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Module III- New Trends in Medieval England.

Introduction: Many institutions, trends, movements, art and literature considered to be part
of modern life and culture of England trace their origins to the medieval period. The concept
of darkness is not fully acceptable to the late phase of medieval European history, for the
feudal disintegration ultimately shattered the existing socio-cultural setup, and gradually
Europe entered into a new phase of modern social formations. The similar type of
developments happened in Britain too. The actual roots of modern education, the religious
reform movements, and the new linguistic and literary developments lies in medieval period
of European history. The legacy of Medieval Christian Church, Universities, Lollards,
Chaucer and others indicates the continuity of European culture from its medieval phase to
modern phase.

Intellectual Development- Role of Universities:

During early medieval times education and learning were the monopoly of the Church, and
their purpose was chiefly to train the students for ecclesiastic life and to instill in them a firm
devotion to the Church and its creed. The Christian Monasteries were the chief centers of
learning but the scope of education imparted there was very limited. From 8 th c AD there was
a revival of education due to the efforts of Charlemagne, the grate Holy Roman Emperor He
established a palace school at his capital and it became a model for several Cathedral Schools
in late years. The chief subjects taught in these schools were the seven liberal arts such as
grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. But the cathedral
schools were incapable of teaching new concepts in mathematics and logic or professional
subjects like law or medicine. A more elaborate institution was required to satisfy this
demand and that was provided by University.

The term ‘university’ is derived from the Latin word ‘universitas’; meaning a guild of
learners, both students and teachers, who came together to study at a particular place. In
Medieval times Universities were organized on two different patterns. The students
themselves constituting the guild or corporation represented one pattern. In this pattern the
students employed the teachers, paid their salaries and determined the service conditions of
the teachers. The guild of teachers represented the second pattern and that included four
faculties of arts, theology, law and medicine each headed by an elected dean. The head of the
faculty of arts was also the head of the University and he was designated as Rector.
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In a medieval University curriculum consisted of seven liberal arts in addition to law,

medicine, and theology. The first three of the liberal arts namely grammar, rhetoric, and logic
(Trivium) were offered for a period of three to five years .After completing the study a
student was conferred the bachelor’s degree. Thereafter for the study of the other four liberal
arts like arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (Quadrivium) another three to five years
could be made use of. After the study a student would be conferred Master’s Degree.

A Medieval University was usually an independent community. All University men were
called ‘Clerks’. They were exempted from paying taxes and rendering military services. The
method of teaching was lecture method and students had to depend much upon such lecture
classes since books and libraries were very rare. From the thirteenth century onwards colleges
were formed and attached to the Universities. Like other European countries such as Italy and
France England too produced great centers of learning during the middle ages. Two great
Universities emerged in England were the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The
Oxford University developed from a great school started in 1167 with the support of Henry
II. The University of Cambridge was established in 1209 to help the scholars who fled from
Oxford after a riot that occurred between townsmen and scholars of oxford during the reign
of King John. After the development of college system the two Universities came to have a
network of colleges. These universities became the valuable centers of learning and became
the centre of many significant religious, social, political, cultural and intellectual movements
in succeeding phase of British history.

Anti-Clerical Movement- John Wycliffe.

The most powerful institution in medieval period was the Church also known as the
Ecclesia. Originally this institution was established for the moral monitoring of the Christian
community. In the initial stage Church contributed too much to the development of medieval
man. It imposed a sense of order through a belief system and asked the believers to contribute
to its development. But gradually the Church entered in worldly matters. A clear cut social
division developed among the Christian community. The laymen separated from the
clergymen. The Priestley class was exempted from paying taxes and rendering military
services to the state and they were tried in ecclesiastical court. The material interest and the
interference of the church in worldly matters led to the development of corruption among the
priests. Many complexities originated in connection with the penetration of the Church into
the non-religious domain. Some resistance movement developed against the malpractices of
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the Church in Medieval period .The Lollard movement started by John Wycliffe in the
fourteenth century was an early reformist movement in this direction.

John Wycliffe (1330 - 1384) was an eminent Oxford based religious reformer and the early
leader of English Reformation. As a priest and Professor at Oxford who taught theology and
believed in the doctrine of predestination. In his estimation many members of the clerical
order violated the Christian norms and were not fit for spiritual election. He openly criticized
the Church and said that the humiliating agreement made by the English king John to pay
tribute to the Pope need not to be honored .He supported the State and said that it was higher
than the Church. Wycliffe declared that the Pope was unworthy to become the representative
of God on earth, as he was anti-Christ in spirit. Monasticism, pilgrimages and sacraments
were also criticized by him. According to him Bible was to be regarded as the only guide of
Christians. He translated bible into English to enable the common man to understand it.

Wycliffe called upon the priest to lead simple and virtuous lives, and be worthy of becoming
the servants of God .The priests who followed him were called Lollards or poor priests. They
lolled mumbled prayers as they walked about. The Lollard movement was a movement with
its aim to purify the church and make the clergy convinced of their faults. It also aimed at
following the simple truth of Holy Scriptures, instead of giving too much importance to
rituals, prayer, and fasting. Wycliffe condemned the worldliness, wealth, and luxury of the
church. He was able to exert a tremendous influence on all sections of society. As he
preached about 150 years before Martin Luther, he was called the Morning Star of
Reformation.

In 1377 Wycliffe was charged with heresy, but as public opinion strongly favored him, he
escaped from trial. In 1378 he was deprived of priestly powers and in 1380 he was
condemned as heretic. In 1832 he was expelled from Oxford. After his death in 1384 the
Council of Constance condemned him in 1415, and his body was disinterred and cremated.
But persecution could not crush Lollards completely. They continued their activities against
some of the teachings and practices of the church. Thus Wycliffe and his poor priests
prepared the ground for Reformation.
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Middle English Language and Literature:

Latin was the language in which the cultured man of Norman times wrote. And French was
the spoken in polite society. The Saxon tongue languished and there is little doubt that the
Norman conquest did for a time militate against the development of English literature .Many
Saxons wrote in French and the bulk of the prose was written in Latin. But gradually this
trend was changed an in 14th & 15th centuries there took place a revival of English language
and the upper classes began to use it. During Edward III’s reign it replaced French in law
courts. A statute of parliament enjoined that men of law ‘should plead in their mother tongue.
This consciousness was the result of the birth of nationalism and towards the beginning of the
15th century English was adopted as the universal medium of instruction. The revival of
English language and the development of nationalism were two silent revolutions fraught
with great significance.

The Medieval English was divided into several provincial dialects like Northumbrian, East
and West Midland. The East Midland dialect triumphed over others and became the ancestor
of modern English .Chaucer. Gower, Langland and many others contributed too much to this
triumph.

John Gower (? 1330-1408)

John Gower was an English poet and a friend of Chaucer. He was a man of Kent and seems
to have been a person of shrewd business instincts with a large amount of landed property in
East Anglia. Some authorities say he was a lawyer. But his biographer G.C. Macaulay
suggests that he made his money as a merchant. Some scholars points out that he was
landlord with vested interests. However that may be, it is clear that about middle life he is
concerned entirely with the management of his estates and the writing of books. Gower wrote
in different languages like Latin, French and English.

Gower’s chief works were Speculum Homims, written in French; the Vox Clamantis, written
in Latin; and the Confessio Amantis, written in English. The first is a poem of some 30,000
lines, somewhat in the nature of a Morality. The Vices and Virtues are classified and a picture
of society is drawn. The Vox Clamantis consists of seven books. Throughout the poem,
politics and theology are intermingled. The author divides people into three classes: clerk,
soldier and ploughman. He criticized the clergy and the corruption of the medieval church.
His Confession Amantis initially dedicated to Richard II but later on the author substitutes the
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name of Henry IV. It is clear from the drift of the poem that the writer is opposed to the
social reform. He believes in an aristocratic government and disapproves strongly of the
vacillation of Richard II. The author uses a number of stories with the definite intention of
telling the people what are the rudiments of good morality. This was a long collection of
exemplary tales of love. His last writing Traite, deals with love and marriage. It consists of
number ballads exhibiting many of the qualities shown in his earlier works .This work was
addressed to married people.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400)

Geoffrey Chaucer, the great English poet was born in London in a middle class family, as son
of a London wine merchant. Of middle class birth, he was a courtier, diplomat, and civil
servant, trusted by three kings in his active and varied career. He was Controller of Customs,
Commissioner of Roads, a Member of Parliament, and several times made diplomatic
mission to France, Flanders, and Italy. This gave him opportunity to mix all sorts of people
and study their lives. He was influenced by Italian poets like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.

Geoffrey Chaucer symbolizes the middle Ages. His place in English literature is more
important, for he is the first English writer, the first man to use ‘naked words’ in English. The
writings of Chaucer may be divided into three period; The French, The Italian, and the
English. His first important poem, The Book of the Duchesse (1369/70) was a dream vision
elegy for the duchess of Lancaster. In the 1380s he produced mature works, including The
Parliament of Fowls, a dream vision for St. Valentine’s Day about a conference of birds
choosing their mates; the fine tragic verse romance Troilus and Criseyde; and the unfinished
dream vision Legend of Good Women. Troilus and Criseyde is the first great narrative poem
in English, contain more than 8000 lines of rhyme-royal. The Legend of Good Women deals
with the poet as wishing to make reparation for past errors.

Chaucer’s best-known work, the unfinished Canterbury Tales, written in 1387-1400, is an

intricate dramatic narrative that employs a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in
Canterbury as a framing device for a highly varied collection of stories. This work gives us a
clear-cut picture of the social life of the medieval England. The thirty pilgrims taking part in
the pilgrimage belong to different walks of life and all their individualities and eccentricities
are well depicted by Chaucer. The wealth and variety of his tales are astonishing. Some of
them are adaptations of Boccaccio’s Decameron. With a fine sense of humor he makes mild
criticism of the corruption of the church. Canterbury Tales reflects the tempo of the age in
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which it is written. It is one of the finest work in English literature. Even in its incomplete
state the work is a small literature in itself, an almost unmeasured abundance and variety of
humor and pathos, of narrative and description and dialogue and digression.

Geoffrey Chaucer not only laid the foundation for modern English, but also introduced fresh
beauties in English. He invented a particular kind of stanza for writing poetry called ‘Rhyme
Royal’ a stanza of 7 lines each containing 10 syllables with a rhyme scheme ab abb cc. It is
written in iambic pentameter .Indeed for all his considerable powers and pathos, his happy
fancy, his lucid imagination, it is as a great humorist that Chaucer lingers longest in our
memories, with a humor, rich, profound and sane, devoid of spite and cynicism, irradiated by
a genial kindliness and a perfect knowledge of human life.

William Langland (1330-1400)

William Langland was one of the greatest Middle English poet, who wrote The Book of
Piers the Plowman, and he was the contemporary of Chaucer. He was born at Cleo bury
Mortimer in Shropshire and educated probably at Malvern. Little is known of his life, though
he clearly had a deep knowledge of theology and was interested in the asceticism. His Piers
Plowman is a best example for Middle English alliterative poems, and also an allegorical
work in the form of a series of dream visions with a complex variety of religious themes. This
was written in simple, colloquial language with powerful imagery. Social responsibility,
faith, and individual salvation constitute the primary themes in this poem. The quiet
assuredness of the poem is one of its most remarkable characteristics and it is undoubtedly
placed among the marvels of medieval literature. In addition to this unfinished work
Langland wrote a poem called Richard the Redeless, i.e. devoid of counsel, which related to
the expected deposition of Richard II in 1399.The shadow of obscurity hangs over his later
years, but he died probably about the same time as Chaucer, in 1400.

Epic and Romance:

Epic is long, narrative poem in an elevated style that celebrates heroic achievement and treats
themes of historical, national, religious or legendary significance. Primary or traditional epics
are shaped from the legends traditions of a heroic age and are part of oral
tradition .Secondary or literary epics are written down from the beginning , and their poets
adapts aspects of traditional epics. The poems of Homer are usually regarded as the first
important epic and the main source of epic conventions in Western Europe. These
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conventions include the centrality of a hero, sometimes semi divine; an extensive perhaps
cosmic, setting; heroic battle; extended journeying; and the involvement of supernatural
beings.

Romance is a literary form that developed in the aristocratic courts of mid-12th century
France. The staple subject matter is chivalric adventure, though love stories and religious
allegories are sometimes interwoven. Chivalry was related with knighthood. The Medieval
society was conventionally thought as three quite distinct classes: the clergy, the nobility, and
the common toilers. The code of conduct that developed in this society was called chivalry. It
arose out of feudal obligation and stressed loyalty by a knight to his God, his lord, his lady,
thus melding Christian and military virtues. In addition to loyalty and honor, the chivalric
virtues included valor, piety, courtesy, and chastity. It was the poets who introduced an
element of romance into chivalry. The chivalrous knight should also be romantic. The
medieval poems are full of chivalric spirit. Medieval legends and stories like ‘King Arthur
and his Round table’, and novels like those of Scott are full of knight errant and their
exploits. Writers like Shakespeare and Spencer evinced great interest in the chivalric past.

Courtly Literature:

The distance between chevalier and villain, or knight and churl, widened and became
hereditary; a literature for the court developed in medieval period. This literary category
includes three important story-cycles .The best known examples for this type of literature
are the ‘Matter of Rome’, includes of The story of Troy ,and the adventures Alexander of
Macedon. The Trojan story inspired Virgil and was popular in France during the 12 th and 13th
centuries. The romances of Alexander were full of marvels, and the romans of Aeneas took
the part of Queen Dido, whom Aeneas abandoned in order to go and found Rome. The
Matter of France includes the Charlemagne Romance, Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. It
is more important as a literary influence. It dealt with Charlemagne and started in France with
the Story of Roland. The groundwork of this cycle is historical, and the struggles depicted
between the feudal nobles and their over-lord is based on fact. This cycle was wonderfully
popular in medieval times and greatly influenced the European literature for example, the
stories of Ariosto. The Matter of Britain; consisted of Arthurian Cycle and Celtic Origin.
Arthurian romance was more popular with ladies. Among the writers who contributed to the
literary evolution of the Arthurian cycle, the first place must be assigned to Geoffrey
Monmouth. His important work Historia Regum Britannioe brings together material drawn
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from ancient poets and prose writers, possibly also oral traditions and with the aid of
imagination he welds the scattered legends into a harmonious whole. The other important
names are Gaimar, an Anglo-Norman poet and Wace, a Norman poet. Famous examples of
this large category are: King Horn, Floris and Blancheflour, Havelock the Dane, Bevis of
Hampton and Guy of Warwick.

Lyrics:

Lyrics are verses or poems that can be sung to musical accompaniment, in ancient times
usually a lyre. The lyric expresses intense personal emotion in a manner suggestive of a song.
Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet and is sometimes contrasted with
narrative poetry and verse drama, which relate events in the form of a story. The elegy, ode,
and sonnet are important forms of lyric poetry. The nightingale had become the bird of love
in provincial lyrics of the early 12 th century. In these first lyrics of courtly love, the service
due to a feudal lord was transferred to a lady. Whatever the relation of this literary cult to
real-life wooing, it is not found in classical literature.

Hundreds of Medieval lyrics remain in manuscripts which can be roughly dated. But the
details of their composition and authors are usually unknown. There are popular songs like
‘The Nut-Brown Maid’, drinking songs, Robin Hood ballads, and mnemonics like ‘Thirty
days hath September/April, June and November .There are also few political poems like
‘When Adam delved and eve span/ Who was then the gentleman?’ and ‘The axe was sharp ,
the stock was hard/ in the fourteenth year of King Richard’. Most of the Lyrics are religious,
for example the hymn of St. Godric dated 1170. Religious lyrics are derived from Latin
songs and hymns. Hymns came into the Latin Church in 4 th century, bringing in accentual
rhythm and rhyme from popular song.

Spiritual Writings:

Spiritual writing begins in Middle English with Richard Rolle (1300-1394), an English
mystic. He left the University of Oxford without a degree, dissatisfied with the subjects of
study, and became a hermit. Writing in the vernacular for the sake of women readers, he
exalted the contemplative life and emphasized a rapturous mystical union with God. He may
have been spiritual adviser to the nuns of Hampole in his late years. His Latin works were
much read in Europe. His English writings include the Ego Dormio (I sleep), Song of
Songs, and Form of Living. Poems and prose marked by a musical rhetoric poured out from
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his Yorkshire hermitage. The first was a meditation on the Old Testament, and the second is
an allegory of Christ’s love for the church and the soul. His Form of Living celebrates the
solitary’s direct experience of the divine especially through the devotion to the holy name of
Jesus. The Scale (Ladder) of Perfection by Walter Hilton is another important work in
spiritual writing. It is addressed to a contemplative, and to all who wish to live the spiritual
life. Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) is the finest English spiritual writer before George
Herbert. Her ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ is remarkable for its clarity, beauty and profundity.

Secular Prose:

Since the end of the Peterborough Chronicle in 1154, English secular prose or non-religious
prose had been used for practical matters. During the time of Richard II English came into
general use. John Trevisa translated a French encyclopedia and Latin world history. Sir John
Mandeville who wrote his ‘Travels’ at this time may have been as fictional as most of his
stories. The chief travels are to the holy land, thrice visited by Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, twice
by St. Godric, and once by Margery Kempe. Margery a King’s Lynn house wife, dedicated
‘The Book Of Margery Kempe’, revising it 1436. In a mental crisis after the birth of the first
of her 14 children, she had a religious conversion. Her confessional testament is fascinating
and artless. The Paston Letters, the correspondence of a 15th century Norfolk family have a
similar human interest.

Ricardian Poetry:

The reign of Richard II saw the arrival of a mature poetic literature in Middle English.
Besides lyrics and religious prose, we have spirited Arthurian verse romances. The revival of
English alliterative verse produced at least two great poems: Piers Plowman and Gawain
and the Green Night. The historic development however, is the appearance of an assured
syllabic verse in the long poems of John Gower and the literary experiments of Chaucer.
(Collect more details from previous pages).
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Prepared by Abdul Salam A M Associate Professor RSM SNDP Yogam College Koyilandy