Old English Literature (500-1100)

Old English Poetry Beowulf-typical old English verse;

Caedmon - a 7th-century poet: Cynewulf-a 9th-centuiy poet
Old English Prose King Alfred's works; Later annuls
and religious writings; Aelfric and Wulfstan
Old English Drama

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The time period of about 500-1 100 AD in British history was
characterized by foreign invasions and internal struggles. This resulted in the
mixing of several
races, tongues and cultures. After the Romans departed from the British Isles in
407 AD fighting continued between the Picts and the Scots who had lost their
common enemy.
The fifth century also saw conquests and the gradual occupation by Germanic
tribes - Angles, Jutes and Saxons - who had moved north to Scandinavia and from
there to Britain. Apart from making conquests, these tribes preferred agricultural
life, had strong family and tribal ties, and were very loyal to their king or chief.
The legendary King Arthur defeated the Saxons in 490 AD and for about a decade
halted their advance. At the end of the sixth century, the Anglo-Saxons accepted
Christianity after Pope Gregory sent Saint Augustine to Britain in 597 AD. (The
Romans had introduced Christianity to the Celts centuries earlier.) This gave rise
to some religious writings. At the end of the eighth century the Vikings (also
known as Norsemen or Danes) invaded the country, easily overcame the local
inhabitants, and plundered their estates. It was not until the reign of King Alfred
the Great (871 -900) that
their advance was stopped. With their acceptance of Christianity, the Danes
partially blended in with the local people. Alfred's successors, Edgar and Ethelred
II were in 1016 followed by Danish King Canute (reigned 1016-1035), after
whose death the empire fell apart Alfred's great-grandson, Edward, son of the
French Emma of Normandy, took over the throne. The fact that Edward had no
descendants led to a power struggle between his brother-in-law, Harold, and
Emma's nephew, William of Normandy. William's victory over Harold at the
Battle of Hastings in 1066 led to theNorman conquest and occupation of England,
which then opened a new chapter in British history . The language of this whole
period (500-1100) is known as Old English. No exact date exists for its beginning.
The first written records of the language date from around 690 AD (however,
people had spoken it long before then). Most Old

Middle English
At any given time, there is no single variety of English. Americans using
the spelling color, whereas most of the rest of the world uses colour. Americans
say tomayto; most people in other countries say tomahto.In the Southern United
States, you might hear yall, whereas in the Northeast you might hear yous. This
sort of variation also existed in Middle English, but much more so than in Modern
English today. Middle English had many dialects, and scribes by and large wrote
in their own dialect, sometimes mixing them if they were copying a document
written in a different dialect. There were few of the standardising influences that
encourage a certain amount of uniformity today. Many variations occurred at all
levels of grammar, particularly pronunciation and grammatical inflection.
Multiple spellings frequently represent these differences; however, sometimes
they merely reflect local writing conventions.
The result of all this variation is that reading Middle English was a very different
process for its original speakers than reading is today. As Modern English
speakers, we dont just need to learn a et of vocabulary and idioms that hasnt
survived today; we need to acquire a new set of skills for how to look at the words
on the page. This handout is designed to get you started in the process. Although
youll have to do much of your learning on the fly by recognising words and
expressions as you encounter them repeatedly. There are a few ways in which you
can help yourself by some rote memorisation up front.This is particularly the case
with pronunciation and grammatical inflection.
The pronunciation of English has changed a great deal over the past six or seven
hundred years. Many consonants originally pronounced (and surviving in our
spelling today) have since become silent. But by far the biggest change is to the
vowels. Starting roughly in the fifteenth century, English underwent a process
known as the Great Vowel Shift, in which certain vowels shifted their
pronunciation from sounds very like those of Spanish to what we often (somewhat
inaccurately) call long vowels today. For instance, name was originally
pronounced with a vowel like the a in Spanish mar. It takes some time and effort
to learn to read the original pronunciation aloud, but it is well worth it. Youll find
that it actually improves your comprehension and helps you recognise words you
wouldnt recognise if you read them silently. Grammatical inflection refers to the
endings of words which indicate their functions in a given sentence.
For instance, the s on the end of girls tells you that the word is plural. The ed on
the end of talked tells
you that it is past tense. In Middle English, there were a few more inflections than
there are today. In a few cases, they vary according to dialect (as do certain words,
such as the pronoun she). It is useful to have these memorised early on when you
begin to read Middle English.

Spelling and Pronunciation

Because Middle English spelling is so variable, and because pronunciation
varied in different dialects, the rules below must be taken as rough guidelines. You
will have to study each individual text to recognise its peculiarities.
Vowels
a only as in father, never as in at or in name: alle, tale, maken.
e followed by one consonant and another syllaable, pronounced like in hey, but
more clipped: here, yede, swere.
e with two consonants following, pronounced as in bet: herkneth.
e in unstressed syllables, particularly at the ends of words, pronounced as in
horses: gode, here, yede.
i, y pronounced like in machine: wives, rym, knict, ivele, yvel.
o pronounced as in note, never as in hot (American pronunciation): gode, do(n),
holden,
holy, more.
o where the modern pronunciation of the word is like young is pronounced in
Middle
English like the sound in boot: lovede, comen.
ou, ow pronounced like the sound in boot: young, brouth, mouthe, browt, nouth.
u pronounced like the sound in boot: but, yung, cuppe, ful. au, aw pronounced like
the sound in house: cause, law.
ay, ai, ey, ei pronounced like the sound in kite: sayle, day, wey, heir. oi, oy
pronounced like the sound in boy: coy.
Notes:
(1) Unstressed e is often not pronounced at the end of verse lines or if the
following word begins with a vowel or h. So in of a tale that ich you wile telle the
final e of tale, wile, are pronounced, but not that of telle.
(2) Final e, whether pronounced or not in Middle English, can indicate a long
vowel in Modern English: gode, yhere, bord, micte. In such instances, the long
vowel may be spelt with two vowels in Modern English: good, hear, board.
Consonants h pronounced as in heaven, but often silent, as in hevere, holde. k
pronounced in words like knight, know.
w pronounced in words like writen.wh, w, hw, qu may be pronounced as hwor w:
wo, whil, hwan, quanne.
l pronounced in words like half, folk. gn pronounced as ny: signe (as in French
signer). ch pronounced like the sound in Scots loch, German Bach: knicht (cht
often appears as ct,
cth, or th). s never pronounced like z at the end of a word: wives.
i occasionally used for the j sound.u occasionally used for the w and v sounds.
Notes:
(1) Middle English possessed two letter forms not in Modern English:
(thorn) and (yogh). The thorn is might see the two alongside each other.
Some editors of modern editions of Middle English pronounced like th
(either in the or in thick). As time went on the th spelling also came into
use,and you texts (especially Chaucers works) have changed all the thorns
 to th. The pronunciation yogh varied according to its position in the
word. In the vicinity of the vowels i and e (except before t), it was
pronounced like the consonant y (e.g. e = ye). Elsewhere it was
pronounced like the ch in Scots loch, German Bach, except with more
vibration of the vocal cords. Words which had yogh in this position
generally have gh in their spelling today (e.g. nit = night).

Grammatical Inflections
Note: This is not a comprehensive account of Middle English grammar. The
points here are merely to call to your attention certain features of Middle English
which should help you gain a reading knowledge of the language.
Nouns
1. The plural of most nouns is es or -s. Some nouns have plurals with (e)n:
brethren, children, (e)yen eyes, oxen. Some words may appear with either
ending.
2. The possessive forms end in es or s (with no apostrophe).
Verbs
1. The basic, or infinitive, form of the verb originally ended in en or n: riden
ride, drinken drink
2. The present tense is indicated by endings as demonstrated in the following
examples: I wil(e); thu knowest; he yeveth; we wolden; ye knowen; he knowen.
3. In the past tense there are two types of verbs: strong and weak. Strong verbs
correspond to Modern English verbs like sing, sang, which form their past tense
with a change in the vowel. Weak verbs in Modern English form their past tense
like talk, talked.
a. In Middle English, strong verbs were more numerous today. For instance, help
was a strong verb; its past tense was holp. The past forms of strong verbs are as
follows: I sang, thou songe, he/she/it sang, we/ye/they songen.
b. Past participles (Modern English taken, eaten, etc.) of strong verbs take a
variety of forms.
Originally they ended in en, bur sometimes the n is dropped: dronke, dronken.
The past participle also often had a prefix: i-/y-: y-dronke, y-dronke.
c. The past tense of weak verbs was formed with d(e)/-ed or t(e). The endings
were as follows: I herde, thou herdest, he/she/it herde, we/ye/they herden. The
past participle ended in ed and could have the prefix i-/y-: maked, imaked.
d. Imperatives, or commands, have the endings e in the singular and eth in the
plural: herkneth.Pronouns
1. The pronoun I often appears in its older form ich.
2. Middle English has singular and plural words for you, rather like the
distinction between you and e yall (in the southeastern United States) or
yous (in Ireland, western Scotland, New York, and Boston). The singular
form is thu, thou. The plural form is ye for the subject of a sentence; otherwise
it is you. Ye was also used in the singular to imply formality, or sometimes
intimacy.
3. The word thee (used for direct objects, objects of prepositions, etc.) is
frequently spelt with one e and can thus easily be confused with the word for
the.
4. Thou is often contracted with verbs: artow = art thou are you, wiltou = wilt
thou will you.
5. The word for she had many different forms in Middle English (depending on
the dialect), many similar to he, heo, and hi. Hence they can be easily confused
with the words for he (he) and they (hi).Sometimes the only way you can
tell who is being referred to is to go by context.
6. The same goes for the possessive and object forms of these words: him (him),
hire (her), hem (them); his (his), hire (her), hire (their).
7. The word for it was hit. The possessive form was his.
 Early modern english
1. Module (3)The Development of EnglishEarly Modern English

2. *Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from
about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th
century) to 1650.

3. *The first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William
Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English.

4. *The standardisation of English spelling falls within the Early Modern

English period and is influenced by conventions predating the Great Vowel
Shift, which is the reason for much of the non-phonetic spelling of
contemporary Modern English.*The revival of classical scholarship
brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language.

5. *Two other major factors influenced the language and served to separate
Middle and Modern English. 1. The Great Vowel Shift 2. The invention of
printing

6. The Great Vowel Shift* This was a change in pronunciation that began
around 1400.* Long vowel sounds began to be made higher in the mouth*
The letter e at the end of words became silent.* Examples: 1. Chaucers
Lyf (pronounced /leef/) became the modern word life. 2. name was
pronounced /nam-a/ 3. five was pronounced /feef/ 4. down was
pronounced /doon/.

7. The invention of printing* William Caxton brought the printing press to

England in 1476.* Books became cheaper and as a result, literacy became
more common.* The printing press brought standardization to English.1.
The dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located,
became the standard.2. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the first
English dictionary was published in 1604.
8. Feature ChangeAdjectives Adjectives lost all endings except for in the
comparative and superlative forms.Pronouns The neuter pronoun it was
first used as well as who as a relative pronoun. The class distinctions
between formal and informal you were decreasing, so that today there is
no difference between them.Verbs More strong verbs became weak and the
third person singular form became -(e)s instead of -(e)th.Pronunciation
The Great Vowel Shift (1400-1600) changed the pronunciation of all the
vowels. Several consonants were no longer pronounced, but the spelling
system was in place before the consonant loss, so they are still written in
English today.

9. *Shakespeares writings greatly influenced the entire English

language.*Prior to and during Shakespeares time, the grammar and rules
of English were not fixed.*Once Shakespeares plays became popular in
the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, they helped contribute to the
standardization of the English language.

10. *Many familiar words and phrases were coined or first recorded by
Shakespeare, some 2,000 words and countless catch-phrases are
Shakespeares.*Examples: 1. Catch-phrases: One fell swoop, vanish into
thin air, and flesh and blood 2. Words critical, leapfrog, majestic, dwindle,
and pedant.*He expanded the scope of English literature by introducing
new words and phrases, experimenting with blank verse, and also
introducing new poetic and grammatical structures.
TASK HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

BY :

NAME : DARMAN

NIM : N1D2 16 016

CLASS : GENAP

ENGLISH LITERATURE

FACULTY OF HUMANITY
UNIVERSITAS HALU OLEO

KENDARI

2017