Halleck's New English Literature. Reuben Post Halleck
a pure Teutonic speech, but no native speaker of it claims for it any superiority over the English as an instrument of expression, while many are willing to concede its inferiority."
The Changes Slowly Accomplished.—For over a hundred years after the Conquest, but few French words found their way into current English use. This is shown by the fact that the Brut, a poem of 32,250 lines, translated from a French original into English about 1205, has not more than a hundred words of Norman-French origin.
At first the Normans despised the tongue of the conquered Saxons, but, as time progressed, the two races intermarried, and the children could hardly escape learning some Saxon words from their mothers or nurses. On the other hand, many well-to-do Saxons, like parents in later times, probably had their children taught French because it was considered aristocratic.
Until 1204 a knowledge of French was an absolute necessity to the nobles, as they frequently went back and forth between their estates in Normandy and in England. In 1204 King John lost Normandy, and in the next reign both English and French kings decreed that no subject of the one should hold land in the territory of the other. This narrowing of the attention of English subjects down to England was a foundation stone in building up the supremacy of the English tongue.
In 1338 began the Hundred Years' War between France and England. In Edward the Third's reign (1327–1377), it was demonstrated that one Englishman could whip six Frenchmen; and the language of a hostile and partly conquered race naturally began to occupy a less high position. In 1362 Parliament enacted that English should thereafter be used in law courts, "because the laws, customs, and statutes of this realm, be not commonly known in the same realm, for that they be pleaded, shewed, and judged in the French tongue, which is much unknown in the said realm."
LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD 1066–1400
Metrical Romances.—For nearly three hundred years after the Norman Conquest the chief literary productions were metrical romances, which were in the first instance usually written by Frenchmen, but sometimes by Englishmen (e.g. Layamon) under French influence. There were four main cycles of French romance especially popular in England before the fifteenth century. These were tales of the remarkable adventures of King Arthur and his Knights, Charlemagne and his Peers, Alexander the Great, and the heroes at the siege of Troy. At the battle of Hastings a French minstrel is said to have sung the Song of Roland from the Charlemagne cycle.
These long stories in verse usually present the glory of chivalry, the religious faith, and the romantic loves of a feudal age. In Beowulf, woman plays a very minor part and there is no love story; but in these romances we often find woman and love in the ascendancy. One of them, well known today in song, Tristram and Iseult (Wagner's Tristan und Isolde), "a possession of our composite race," is almost entirely a story of romantic love.
The romances of this age that have most interest for English readers are those which relate to King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The foundation suggestions for the most of this cycle are of British (Welsh) origin. This period would not have existed in vain, if it had given to the world nothing, but these Arthurian ideals of generosity, courage, honor, and high endeavour, which are still a potent influence. In his Idylls of the King, Tennyson calls Arthur and his Knights:—
"A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time."
The Quest of the Holy Grail belongs to the Arthurian cycle. Percival (Wagner's Parsifal), the hero of the earlier version and Sir Galahad of the later, show the same spirit that animated the knights in the Crusades. Tennyson introduces Sir Galahad as a knight whose strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure, undertaking "the far-quest after the divine." The American poet Lowell chose Sir Launfal, a less prominent figure in Arthurian romance, for the hero of his version of the search for the Grail, and had him find it in every sympathetic act along the common way of life.
The story of Gawayne and the Green Knight, "the jewel of English medieval literature," tells how Sir Gawayne, Arthur's favorite, fought with a giant called the Green Knight. The romance might almost be called a sermon, if it did not reveal in a more interesting way a great moral truth—that deception weakens character and renders the deceiver vulnerable in life's contests. In preparing for the struggle, Sir Gawayne is guilty of one act of deceit. But for this, he would have emerged unscathed from the battle. One wound, which leaves a lasting scar, is the result of an apparently trivial deception. His purity and honor in all things else save him from death. This story, which reminds us of Spenser's Faerie Queene, presents in a new garb one of the oft-recurring ideals of the race, "keep troth" (truth). Chaucer sings in the same key:—
"Hold the hye wey, and let thy gost thee lede,
And trouthe shall delivere, it is no drede."
We should remember that these romances are the most characteristic literary creations of the Middle Ages, that they embody the new spirit of chivalry, religious faith, and romantic love in a feudal age, that they had a story to tell, and that some of them have never lost their influence on human ideals.
A Latin Chronicler.—One chronicler, Geoffrey of Monmouth, although he wrote in Latin, must receive some attention because of his vast influence on English poetry. He probably acquired his last name from being archdeacon of Monmouth. He was appointed Bishop of St. Asaph in 1152 and died about 1154. Unlike the majority of the monkish chroniclers, he possessed a vivid imagination, which he used in his so-called History of the Kings of Britain.
Geoffrey pretended to have found an old manuscript which related the deeds of all British kings from Brutus, the mythical founder of the kingdom of Britain, and the great-grandson of Aeneas, to Caesar. Geoffrey wrote an account of the traditionary British kings down to Cadwallader in 689 with as much minuteness and gravity as Swift employed in the Voyage to Lilliput. Other chroniclers declared that Geoffrey lied saucily and shamelessly, but his book became extremely popular. The monks could not then comprehend that the world's greatest literary works were to be products of the imagination.
In Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain we are given vivid pictures of King Lear and his daughters, of Cymbeline, of King Arthur and his Knights, of Guinevere and the rest of that company whom later poets have immortalized. It is probable that Geoffrey was not particular whether he obtained his materials from old chroniclers, Welsh bards, floating tradition, or from his own imagination. His book left its impress on the historical imagination of the Middle Ages. Had it not been for Geoffrey's History, the dramas of King Lear and Cymbeline might never have been suggested to Shakespeare.
Layamon's Brut.—About 1155 a Frenchman named Wace translated into his own language Geoffrey of Monmouth's works. This translation fell into the hands of Layamon, a priest living in Worcestershire, who proceeded to render the poem, with additions of his own, into the Southern English dialect. Wace's Brut has 15,300 lines; Layamon's, 32,250. As the matter which Layamon added is the best in the poem, he is, in so far, an original author of much imaginative power. He is certainly the greatest poet between the Conquest and Chaucer's time.
A selection from the Brut will give the student an opportunity of comparing this transition English with the language in its modern form:—
"And Ich wulle varan to Avalun: And I will fare to Avalon,
To vairest alre maidene To the fairest of all maidens,
To Argante ðere quene, To Argante the queen,
Alven swiðe sceone; Elf surpassing fair;
And heo scal mine wunden And she shall my wounds
Makien alle isunde, Make all sound,
Al hal me makien All hale me make
Mid halweige drenchen. With healing draughts.
And seoðe Ich cumen wulle And afterwards I will come
To mine kineriche To my kingdom
And wunien mid Brutten And dwell