Middle English

Middle English is the form of the English language used from the late 12th century until the 1470s. It developed from Old English following the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Middle English was succeeded in the late 15th century by Early Modern English.

History

Middle English developed out of Late Old English in Norman England (1066–1154) and was spoken throughout the Plantagenet era (1154–1485). The system of orthography that was established during the Old English period was continued into the Middle English period, but under the influence of Old Norse, a North Germanic language, the richness of inflections began to decrease. The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give the appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages to what had then become Middle English.

Characteristics

Middle English is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1200–1450. First, the waves of Norse invasions (8th–11th centuries) mixed Old English with Old Norse, leaving recognizable Norse vocabulary, especially in northern England. Second, the Anglo-Norman language brought a new layer of words to the English language.

Literature

The most famous writer from the Middle English period is Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a variety of genres, which are narrated by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.

See also

• History of the English language
• Old English
• Early Modern English

External links

• British Library: Discovering Literature: Medieval
• Luminarium: Anthology of Middle English Literature (1350–1485)

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