Middle English Period

Outline and Chronology

• Norman invasion (1066), French conquest and unification of England; Norman = North-man, descendants of Danes, spoke French influenced by Germanic dialect
• William in full control of England within ten years
• death of many Anglo-Saxon nobles
• end of internal conflicts and Viking invasions; control of the Welsh
• Frenchmen in all high offices
• imposition of feudal system, vassalage, peasants bound to the land
• kings of England spoke French, took French wives and lived mostly in France, French-speaking court
• Anglo Saxon Chronicle written until 1154
• Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae ("History of the Kings of Britain," 1136-1139)
• Henry II Plantagenet (r. 1154-1189), married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, father of Richard I, the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) and John Lackland; assassination of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket in 1170
• Layamon's Brut (1189-1205); The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1200); Ancrene Riwle (c. 1200)
• King John (John Lackland) (r. 1199-1216), loss of Normandy in 1204; many Norman landholders chose to stay in England, spoke Anglo-French dialect
• Barons revolt against John, Magna Carta (1215), origins and development of Parliament
• Henry III (r. 1216-1272), son of John; francophilia of Henry III, many Frenchmen given official positions
• Verse romances: King Horn (c. 1250), Havelok the Dane (c. 1285)
• Edward I (r. 1272-1307), son of Henry III, conquered Wales and waged war with Scotland
• Gesta Romanorum (13th-14th c.), Latin collection of tales
• Edward III (Windsor) (r. 1327-1377), his claim to French throne led to Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), English victories at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), Agincourt (1415), role of Joan of Arc (1429), eventual French victory, loss of all English continental holdings, French no longer significant to the English
• Black Death 1348-1351, death of one third of English population, social chaos, labor shortages, emancipation of peasants, wage increases, rise in prestige of English as language of working classes
• Alliterative Morte Arthure (c. 1370-1380)
• Richard II (1377-1399) (grandson of Edward III), John of Gaunt (1340-1399) (son of Edward III), Richard II deposed by Henry IV (Bolingbroke)
• William Langland (c. 1330-1387), Piers Plowman
• Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), Canterbury Tales (1386-1400), connected to Edward III, Richard II, and John of Gaunt
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1375-1400); Pearl (1380-1400)
• Julian of Norwich (1342-c. 1416), Margery Kemp (c. 1373-1438)
• War of the Roses (1455-1485), York vs. Lancaster, Richard Duke of York vs. Henry VI
• Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1405-1471), Morte Darthur (c. 1469-70) (printed by Caxton in 1485)
• Henry VI executed 1471
• printers' activity (William Caxton 1474), increased literacy
• Wakefield Master, Second Shepherds' Play (c. 1475)
• Edward II's brother Richard III (1483-85) killed by Lancastrian Henry VII (Tudor), Henry marries Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV), fathers Henry VIII
• Everyman (after 1485)
• 1509 begins reign of Henry VIII, end of Middle English period