A History of English Language

The reestablishment of english, 1200-1500 143
we would gladly know more about, are specifically referred to as a precedent in the
resolution of the London brewers quoted above. Apparently his brilliant victories over the
French at Agincourt and elsewhere gave the English a pride in things English. The end of
his reign and the beginning of the next mark the period at which English begins to be
generally adopted in writing. If we want a round number, the year 1425 represents very
well the approximate date.
110. Middle English Literature.
The literature written in England during the Middle English period reflects fairly
accurately the changing fortunes of English. During the time that French was the
language best understood by the upper classes, the books they read or listened to were in
French. All of continental French literature was available for their enjoyment, and we
have seen above how this source was supplemented by an important body of French
poetry written in England (§ 88). The rewards of patronage were seldom to be expected
by those who wrote in English; with them we must look for other incentives to writing.
Such incentives were most often found among members of the religious body, interested
in promoting right living and in the care of souls. Accordingly, the literature in English
that has come down to us from this period (1150–1250) is almost exclusively religious or
admonitory. The Ancrene Riwle, the Ormulum (c. 1200), a series of paraphrases and
interpretations of Gospel passages, and a group of saints’ lives and short homiletic pieces
showing the survival of an Old English literary tradition in the southwest are the principal
works of this class. The two outstanding exceptions are Layamon’s Brut (c. 1200), based
largely on Wace (cf. § 88), and the astonishing debate between The Owl and the
Nightingale (c. 1195), a long poem in which two birds exchange recriminations in the
liveliest fashion. There was certainly a body of popular literature that circulated orally
among the people, just as at a later date the English and Scottish popular ballads did, but
such literature has left slight traces in this early period. The hundred years from 1150 to
1250 have been justly called the Period of Religious Record. It is not that religious works
were not written in French too for the upper classes; it is rather the absence in English of
works appealing to courtly tastes that marks the English language at this time as the
language of the middle and lower classes.
The separation of the English nobility from France by about 1250 and the spread of
English among the upper class is manifest in the next hundred years of English literature.
Types of polite literature that had hitherto appeared in French now appear in English. Of
these types the most popular was the romance. Only one English romance exists from an
earlier date than 1250, but from this time translations and adaptations from the French
begin to be made, and in the course of the fourteenth century their number becomes quite
large. The religious literature characteristic of the previous period continues; but we now
have other types as well. The period from 1250 to 1350 is a Period of Religious and
Secular Literature in English and indicates clearly the wider diffusion of the English
language.
The general adoption of English by all classes, which had taken place by the latter half
of the fourteenth century, gave rise to a body of literature that represents the high point in