Anglo-Norman

Introduction
The Anglo-Normans were the medieval ruling class in England, composed mainly of a
combination of ethnic Anglo-Saxons, Normansand French, following the Norman conquest. A
small number of Normans had earlier befriended future Anglo-Saxon King of England, Edward
the Confessor, during his exile in his mother's homeland of Normandy. When he returned to
England some of them went with him, and so there were Normans already settled in England prior
to the conquest. Following the death of Edward, the powerful Anglo-Saxon noble, Harold
Godwinson, acceded to the English throne until his defeat by William, Duke of Normandy at
the Battle of Hastings.
The invading Normans came from the duchy of Normandy in the kingdom of France. They formed
a ruling class in Britain, distinct from (although inter-marrying with) the native populations. Over
time their language evolved from the continental Old Norman to the distinct Anglo-Norman
language. Anglo-Normans quickly established control over all of England, as well as parts
of Wales (the Cambro-Normans). After 1130, parts of southern and eastern Scotland came under
Anglo-Norman rule (the Scoto-Normans), in return for their support of David I's conquest.
The Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169 saw Anglo-Normans (or Cambro-Normans) settle vast
swaths of Ireland, becoming the Hiberno-Normans.

Anglo-Normans’ Literature
Anglo-Norman literature is literature composed in the Anglo-Norman language developed during
the period 1066–1204 when the Duchy of Normandy and England were united in the Anglo-
Norman realm.

Anglo-Norman literature, body of literature written in England, in the French dialect known as
Anglo-Norman, from c.1100 to c.1250. Initiated at the court of Henry I, it was supported by the
wealthy, French-speaking aristocracy who controlled England after the Norman conquest. The
dominant literary forms were histories, sacred and secular biographies, and homilies; romance and
fiction were relatively scarce. Perhaps the most important historian was Geoffrey Gaimer, whose
two-part history of England, Histoire des Bretons and Estorie des Engles, was written in verse.
Philippe of Thaün, the earliest known Anglo-Norman poet, was noted for the moral allegory
the Bestiaire. Of secular works, Thomas's Tristan (c.1170) is notable both artistically and as an
early source for the Tristram and Isolde legend.
The most flourishing period of Anglo-Norman literature was from the beginning of the 12th
century to the end of the first quarter of the 13th. The end of this period is generally said to coincide
with the loss of the French provinces to Philip Augustus, but literary and political history do not
correspond quite so precisely, and the end of the first period would be more accurately denoted by
the appearance of the history of William the Marshal in 1225 (published for the Société de l'histoire
de France, by Paul Meyer, 3 vols., 1891–1901). It owes its brilliancy largely to the protection
accorded by Henry II of England to the men of letters of his day. [3]
"He could speak French and Latin well, and is said to have known something of every
tongue between the Bay of Biscay and the Jordan. He was probably the most highly
educated sovereign of his day, and amid all his busy active life he never lost his interest in
literature and intellectual discussion; his hands were never empty, they always had either
a bow or a book"

Anglo-Norman’s Language
Anglo-Norman, also known as Anglo-Norman French, was a dialect of French[2] that was used
in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-
Norman period.[3]
When William the Conqueror led the Norman conquest of England in 1066, he, his nobles, and
many of his followers from Normandy, but also those from northern and western France, spoke a
range of langues d'oïl (northern varieties of Gallo-Romance). One of these was Old Norman, also
known as "Old Northern French". Other followers spoke varieties of the Picard language or
western French. This amalgam developed into the unique insular dialect now known as Anglo-
Norman French, which was commonly used for literary and eventually administrative purposes
from the 12th until the 15th century. It is difficult to know much about what was actually spoken,
as what is known about the dialect is restricted to what was written, but it is clear that Anglo-
Norman was, to a large extent, the spoken language of the higher social strata in medieval England.
It was spoken in the law courts, schools, and universities and, in due course, in at least some
sections of the gentry and the growing bourgeoisie. Private and commercial correspondence was
carried out in Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French from the 13th to the 15th century though its spelling
forms were often displaced by continental spellings. Social classes other than the nobility became
keen to learn French: manuscripts containing materials for instructing non-native speakers still
exist, dating mostly from the late 14th century onwards.
Although Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French were eventually eclipsed by modern English, they had
been used widely enough to influence English vocabulary permanently. Thus, many
original Germanic words, cognates of which can still be found in Nordic, German, and Dutch,
have been lost or, as more often occurs, exist alongside synonyms of Anglo-Norman French origin.
Grammatically, Anglo-Norman had little lasting impact on English although it is still evident in
official and legal terms where the ordinary sequence of noun and adjective is reversed, for
example attorney general: the spelling is English but the word order (noun then adjective) is
French. Other such examples are heir apparent, court martial, and body politic.
Norman Conquest
The event that began the transition from Old English to Middle English was the Norman Conquest
of 1066, when William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy and, later, William I of England)
invaded the island of Britain from his home base in northern France, and settled in his new
acquisition along with his nobles and court. William crushed the opposition with a brutal hand and
deprived the Anglo-Saxon earls of their property, distributing it to Normans (and some English)
who supported him.
The conquering Normans were themselves descended from Vikings who had settled in northern
France about 200 years before (the very word Norman comes originally from Norseman).
However, they had completely abandoned their Old Norse language and wholeheartedly adopted
French (which is a so-called Romance language, derived originally from the Latin, not Germanic,
branch of Indo-European), to the extent that not a single Norse word survived in Normandy.
However, the Normans spoke a rural dialect of French with considerable Germanic influences,
usually called Anglo-Norman or Norman French, which was quite different from the standard
French of Paris of the period, which is known as Francien. The differences between these dialects
became even more marked after the Norman invasion of Britain, particularly after King John and
England lost the French part of Normandy to the King of France in 1204 and England became even
more isolated from continental Europe.
Anglo-Norman French became the language of the kings and nobility of England for more than
300 years (Henry IV, who came to the English throne in 1399, was the first monarch since before
the Conquest to have English as his mother tongue). While Anglo-Norman was the verbal language
of the court, administration and culture, though, Latin was mostly used for written language,
especially by the Church and in official records. For example, the “Domesday Book”, in which
William the Conqueror took stock of his new kingdom, was written in Latin to emphasize its legal
authority.
However, the peasantry and lower classes (the vast majority of the population, an estimated 95%)
continued to speak English - considered by the Normans a low-class, vulgar tongue - and the two
languages developed in parallel, only gradually merging as Normans and Anglo-Saxons began to
intermarry. It is this mixture of Old English and Anglo-Norman that is usually referred to as Middle
English.