The Early Period
Several poems in early Middle English are extant.The Orrmulum
- a 12th-century work of Biblical exegesis, written in early Middle English verse by a monk named Orm. It’s a verse translation of parts of the Gospels which is of linguistic and prosodic rather than literary interest. Of approximately the same date,The Owl and the Nightingale
is the first example in English of thedébat,
a popular continental form; in the poem, the owl, strictly monastic and didactic, and the nightingale, a free and amorous secular spirit, charmingly debate the virtues of their respective ways of life.
The Thirteenth Century
Middle English prose of the 13th cent. continued in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon prose—homiletic, didactic, and directed toward ordinary people rather than polite society. The “Katherine Group” (c.1200), comprising three saints' lives, is typical. The Ancren Riwle (c.1200) is a manual for prospective anchoresses; it was very popular, and it greatly influenced the prose of the 13th and 14th cent. The fact that there was no French prose tradition was very important to the preservation of the English prose tradition.
In the 13th cent.the romance
, an important continental narrative verse form, was introduced in England. It drew from three rich sources of character and adventure: the legends of Charlemagne, the legends of ancient Greece and Rome, and the British legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.Layamon’s Brut
, a late 13th-century metrical romance marks the first appearance of Arthurian matter in English.
Layamon's Brut
, also known as theChronicle of Britain
and often called simplyBrut
, is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. It is named for Britain’s mythical founder, Brutus of Troy. TheBrut
is 16,095 lines long and narrates the history of Britain. The rhyming style is the alliterative verse line style commonly used in Middle English poetry. Layamon's Brut (c. 1215) is a history of England in verse written in a form of Middle English and it remains one of the best extant examples of early Middle English.
Original English romances includeKing Horn
( one of the earliest Middle English romances which was written in a South Midlands dialect somewhere around 1225 by an unknown poet and which is based on the Anglo-Norman story) andHavelok the Dane (
a Middle English romance story). Both 13th-century works retain elements of the Anglo-Saxon heroic tradition.
However, French romances were far more influential than their English counterparts. In England French romances popularized ideas of adventure and heroism quite contrary to those of Anglo-Saxon heroic literature and were representative of wholly different values and tastes. Ideals of courtly love, together with its elaborate manners and rituals, replaced those of the heroic code; adventure and feats of courage were pursued for the sake of the knight's lady rather than for the sake of the hero's honor or the glory of his tribal king.
Continental verse forms based on metrics and rhyme replaced the Anglo-Saxon alliterative line in Middle English poetry. Many French literary forms also became popular, such as a moral tale, the animal fable, and the dream vision. The continental allegorical tradition, which derived from classical literature, is exemplified by the Roman de la Rose, which had a strong impact on English literature.
Medieval works of literature often center on the inevitability, sadness, change, loss, and death; and the vanity of human grandeur. A number of 13th-century secular and religious Middle Englishlyrics
are extant, but like Middle English literature in general, the lyric reached its fullest flower during the second half of the 14th cent. Lyrics continued popular in the 15th cent., from which time theballad
also dates.
The Fourteenth Century
The poetry of the alliterative revival includes some of the best poetry in Middle English. The Christian allegoryThe Pearl
is a poem of great intricacy and sensibility that is meaningful on several symbolic levels.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
by the same anonymous author, is also of high literary sophistication, and its intelligence, vividness, and symbolic interest render it possibly the finest Arthurian poem in English. Other important alliterative poems are the moral allegoryPiers Plowman
,
attributed to William Langland, and the alliterativeMorte Arthur
,
which, like nearly all English poetry until the mid-14th cent., was anonymous.
Pearl
It is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the "Pearl poet" or "Gawain poet", is generally assumed to be the author ofSir Gawain and the Green Knight
,Patience
, andCleanness
and may have composedSt. Erkenwald.
The poem may be divided into three parts: an introduction, a dialog between the two main characters in which the Pearl instructs the narrator, and a description of the New Jerusalem with the narrator's awakening. The narrator, upset at the loss of his Pearl, falls asleep and begins to dream. In his dream he is transported to a garden. Wandering by the side of a beautiful stream, he becomes convinced paradise is on the other shore. He sees a young maid whom he identifies as his Pearl.
When he asks whether she is the pearl he has lost, she tells him he has lost nothing, that his pearl is merely a rose which has naturally withered. He wants to cross to her side, but she says it is not so easy, that he must resign himself to the will and mercy of God. He objects to the idea that God rewards every man equally, regardless of his apparent due. She responds that God gives the same gift of Christ's redemption to all. She instructs him on several aspects of sin, repentance, grace and salvation. She describes the earthly and the heavenly Jerusalem. She advises him to forsake all and buy this pearl. He asks about the heavenly Jerusalem; she tells him it is the city of God. He asks to go there; she says that God forbids that, but he may see it by a special dispensation. They walk upstream, and he sees the city across the stream, which is described in a paraphrase of the Apocalypse. He also sees a procession of the blessed. Plunging into the river in his desperation to cross, he awakes from the dream back and resolves to fulfill the will of God.