English Literature

The English Language

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The English Language

Four principal dialects existed in late medieval England in addition to the western and northern Welsh and Scots. Latin was still the dominant institutional language and French was commonly spoken among the nobility and others. Gradually throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, written English would become the language of many kinds of records, replacing Latin and French. This complex linguistic situation, somewhat exacerbated by Lollardy, caused … Read the rest

English Literature

Plays and Representations

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Plays and Representations

Lollards often objected to any visual representation of religious subjects, including paintings, illuminations, and sculptures (even crosses) (see “Lollardy Trials,” p. 59, “Censorship,” p. 242, and the “Chaucer portrait: Thomas Hoccleve, Regiment of Princes,” p. 141). Such a rejection of images was part of a more general late medieval desire for unmediated communication with God and a relationship that was also outside established institutional conventions. Criticisms of … Read the rest

English Literature

Style and Spectacle Feasts

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Style and Spectacle Feasts

Noble households were large socioeconomic enterprises, and meals were an integral part of their owners’ desire to display their status both at home and as they traveled around the countryside. Royal households employed anywhere from 300–800 indentured and other servants, while the households of lords and clergy employed an average of between 20 and 150 servants to perform the duties for the immediate family and its … Read the rest

English Literature

Quick Sermons

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Quick Sermons

Audience Reactions to Sermons

Medieval theoreticians and practitioners adapted the Classical arts of rhetoric – the artes dictaminis (letter-writing), artes poetriae (poetry), and artes praedicandi (speaking) – to their specific needs. The focus of the artes or ars praedicandi became the province of preachers, lawyers, and rulers, who learned the art of composing and delivering their sermons, arguments, and speeches. Very little, however, is known about the reception … Read the rest

English Literature

Women: Margaret Paston

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Women: Margaret Paston

Women in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had greatly varied lives not only because of class differences but also because of geographical location, marital status, religious involvement, and individual experience. Even within the smaller group of aristocratic and middle-class women, one needs to remain aware of differences, especially given the nature of writings about women from clerical, literary, legal, and historical sources. Many women of the nobility … Read the rest

English Literature

English Literature Poems

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Poem 1 “Miracle of the Boy Singer”

Bodleian Library MS English Poetry a.1, fol. 124v (Vernon) The Vernon manuscript is the longest and largest surviving volume of Middle English writings; it was originally over 420 vellum leaves long, the pages ruled in 2 or 3 columns with over 80 lines of text each. The contents include passages from the South English Legendary, Northern Homilies, miracles of our Lady, poems, and … Read the rest

English Literature

Book History Journal

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Book History Journal

Larger book collections in the Middle English period tended to be eclectic and restricted to wealthier individuals because of their price, but even lessmoneyed people frequently owned one or more volumes. A newly commissioned luxury book could cost as much as 35 pounds, a simpler missal 20 shillings. Nobility and courtiers often had collections of between five and fifteen books: Bibles, primers, and other religious writings, historical … Read the rest

English Literature

Saracens

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Saracens

Medieval Christians’ views of Islam developed throughout the Middle Ages, beginning with concerns about easterners’ military and political conquests and developing into a greater understanding of some of the tenets of Islam. This second phase began due to contact with Muslims during the crusades (1096, 1146, 1189, 1228) and the arrival of Arab philosophy and science in the West via Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This familiarity … Read the rest

English Literature

Lechers and Sodomites

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Lechers and Sodomites

After the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the classification of sins into groups and degrees of severity had even more pragmatic consequences. Drawing on earlier canon law, a principal focus of the pastoral function became the redemption of sinners through sermon and confession, and new compendia of writings on the priest’s role in confession as well as practical instructional manuals for administering confession appeared. Discussions of sexuality … Read the rest

English Literature

God’s Unknowability

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God’s Unknowability

Original compositions of contemplative, or mystical, writings in English as well as translations of continental works into the vernacular flourished in the late-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. From Richard Rolle in the 1340s and even during the persecutions of Lollards in the 1400s (see “Lollardy Trials,” p. 59), English writers and translators explored modes of spirituality that centered around ways of approaching God and composed descriptions of union with … Read the rest