Middle English.doc

Middle English1066-1500The Norman Conquest1066-1200A. The single most important event on the history of the English language is the Norman Conquest in 1066.B. In 1066 King Edward (the Confessor) died childless. Edward's chief advisor (earl of West Saxon), Godwin, had a son names Harold. Harold succeeded his father Godwin and virtually ruled England the last 12 years of Edward's reign. Upon Edward's death, Harold was elected King.C. William, the duke of Normandy, was 2nd cousin to Edward, and Edward had promised him the throne upon Edward's death. Once William learns of Harold's succession to the throne, William begins a very detailed and careful plan to win the crown.        1. First, William secured cooperation from his vassals by promising good rewards.   2. He made peace with his enemies on the continent.   3. He appealed to the Pope to sanction his plan and recieved the blessing of the Church.   4. The end result was a massive number of people with questionable (greedy & ambitious) motives coming to the aid of William. By the time William invades England, he has a formidable army.   5. When William landed (Sept. 1066 at Pevensy in the south of England), he was unopposed.   6. Harold was busy in northern England trying to ward off an invaion by the king of Norway, who also wanted the throne.   7. When Harold finally marshals his army, he didn't have the numbers that William did. However, the day of the big battle, Harold managed a valiant fight and actually held William off. According to history, military might had nothing to do with William's victory. Instead, Harold was killed, and in the confusion without a leader, the English troops fell apart. Thus, William was able to triumph at Hastings.   8. However, William had to burn and pillage southeast England before the people gave in, and on Christmas Day 1066, William was crowned king.D. William's reign virtually wipes out all of the old English nobility. In its place, a new nobility-of Norman descentE. With Norman nobility in place, nearly all great estates and important positions were held by Normans or other foriegners.F. The governing class in both church and state, then, was foreign, and their influence great.Language Use During ME1. French   a. The ruling class continued to use their own language-French.   b. For 200 years after the Conquest, the language of policy was French. And this was not a demarcation of ethnicity. Numerous English people (those of the upper classes) learned the language through marriage and by association.   c. However, the language of the masses remained English.   d. Until the beginning of the 13th century, French continued to dominate as the language of nobility. A very close connection existed between the continent and England . . . the nobility usually held land in both places: therefore, travel between the two was fairly common.   e. Further, William was no exception tothis. In fact when William died, he left Normandy to his eldest son and England to his youngest son, William the Second. Later Normandy and England were under one ruler, but not until Henry the First. Under Henry the Second, English "possessions" in France were even further broadened and enhanced.   f. When Henry the 2nd marries Eleanor of Aquitaine, he increased his holdings so that by the time he became King of England, he controlled about 2/3 of France.   g. From William the Conqueror through Henry the 2nd, most kings spent at least 2/3 of their time in France. And besides Henry I, no other English king married an Englishwoman until Edward the 4th in the 1460s. The perpetuation of French was on. Too much time and too much money were invested in France for the nobility not to have, as a natural course of events, used French as the language.      *note: no evidence exists to suggest that English was a "hated" language. Most probably very little attention was paid to it because classes simply did not mix.2. Fusion of the French and English-over time, the two "cultures" assimilated and adjusted to one another.3. Diffusion of English   a. Some nobility spoke English. This would be a natural occurrence.   b. Some clergy preserved English.   c. Some of the educated, the nobility, and clergy, then, representing the upper social strata, were bilingual.4. Diffusion of French   a. Knights learned French.   b. Merchants spoke both French and English.   c. Managers (sheriffs, bailiffs, etc.) on large estates were bilingual.   d. For the most part, bilingualism extended only down to the middle class.      *Qualification: Bilingual as used above does not indicate fluency.The Re-establishment of English1200-15001. The Loss of Normandy   a. King John "lost" Normandy in 1204   b. King John fell in love with a French noblewoman-Isabel of Angouleme.   c. He married her hastily without regard for her other suitor (to whom she was already engaged), Hugh of Lusignan.   d. Hugh was the head of a very powerful and ambitious family, but John chose to ignore these connections and, in anticipation of retaliation for stealing Isabel, attacked Hugh's family.   e. Hugh appeals to the King of all France, Philip, and Philip took advantage of the situation to "embarrass" the duke of Normandy (and King of England), John. Since John was extremely irritating to Philip, it was with great delight that Philip summoned John to appear before him, answer charges, and submit to the judgement of the court.   f. John maintained that, as King of England, he was exempt from subjugation and did not appear at his trial. Hence, Philip stripped John of his "dukedom" and invaded Normandy.   g. Philip succeeded, and Normandy returned solely to the French.   h. John lost support: he was viewed as a scoundrel. There was even thought (with some basis) that he had his own cousin, prince Arthur, murdered.2. Separation of English and French nobility   a. With the loss of Normandy (some holdings were left in the south of France), many nobles had to decide where their allegiance lay . . . France or England.   b. Philip, and later Louis, helped solve this problem: he confiscated the land of many nobles. Those who still had holdings in both places were forced to give up one or the other. There were some that were divided up by Philip, and in some instances, the nobles kept their larger landholdings in England and gave up the lesser in Normandy.   c. By 1250 the holdings had been divided or the choice made to hold land either in England or Normandy, and by 1250, there was no real reason for using French.   d. During the breakup of holdings, an influx of French from the south was also occurring. There were three periods of infiltration by foreigners, all occurring during the reign of Henry the 3rd:      1. -in 1233 under Peter des Roches (a Frenchman made bishop of Winchester and later chancellor)      2. -in 1236 when Henry married Eleanor of Provence, and he gave her many, many relatives land and positions      3. -the last in 1246   e. Not all infiltrators were French; some were Spanish3. Henry the 3ed's reign was full of excesses and liberties. He freely gave to foreigners-land,etc.-and encouraged their influx. The hostilities that ensued were, in large part, due to Henry's catering tothe French. Resentment of the foreigners and of Henry was the attitude of the day.4. Promotion of National Feeling   a. Opposition to foreigners helped promote national feeling   b. Drove the barons and middle class together in a common cause   c. Ironically, one leader of the cause was Simon de Montfort-a Norman by birth.   d. In line with these feelings, then, some knowledge of English would be regarded as desirable.5. French as "supreme"   a. Though England was beginning to unite, this did not mean French was given up overnight.   b. In fact, French was considered "the" language of the continent. Even Germans and Italians spoke French.6. The 13th Century   a. French continued to be spoken by the upper class in England, but not for different reasons. No longer the "mother" tongue, French was spoken as a matter of social custom and administrative convention.   b. However, with the separation of nobility from interests in France and Normandy, the upper classes were generally using it.   c. Because French use was fading and English use becoming prevalent, the impact of "borrowing" French vocabulary is major. When an English term was unknown and needed to be expressed, a French word or phrase was used.   d. On the whole English use was steady.   e. By the middle of the 13th century, French is considered a foreign language.   f. Some attempt to preserve French existed in the clergy and from scholars, but not much.   g. The French that had been spoken among "Englishmen" was considered by Francophiles to be a "backard" and butchered dialect. 7. Other factors contributing to the rise of English   a. The 100 years' War-promoted national unity against the French to a very intense degree. Because the English came to "hate" the French, the French language was used less and less.   b. The rise of the middle class-with the outbreak of "The Black Death" in 1348, approximately 30% of the population died. This brought a shortage of labor; consequently, the economic importance of the working class grew. Since English was the language of the common laborer, its use become even more widespread. 8. By the beginning of the 14th century, English was once again the dominant language. Futher, in 1362 Parliament enacted a law requiring all lawsuits to be conducted in English. English is, then, officially recognized. From here, the use of English filtered down to other branches of government and law.9. Henry V's reign from 1413-1422 marked a turning point in English as a written language. Henry used English in writing letters, and the practice diffused among the English people.10. French literature was not so easily replaced, though, by English literature. Most of the literature in Middle English comes in the form of religious.11. The diffusion of hte language does extend eventually to literature. -Chaucer (1340-1400), Langland (Piers Plowman), and the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight emerge, leading to the labeling of writing at the time as The Period of Great individual Writing (1350-1400).12. The 15th century literature of England becomes known as the Imitative Period or Transition Period, the period of imitators of Chaucer and before Shakespeare. Middle English Dialects and The Rise of Standard EnglishA. ME was comprised of 5 distinct dialects (see p. 186 in book). These reflect :   1. original settlement by Anglo-Saxons and Jutes   2. the influence on ON on OE. The division between East & West Midland reflects the boundary of the Old    DanelawB. As London developed into a major commercial city and seat of government, London English (which was a variety of East Midland English) became the language of literature & of widest use by the end of the 14th century C. However, the present day written standard English derives from the variety used in the Chancery (the national bureacracy). The written conventions & spelling adopted by the clerks of the Chancery provided a written standard that existed in spite of significant differences in the spoken language. Middle English Phonology 1. Vowel changes-simple vowels change in quality, and the 4 OE diphthongs become monophthongs.     a:      b n  b n  (backing)     鎉   a  捩t  that  (backing)     :    :   s:  s :  (raising)     y   I   synn   s nne   (unrounding)     y:    i:   hy:dan   hi:dan   (unrounding)Diphthongs (smoothing):         hearm    harm :     :    stream     streme o        heofon    hevene:o   e:    b on    b n2.New diphthongs-6 new ones appear, but only one persists in Modern English:          borrowed from French (joie)3.Lengthening and Shortening   a. Vowels became long after ld, mb, and nd (but not if a third consonant followed)     OE     ME     cild     ch ld (c.f. children)     hund     hound   b. The vowels a, e, and o became long in open syllables of disyllabic words     OE     ME     nama     na:me     nosu     no:se (c.f. nostril)   c. Vowels became short before double consonants and consonant clusters other than ld, mb, and nd     OE      ME     ce:pte     kept     ble:dde     bledde (c.f. bleed)   d. Vowels become short in the first syllable of trisyllabic words (trisyllabic shortening)     OE     ME     ha:ligdag     halidai (c.f. holy)4. Consonant Changes   a.hl, hn, and hr become l, n, and r respectively      OE     ME     hlu:d     lu:d     hnecca     necke     hring     ring   b.w is lost between a consonant and a back vowel ( , , o, and u)     OE     ME     Modern E     twa:     t :     two     sword     s rd     sword   c. , is lost after unstressed vowels      OE     ME     rihtli     rightly     a:nli     onli   d.Voiced fricatives emerge as separate phonemes (v, 餧, z and ) as a result of:     1.leveling      OE     ME     nosu n zu     nose n :z     risan ri:zan     rise ri:z   2.French influence     vat, vixen, verseMiddle English GrammarA. Leveling eliminates most of the inflectional systemB. As a consequence, word order and prepositions become increasing importantC. The loss of inflections leads to the replacement of grammatical gender with natural genderD. Dual number pronouns disappearE. Many strong verbs become regularized; in ME, many verbs are in a state of flux.F. The strong/weak adjective disappears as a result of the loss of inflectional endingsG. They begins to appear as a 3rd person plural nominativeFrench Influence on ME Vocabulary-If two languages are spoken "side by side," frequently transference of words from one language to another is inevitable. Again this process is called borrowing.-The borrowing that occurred was not an immediate process; rather, it occurred gradually.-We can trace the borrowings from French by two time periods: before 1250 and after 1250.A. Prior to 1250    1.Approximately 900 French words borrowed    2.Most of the 900 came in through language contact between the nobility and the working class    3.baron, noble, dame, servant, feast, etc., all signifying the relationship between the classes    4.story, rime, etc., came in by way of literature    5.The largest number of words to enter during this period were, however, from the church. The need to convey doctrine and belief quickly accounts for this, the largest group. B. After 1250   1.Of the two periods, more words entered after 1250 when the language wa