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The term Middle English literature refers to the literature written in the form of the English language known as Middle English, from the late 12th century until the 1470s. During this time the Chancery Standard , a form of London -based English, became widespread and the printing press regularized the language.
Middle English (abbreviated to ME [1]) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period.
The Canterbury Tales (Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury) [2] is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. [3] It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus.
'The Grave' is a poem preserved in a 12th century manuscript, MS Bodleian 343, at fol. 170r: over time, scholars have called it "Anglo-Saxon", "Norman-Saxon", late Old English, and Middle English. [80] [81] The Peterborough Chronicle can also be considered a late-period text, continuing into the 12th century. [82]
Langland's Piers Plowman (written c. 1360–87) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem, written in unrhymed alliterative verse. [34] Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance. It is one of the better-known Arthurian ...
Pearl (Middle English: Perle) is a late 14th-century Middle English poem that is considered one of the most important surviving Middle English works. With elements of medieval allegory and from the dream vision genre, the poem is written in a North-West Midlands variety of Middle English and is highly—though not consistently—alliterative; there is, among other stylistic features, a complex ...
Old English religious poetry includes the poem Christ by Cynewulf and the poem The Dream of the Rood, preserved in both manuscript form and on the Ruthwell Cross.We do have some secular poetry; in fact a great deal of medieval literature was written in verse, including the Old English epic Beowulf.
The period known as the English Renaissance, approximately 1500–1660, saw a flowering of the drama and all the arts. The two candidates for the earliest comedy in English Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1552) and the anonymous Gammer Gurton's Needle (c. 1566), belong to the 16th century.