Dialect and language change
Even when English had attained full literary parity with French in the reign of
Richard II (r.1372–99), there was no standard literary English: the great writers of
that reign – Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland and the author ofSir Gawain and
the Green Knight – wrote three different forms of English. Chaucer wrote in a
London English, Langland in a Worcestershire English, and the Gawain-poet in an
English of the Stafford–Cheshire border. There are Middle English works in
Yorkshire English, Kentish English, Norfolk English and other varieties of English;
and much writing in Scots, known as Inglis.
William the Conqueror had made London the capital of England, and it was not
until 1362 that Parliament was opened in English instead of French. But London
English was itself a mixture of dialects, changing during this period from Southern to
East Midland. The East Midland dialect area, as can be seen from the map on page
39,had borders with the other four chief dialect areas and was understood in each. In
the 15th century, London’s changing English became the national standard. Printing,
introduced in 1476, helped to spread this literary standard under the Tudors
(1485–1603).The King’s English was eventually disseminated by such centrally issued
works as the Prayer Book (1549, 1552, 1559) and the King James Bible (1611). After
Dr Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755, printers began to standardize spelling.
In contemporary British English, regional variation is more a matter of accent
than of word and idiom, but the passages quoted in this chapter show Middle
English dialects differing in vocabulary and grammar. The absence of standard
spelling makes Middle English dialectal divergence seem even greater. Danish settle-
ment in the north and east of England in the 10th century had brought
Scandinavian speech-forms to English, similar in stem but different in inflection.38 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500
inflection A word’s ending,
as distinct from its (usually
invariable) stem; a
grammatical variation in the
final syllables, indicating a
word’s case and number.
Reigns and major events 1066–1399
1066 William I (the Conqueror)
1087 William II (Rufus)
1100 Henry I
1135 Stephen
1154 Henry II (Plantagenet)
1170 Murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, by agents of the King
1189 Richard I on Third Crusade (see p. 42)John Milton
c.1216 Henry III
1272 Edward I
1307 Edward II
1314 The Battle of Bannockburn (Scots defeat invading English army)
1327 Edward III
1346 The Battle of Crécy (English victory in France)
1348–9 Black Death
1377 Richard II
1381 Peasants’ Revolt
1399 Henry IV