296 



THE STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



poem "Beowulf" has Teutonic power 



but it is not native to English .linon's 



phrase of the Scriptures " is the first great 



British {x>em. With Christianity a new 



spirit entered into Fngli>h jHK-try. 



old English prose al.M. beiran in the monastery 

 of \orthumbria with l>rde. His learning was 

 famed over the whole of Europe. It is said that 

 forty-five works written in Latin {trove his in- 

 dustry. His last work was a "Translation of 

 the Gospel of St. John." 



During the Ninth Century the greater part 

 1 ly the Danes, and litera- 

 iied. The long battle against 

 these invaders was lost in Northumbria, but 

 was gained for a time by Alfred the Great in 

 \. learning changed its seat from the 

 north to the south, and as Whitby was the cradle 

 of English poetry in the North, so Winchester 

 of English prose in the South. 

 Alfred gathered scholars about him and trans- 

 lated the Latin works of Bede, the Chronicles 

 of Orosius, and added an account of the voyages 

 of Othere and Wulfstan. Many other works 

 were added to the English language in Alfred's 

 time. "At Winchester the king took the Eng- 

 lish tongue and made it the tongue in which 

 philosophy, law, and religion spoke to 

 the English people." He also established schools 

 and wrote text-books for these schools, so that 

 every free-born youth might attend to his books 

 till he "could read English writing perfectly." 



The next great name in literature after King 

 Alfp-d is Alfric. He wrote numerous ecclesias- 

 tical works and was the first translator of any 

 considerable portion of the Bible. His trans- 

 lation of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, and 

 part of Job, form the best model we possess of 

 the language at the beginning of the Eleventh 

 Century. A long line of Saxon Chronicles con- 

 tinues an unbroken history of the language and 

 literature from Alfred to the death of Stephen 

 in 11.11. 



Tin- overthrow of Saxon rule in England by 

 William the Conqueror is an event of vast im- 

 portance in literature as well as in history. For 

 a hundred years after the conquest literature 

 was inert. A foreign king and an aristocracy 

 of a foreign people ruled the land ; an alien lan- 

 guage and literature had been introduced. A 

 few generations of such domination and then 

 there wen- H-MS of returning life. The language 

 could not die while the bulk of the people re- 

 mained Saxon, but it underwent a great change. 

 Enirlaml was still to remain the land of the Saxon 

 tongue, but it was to be a language greatly modi- 

 fied by its contact with the Latin of the clergy 

 and the French of the Norman conquerors. For 

 three hundred years after the conquest these 

 languages contended with the Saxon English 

 for supremacy in England. In Edward the 

 Third's reign it had been fully demonstrated 

 that the English were to be the ruling people 

 and parliament enacted important laws making 

 the English the required language in the law 

 courts and in schools. 



But the English of King Edward's time was 

 quite unlike the rude Saxon speech of " Beowulf " 

 and "Caedmon," or the later Chronicles. Pure 

 Anglo-Saxon was an energetic language, able 



; to express with vigor the practical common 

 thoughts of everyday; but it lacked delicacy 

 and flexibility of expression. The Saxon mind, 

 too, was lacking in quickness of though! and in 

 the creative play of the imagination. It has 

 been well said that in this blending of languages 

 the Saxon furnished the dough and the Norman 

 French the yeast. Out of the combined product 

 we get a strength and flexibility of language that 

 belonged to neither. 



The literature of England during the Twelfth 

 Century was almost entirely Latin and French, 

 but we go back to it as a rich source of our story 

 telling. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote twelve 

 short books in Latin which he called "History 

 of the Kings of Briton." It is a clever putting 

 together of Welsh legends, a source to which 

 we go for some of our King Arthur stories. 

 These stories were afterward translated into 

 French and later brought back into English 

 verse by Laymon in his "Brut d'Engleterre." 

 Later many other stories were added and other 

 cycles of romance were introduced into English 

 literature. There were four of these great ro- 

 mantic cycles: The first, already mentioned, 

 are the King Arthur legends, to which later 

 stories were added, as "Quest of the Graal," 

 "Morte d' Arthur," "Romance of Sir Tristam," 

 etc.; the second, Charlemagne and his twelve 

 peers, containing the stories of "Roland," 

 "Charlemagne," "Otwell," "Siege of Milan," 

 etc.; the third, the "Life of Alexander," ro- 

 mantic wonder stories from the east; fourth, 

 "Siege of Troy," derived from Latin sources. 

 Popular ballads, such as "Robin Hood" and 

 "Robert of Gloucester's Rhyming Chronicles," 

 and lyrics sung among the people, kept the 

 love of poetry alive until the greater burst of 

 song in the Fourteenth Century. 



From the Conquest there is very little prose 

 writing in England for the next three centuries, 

 but in the Fourteenth Century there were two 

 prose writers of preeminence, Sir John Mande- 

 ville and John Wyclif. Mandeville wrote a most 

 popular book of stories which he styled "The 

 Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Mandeville." 

 This book established the love of story telling. 

 John Wyclif, next to Chaucer, is the greatest 

 literary name of the century. He is the first 

 to give a complete copy of the Scriptures to the 

 English people in their own tongue. The 

 influence of such a translation read by all the 

 people is to raise a dialect to the dignity of a 

 national language. Besides this great work, 

 Wyclif is the author of a large number of ser- 

 mons and polemical writings. Contemporan- 

 eous with these religious tracts which Wyclif 

 distributed so freely was "Piers Plowman" by 

 William Langland. It was a satire in verse 

 upon the evils which had gained a foothold with- 

 in the Church. 



The one name which stands first in the litera- 

 ture of the Fourteenth Century is that of Geoffrey 

 Chaucer. Some critics claim that before him 

 there was no permanent English verse. He is 

 therefore often called the "Father of English 

 poetry." Chaucer's earlier poems are "Ro- 

 maunt of the Rose," " The Boke of the Duchess," 

 and " Parlement of Briddes." His greatest work 

 is "Canterbury Tales," the plan of which was 



