A history of the english language — страница 7

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is partly a result of the post-conquest political situation. The newly centralized monarchy commissioned national and local surveys, beginning with the Domesday Book and there is a marked increase in the number of public and private documents – mandates, charters, contracts, tax-rolls, and other administrative or judicial papers. However, the early material is of limited value to those interested in the linguistic history of English because it is largely written in Latin or French, and the only relevant data which can be extracted relate to English and personal names. Most religious publication falls into the same category, with Latin maintaining its presence throughout the period as the official language of the Church [7; 28; 40] A major difference from Оld English is the

absence of a continuing tradition of historical writing in the native language, as in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – a function which Latin supplanted, and which was not revived until the 15th century. Material in English appears as a trickle in the 13th century, but within 150 years it has become a flood. In the early period, we can see a great deal of religious prose writing, in the form of homilies, tracts, lives of the Saints, and the other aids to devotion and meditation. Sometimes a text was written with a specific readership in mind; the Ancrene Rewle ‘Anchorites Guide’, for example, was compiled by a spiritual director for three noblewomen who had abandoned the world to live as anchoresses. During the 14th century, there is a marked increase in the number of translated

writings from French and Latin, and of the texts for teaching these languages. Guild records, proclaims, proverbs, dialogues, allegories, and the letters illustrate the diverse range of new styles and genres. Towards the end of the century, the translations of the Bible inspired by John Wycliff appear amid considerable controversy, and the associated movement produces many manuscripts. Finally, in the 1430es, there is a vast output in English from the office of the London Chancery scribes, which strongly influenced the development of the standard written language [28; 44; 49]. Poetry presents a puzzle. The Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition apparently dies out in the 11th century, to reappear patchily in the 13th. A lengthy poetic history of Britain is known as Lagamon’s Brut as we

have mentioned above, one of the earliest to survive from Middle English, and in the 14th century come the important texts of Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What is surprising in that the alliterative Old English style is still present in all these works, despite an apparent break in poetic continuity of at least a hundred years. The conundrum has generated much discussion. Perhaps the alliterative technique was retained though prose: several Middle English prose texts are strongly alliterative, and it is sometimes difficult to tell from a manuscript which genre (poetry or prose) a piece belongs to, because the line divisions are not shown. Perhaps the Old English style survived through the medium of oral transmission. Or perhaps it is simply that most poetic

manuscripts have been lost. Middle English poetry was inevitably much influenced by French literary traditions, both in content and style. One of the earliest examples is the 13th century verse-contest known as The Owl and the Nightingale. Later works include romances in the French style, secular lyrics, bestiaries, biblical poetry, Christian legends, hymns, prayers and elegies [28; 35; 50]. The mystical dream vision popular in Italy and France, is well illustrated by the poem modern editors have called Pearl, in which the writer recalls the death of his two-year- old daughter, who then acts as his spiritual comforter. Drama also begins to make its presence felt, in the form of dialogues, pageants, and the famous cycles of mystery plays. Much of the Middle English literature is

of unknown authorship, but the end of the period this situation has changed. Among the prominent names which emerge in the latter part of the 14th century are John Gower, William Langland, and some time later John Lydgate, Thomas Malory, William Caxton, and the poets who are collectively known as Chaucerians. Rather than a somewhat random collection of interesting texts, there is now a major body of literature, in the modern sense. It is this which provides the final part of the bridge between Middle and Early Modern English. The flourishing of literature, which marks the seconds half of the 14th century, apart from its cultural significance, testifies, to the complete reestablishment of English as the language of writing. Some authors wrote in their local dialect from outside