Периоды английской литературы. Карпова В.А - 9 стр.

       In Europe this was the age of the great crusades and the period of the
dominance of French literature. The Old English language, the tongue of
conquered slaves for a period after the Conquest, not only survived in the period
but blended with the French dialect of the Norman victors. Gradually it emerged
as the language of England. By 1300 English was becoming again the language
of the upper classes and was beginning to displace French in schools and legal
pleadings.
       Latin was the language used for learned works, French for courtly
literature, and English chiefly for popular works-religious plays, metrical
romances, and popular ballads. On the continent Dante and Boccaccio
flourished. In England and France the body of legend and artful invention that
gave England its national hero, Arthur, was coming into being in French, Latin,
and English.
       Writings in native English were few. The last entry in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles was made at Peterborough in 1154. About 1170 a long didactic poem
in fourteeners4, the Poema Morale, appeared. Early in the twelfth century
English metrical romances using English themes began to appear, the first being
King Horn, and flourished throughout the period. The drama made its first major
forward leaps in this period. The first recorded miracle play 5 in England, The
Play of St. Catherine, was performed at Dunstable about 1100. By 1300 the
mystery plays were moving outside the churches and into the hands of the town
guilds.
       Native English poetry, both in the older alliterative tradition and in the
newer French forms continued to develop. About 1250 came The Owl and the
Nightingale, the most famous English debat 6 poem; about the same time lyric
verse was getting under way with poems like The Cuckoo Song. About 1340
came the popular The Prickeof Conscience, describing the misery of earth and
glory of heaven and often ascribed to Richard Rolle of Hampole.
       But, significant as these works are in the developing strength of native
English writing, the period between 1100 and 1350 is predominantly the age of
the Latin chronicle and of the glories of French and Anglo-Norman writings.
Throughout the period, but particularly in the twelfth century, a veritable
cultural renaissance was expressing itself in England primarily through
imaginative literature written in Anglo-Norman. In general, it follows the lines
of the contemporary literature of France and embraces romances, tales, historical
works, political poems and satires, legends, and saints` lives, didactic works,
lyrics and debats, as well as religious drama. By 1350, however, the French
qualities of grace, harmony, humour, and chivalric idealism, together with the
many characteristic French lyric forms, worldly subjects, and syllabic meters,
had been absorbed into the mainstream of English writing; and, in folk ballad, in

4
  fourteeners - a verse form consisting of fourteen syllables arranged in iambic.
5
  miracle play - a play based on the legend of some saint or a miracle performed by some saint or sacred object.
6
  debat - a type of literary composition, usually in verse, in which two persons or objects, frequently allegorical,
debate some specific topic and then refer it to a judge.

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