The Anglo-Norman Period in English Literature, 1066 to 1340

Historical Background

William, Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold the Second at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 and was crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day of the same year. The consequence for literature was immediate and severe. The English aristocracy was displaced, monastic and court patronage passed to French speakers, and writing in English lost its prestige almost overnight.

The recovery of English was gradual and was driven by politics rather than by literary taste. When King John lost Normandy in 1204, the Anglo-Norman nobility ceased to be a cross-channel class and began to identify as English. The long war with France, opening in 1337, made French the language of the enemy. The Black Death of 1348 and 1349 killed a large part of the clergy and the French-speaking teaching class, which accelerated the return of English to the schools.

• 1066: the Battle of Hastings and the coronation of William the Conqueror.
• 1086: the Domesday Book, the great survey of landholding, compiled in Latin.
• 1154: the last entry of the Peterborough Chronicle, the final continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the last sustained piece of English prose for well over a century.
• 1204: the loss of Normandy under King John separates the English nobility from their continental estates.
• 1215: Magna Carta.
• 1337: the beginning of the long conflict with France known as the Hundred Years War.
• 1348 and 1349: the Black Death.
• 1362: the Statute of Pleading requires English to be used in the law courts, and Parliament is opened in English in the same year. This is the formal end of the period's language settlement, though the change had begun much earlier.

The Language and Its Dialects

The English of this period is called Middle English. Deprived of a written standard, it changed faster than at any other time in its history. The heavy inflections of Old English were reduced and levelled, word order became fixed to carry the grammatical work that endings had done, and an immense French vocabulary entered the language in the areas where French speakers ruled: government, law, war, the church, cookery, fashion and art.

Because there was no standard, texts survive in strongly marked regional forms, and the dialect of a text is a standard examination question.

• The main Middle English dialects are Northern, East Midland, West Midland, Southern and Kentish.
• The East Midland dialect, the speech of London, Oxford and Cambridge, became the basis of standard English, which is why Chaucer at the end of the period is readable in a way that his northern contemporaries are not.
• Loanwords: government, parliament, justice, judge, jury, prison, army, soldier, religion, sermon, beef, mutton, pork, fashion and art all come into English from French in this period, while the Old English words for the living animals, ox, sheep and swine, remain.
• A characteristic pattern of doublets survives from the trilingual situation: kingly from English, royal from French and regal from Latin, all in use with different registers.
• Old English poetry was alliterative and unrhymed. In this period rhyme and syllable-counting metres arrive from French, and the octosyllabic couplet becomes the standard narrative measure. Alliterative verse survives in the west and north and revives strongly in the later fourteenth century.
• The term Anglo-Norman literature strictly means the literature written in French in England, which was large and distinguished, and which is why so much English writing of the period is translation or adaptation from it.

Religious and Didactic Writing

Most surviving English of the period was written to instruct the unlearned, and its authors are usually clerics writing for people who had no French. The literary interest lies in what happens to the English language under this pressure, and in a few works of genuine distinction.

• The Ancrene Riwle, also called the Ancrene Wisse, of about 1200, is a rule of life written for three anchoresses. It is the finest English prose of the period, humane and often witty, and it is the central text of what scholars call the Katherine Group and the AB language, a remarkably consistent West Midland written form.
• The Ormulum, by an Augustinian canon who names himself Orm, is a long series of homilies in unrhymed septenary lines. It is valued less as literature than as evidence, because Orm devised a phonetic spelling in which a doubled consonant marks a preceding short vowel, which tells us how the language was pronounced.
• Poema Morale, an early moral poem in septenaries, and the Cursor Mundi of about 1300, a northern verse history of the world in some thirty thousand lines, are the large didactic monuments.
• Handlyng Synne, written in 1303 by Robert Mannyng of Brunne, adapts a French manual of the sins and enlivens it with anecdotes, so that it is often read as a forerunner of the storytelling manner of Chaucer.
• The Pricke of Conscience, a long didactic poem on death and judgement, survives in more manuscripts than almost any other Middle English poem.
• Richard Rolle of Hampole, who died in 1349, is the first of the great English mystics and wrote both Latin and English devotional prose, including The Form of Living. He begins the tradition that leads to Julian of Norwich and The Cloud of Unknowing later in the century.
• The Owl and the Nightingale, of about 1200, stands apart from all of this. It is the first debate poem in English, some eighteen hundred lines of octosyllabic couplets in which the two birds quarrel with great vivacity about their respective merits, agreeing at last to take the case to one Nicholas of Guildford. It is a work of real comic art and is often the single Anglo-Norman period text set for close study.

Romance, Chronicle and Lyric

The metrical romance is the characteristic secular form of the period, and it comes into English from French. The romance replaces the heroic values of Old English poetry with a new set: courtly love, chivalry, adventure for its own sake, the marvellous, and the service of ladies. The French poet Jean Bodel divided the whole body of romance into three matters, and the classification is standard.

• The Matter of Britain: Arthur and his knights. The Matter of France: Charlemagne and his peers. The Matter of Rome: the classical stories of Troy, Thebes and Alexander.
• The Arthurian line runs from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Historia Regum Britanniae of about 1136, through Wace's Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut of 1155, which first mentions the Round Table, to Layamon's Brut in English of about 1200.
• Layamon's Brut is the first work in English to tell the story of Arthur. It is a long poem of over sixteen thousand lines in a loose alliterative verse that looks back to Old English practice while its matter is entirely of the new French kind.
• King Horn, of about 1225, is generally taken as the earliest surviving English metrical romance. Havelok the Dane, of the later thirteenth century, is the other well known early example, and is notable for its sympathy with common life.
• Sir Orfeo, a Breton lay that transposes the story of Orpheus into a world of fairy, and Floris and Blancheflour are the other romances most often set.
• Marie de France, writing in Anglo-Norman in the later twelfth century, gave the Breton lai its literary form, and Chretien de Troyes in French introduced Lancelot and the Grail into the Arthurian story. Both stand behind the English romances rather than in them.
• Chronicle: the Peterborough Chronicle carries the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle down to 1154 and its later entries, on the anarchy of Stephen's reign, are among the most moving prose in early English. Robert of Gloucester's rhyming chronicle belongs to the end of the thirteenth century.
• Lyric: the earliest English lyrics belong to this period. Sumer is icumen in, of about 1250 and preserved in a Reading Abbey manuscript, is the famous cuckoo song and is written as a rota, that is a round for several voices. The Harley Lyrics, in British Library manuscript Harley 2253 compiled about 1340, are the finest collection, and include Alysoun and The Blacksmiths, mixing religious and secular, English, French and Latin.

How the Period Is Examined

In a postgraduate entrance paper this period is tested almost entirely by objective questions of attribution and date, because the texts themselves are rarely read in full at undergraduate level. Learn each work with its author where known, its approximate date, its form and its dialect, and you have covered most of what can be asked. The Common Post Graduate Entrance Test in Odisha, like most such papers, sets a single objective paper at bachelor's degree level, so confirm the current pattern and syllabus on the official admission portal before planning your revision.

• Fix the frame first: 1066 to about 1340, between the Old English period and the Age of Chaucer.
• Know the four or five works that are always set: The Owl and the Nightingale, the Ancrene Riwle, Layamon's Brut, King Horn and Havelok the Dane, and Sumer is icumen in.
• Know the chain of Arthurian transmission from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Wace to Layamon, and be able to say what each contributed.
• Know the three matters and be able to assign a named romance to the right one.
• Be able to state the linguistic consequences of the Conquest in three sentences: loss of prestige for written English, massive French borrowing, and the reduction of inflections with a corresponding fixing of word order.
• Distinguish carefully between the Anglo-Norman period, meaning the period, and Anglo-Norman literature, meaning the French writing produced in England during it.

Key Terms

Metrical romance

The dominant secular narrative form of the period: a verse tale of chivalric adventure, usually adapted from French, dealing in courtly love, marvels and knightly honour rather than in the tribal heroism of Old English poetry.

The three matters

Jean Bodel's division of romance material into the Matter of Britain, the Arthurian stories; the Matter of France, the stories of Charlemagne; and the Matter of Rome, the classical stories of Troy, Thebes and Alexander.

AB language

The name scholars give to the notably consistent early Middle English written dialect of the West Midlands found in two manuscripts, one of the Ancrene Riwle and one of the Katherine Group, and taken as evidence of a local written standard.

Rota

A round, that is a song in which several voices enter in turn on the same melody. Sumer is icumen in, from about 1250, is the earliest known English example and the earliest surviving six-part composition.

Practice Quiz — 20 Questions

1. The Anglo-Norman period in English literature is conventionally dated from:

   • A.449 to 1066
   • B.1066 to 1340
   • C.1340 to 1400
   • D.1200 to 1500
   B. 1066 to 1340 — It runs from the Norman Conquest to the beginning of the Age of Chaucer at about 1340.

2. The Battle of Hastings was fought in:

   • A.1042
   • B.1066
   • C.1086
   • D.1154
   B. 1066 — William of Normandy defeated Harold the Second on 14 October 1066 and was crowned that Christmas.

3. The last continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ending in 1154, is known as the:

   • A.Winchester Chronicle
   • B.Peterborough Chronicle
   • C.Abingdon Chronicle
   • D.Worcester Chronicle
   B. Peterborough Chronicle — The Peterborough Chronicle carries the record to 1154 and is the last sustained English prose for a long period.

4. The Owl and the Nightingale is best described as:

   • A.An alliterative romance
   • B.A debate poem in octosyllabic couplets
   • C.A prose rule for anchoresses
   • D.A verse chronicle of British kings
   B. A debate poem in octosyllabic couplets — It is the first English debate poem, of about 1200, written in octosyllabic couplets.

5. The Ancrene Riwle was written as a guide for:

   • A.Parish priests
   • B.Anchoresses
   • C.Crusading knights
   • D.University students
   B. Anchoresses — It is a rule of life composed for three women living as anchoresses, and it is the best prose of the period.

6. The Ormulum is chiefly valuable to scholars because of its:

   • A.Alliterative metre
   • B.Distinctive phonetic spelling system
   • C.Arthurian subject matter
   • D.French vocabulary
   B. Distinctive phonetic spelling system — Orm doubled consonants to mark preceding short vowels, which preserves evidence of contemporary pronunciation.

7. Which work is the first in the English language to tell the story of King Arthur?

   • A.Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae
   • B.Wace's Roman de Brut
   • C.Layamon's Brut
   • D.Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
   C. Layamon's Brut — Geoffrey wrote in Latin and Wace in Anglo-Norman French. Layamon's Brut, of about 1200, is the first English treatment.

8. The Round Table is first mentioned in:

   • A.Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae
   • B.Wace's Roman de Brut
   • C.Layamon's Brut
   • D.Chretien de Troyes's Perceval
   B. Wace's Roman de Brut — Wace introduced the Round Table into the Arthurian story in his Roman de Brut of 1155.

9. The division of romance into the Matters of Britain, France and Rome was made by:

   • A.Jean Bodel
   • B.Marie de France
   • C.Chretien de Troyes
   • D.Wace
   A. Jean Bodel — Jean Bodel's classification of the three matters remains the standard division.

10. Stories of Charlemagne and his peers belong to which matter?

    • A.The Matter of Britain
    • B.The Matter of France
    • C.The Matter of Rome
    • D.The Matter of England
    B. The Matter of France — The Matter of France is the Carolingian cycle; Arthur belongs to Britain and Troy and Alexander to Rome.

11. Which is generally regarded as the earliest surviving English metrical romance?

    • A.Havelok the Dane
    • B.King Horn
    • C.Sir Orfeo
    • D.Floris and Blancheflour
    B. King Horn — King Horn, of about 1225, is usually given this place.

12. Sir Orfeo is a Breton lay that reworks the classical story of:

    • A.Odysseus
    • B.Orpheus
    • C.Oedipus
    • D.Orestes
    B. Orpheus — It transposes the descent of Orpheus into a Celtic world of fairy, with a happy ending.

13. Sumer is icumen in, of about 1250, is significant as:

    • A.The first English sonnet
    • B.The earliest English lyric written as a rota or round
    • C.The first English debate poem
    • D.The earliest English prose romance
    B. The earliest English lyric written as a rota or round — It is the famous cuckoo song, preserved in a Reading Abbey manuscript and written for several voices.

14. The Harley Lyrics are so called because they are preserved in:

    • A.A manuscript in the Bodleian Library
    • B.British Library manuscript Harley 2253
    • C.The Exeter Book
    • D.The Vercelli Book
    B. British Library manuscript Harley 2253 — Harley 2253, compiled about 1340, contains the finest collection of early Middle English lyrics.

15. Handlyng Synne, written in 1303, is by:

    • A.Robert Mannyng of Brunne
    • B.Robert of Gloucester
    • C.Richard Rolle
    • D.Orm
    A. Robert Mannyng of Brunne — Robert Mannyng adapted a French manual of the sins and filled it with lively illustrative stories.

16. Which dialect of Middle English became the basis of standard English?

    • A.Northern
    • B.East Midland
    • C.West Midland
    • D.Kentish
    B. East Midland — The East Midland dialect, the speech of London and the two universities, became the standard.

17. Which pair shows the characteristic Anglo-Norman split between the animal and its meat?

    • A.Ox and beef
    • B.Horse and mare
    • C.Dog and hound
    • D.Bird and fowl
    A. Ox and beef — The English-speaking farmer kept the ox, sheep and swine, while the French-speaking lord ate beef, mutton and pork.

18. The metre that becomes the standard measure for narrative verse in this period is:

    • A.Unrhymed alliterative long line
    • B.The octosyllabic couplet
    • C.Blank verse
    • D.The heroic couplet
    B. The octosyllabic couplet — The octosyllabic couplet, borrowed from French practice, replaces the Old English alliterative line for narrative.

19. Richard Rolle of Hampole is best known as:

    • A.A romance writer
    • B.An early English mystic and devotional writer
    • C.A chronicler of the Norman kings
    • D.A translator of the Bible
    B. An early English mystic and devotional writer — He died in 1349 and begins the line of English mystical writing continued by Julian of Norwich.

20. The Statute of Pleading of 1362 is important because it:

    • A.Abolished the use of Latin in the Church
    • B.Required English to be used in the law courts
    • C.Established the first English printing press
    • D.Made French the language of Parliament
    B. Required English to be used in the law courts — It marks the formal recovery of English as a public language, and Parliament was opened in English in the same year.

References

• The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume A, The Middle Ages — https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393603026
• British Library, Middle English manuscripts including Harley 2253 — https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/
• Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language — https://www.routledge.com/A-History-of-the-English-Language/Baugh-Cable/p/book/9781138500945
• Oxford Reference, Middle English literature and the matters of romance — https://www.oxfordreference.com/
• Odisha Department of Higher Education, CPET admission portal — https://pg.samsodisha.gov.in/