ENGLISH LITERATURE TO THE TIME OF CHAUCER

1.To the Norman Conquest :

ENGLISH  literature began long before the fourteenth century. But it was not till then that its language became one which could be readily understood by a present-day reader without special training. Although the poems of Chaucer, who lived from 1340 to 1400, are not written modern English, it is always possible to understand the general sense of what is being said; and the people he describes and his outlook on life seem remarkably close to ourselves. The literature before his time, on the other hand, is written in a language which has to be learnt and deals with customs and a way of life a long way from our own. To go back to this literature, back to the writings of the early Middle Ages or, farther still, to those of Anglo-Saxon times, is to journey to strange, distant, and half-forgotten countries.

Yet the language and the kind of poetry which Chaucer wrote were not things which he had newly invented. A great many of his stories and the forms he used in telling them came from the Continent, from the rich sources of French, Italian, and classical literature.

The language which the Anglo-Saxons spoke differed in many ways from modern English. It was a language of strong stresses and many consonants. Their poetry was not rhymed but alliterative. Each line had a number of stressed syllables which began with the same consonant or vowels. Here, for example, is a passage from Beowulf, a famous Anglo-Saxon epic:

Sceal se hearda helm hyrstedgolde

Fætum befeallen; feormynd swefaö

Pa Öe beadogriman bywan sceoldon;

ofer borda gebræc bite irena,

brosnaö æfter beorne. Ne mæg byrnan hring

æfter wigfruman wide fëran,

hæleöum be healfe. Næs hearpan wyn,

gomen glëobëames, në göd hafoc

geond sæl swingeö, në se swifta mearh

burhstede bëateö

Only a few of these heroic poems have survived, fragments like "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer", or "The Battle of Brunanburh", a poem in praise of Athelstan who in 937 defeated the Scots and the Irish Norsemen in a battle of this name. At a later time than this poem, when Anglo-Saxon traditions were declining and about to go down before the onslaught of the Normans, an unknown writer put into verse the heroic story of "The Battle of Maldon". The poem describes a fight, unimportant enough in itself, between a band of Anglo-Saxons under their chief Byrhtnoth and a marauding party of Norsemen who had landed on the coast of Essex (991).In the end Byrhtnoth's thanes die defending their leader.

Besides this kind of poem there is , however, a great mass of Anglo-Saxon poetry which is essentially religious. Much of it is merely paraphrase of parts of the Bible or of Bible legend. Cædmon,who began probably as a herdsman at Whitby Monastery, wrote many poems of this kind. His story is told by Bede. Because of his ignorance he could not join with the others in songs of praise to God, and stayed lonely in the stable. There an angel visited him and bade him sing of the creation. He did this and afterwards wrote down in verse all that he had sung, and later many other poems of the same kind. The poems on biblical subjects which have survived are too late in date to have been written by Cædmon, but they have a fire and earnestness and simplicity which probably belonged to his time.

But literary prose does not begin until the ninth century when Alfred, King of Wessex, attempted to bring back to his kingdom her lost learning. For this he studied Latin and translated, or had translated for him, those works which he thought would be most useful to his people. He formed his prose on Latin, making his English follow Latin constructions. Either directly to him or to his encouragement we owe translations of the " Cura Pastoralis" ( a volume of priestly instruction) by Pope Gregory the Great, the "History of the world of Orosius", "The Consolations of Philosophy of Boethius" , and Bede, the History of the English Church. Lives of the Saints (993-8) a lighter, clearer, more musical prose.

 When the Norman Conquest came , poetry was almost destroyed; prose, on the contrary, in spite of changes, remained recognizable and suffered no such break with the past.