composition.

Chaucer’s literary language, based on the mixed (largely East Midland) London dialect is known as classical ME; in the 15th and 16th c. it became the basis of the national literary English language.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL LITERARY ENGLISH LANGUAGE (16TH-19TH C.).

The formation of the national literary English language covers the Early NE period (c. 1475—1660). Henceforth we can speak of the evolution of a single literary language instead of the similar or different development of the dialects.

There were at least two major external factors which favoured the rise of the national language and the literary standards: the unification of the country and the progress of culture. Other historical events, such as increased foreign contacts, affected the language in a less general way: they influenced the growth of the vocabulary.

Economic and Political Unification. Conditions for Linguistic Unity.

As early as the 13th c, within the feudal system, new economic relations began to take shape. The villain was gradually superseded by the copy-holder, and ultimately, by the rent-paying tenant. With the growing interest in commercial profits, feudal oppression grew and the conditions of the peasants deteriorated. Social discontent showed itself in the famous peasants’ rebellions of the 14th and 15th c. The village artisans and craftsmen travelled about the country looking for a greater market for their produce. They settled in the old towns and founded new ones near big monasteries, on the rivers and at the crossroads. The crafts became separated from agriculture, and new social groups came into being: poor town artisans, the town middle class, rich merchants, owners of workshops and money-lenders.

The 15th and 16th c. saw other striking changes in the life of the country: while feudal relations were decaying, bourgeois relations and the capitalist mode of production were developing rapidly. Trade had extended beyond the local boundaries and in addition to farming and cattle-breeding, an important wool industry was carried on in the countryside. Britain began to export woollen cloth produced by the first big enterprises, the “manufactures”. The landowners evicted the peasants and enclosed their land with ditches and fences, turning it into vast pastures. The new nobility, who traded in wool, fused with the rich towns-people to form a new class, the bourgeoisie, while the evicted farmers, the poor artisans and monastic servants turned into farm labourers, wage workers and paupers. The changes in the economic and social conditions led to the intermixture of people coming from different regions and to the strengthening of social ties between the various parts of the country.

Economic and social changes were accompanied by political unification. In the last quarter of the 15th c. England became a centralised state.

At the end of the Hundred Years’ War, when the feudal lords and their hired armies came home from France, life in Britain became more turbulent than ever. The warlike nobles, disappointed with their defeat in France, fought for power at the King’s Court; continued anarchy and violence broke out into a civil war known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485). The thirty-year contest for the possession of the crown ended in the establishment of a strong royal power under Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor dynasty.

The absolute monarchy of the Tudors was based on a new relation of class forces: the crown had the support of the middle class. Henry VII reduced the power of the old nobles and created a new aristocracy out of the rural and town bourgeoisie. The next step in the creation of an absolute monarchy was to break the monopoly of the medieval Papacy. This was achieved by his successor, Henry VIII (1509—1547), who quarrelled with the Pope, declared himself head of the English Church and dissolved the monasteries (the English Reformation, 1529—1536); now the victory of the Crown was complete.

The economic and political unification played a decisive role in the development of the English language. All over the world the victory of capitalism over feudalism was linked up with the consolidation of people into nations, the formation of national languages and the growth of superdialect forms of language to be used as a national Standard. The rise of capitalism helped to knit together the people and to unify their language.