A History of English Literature

The resulting confusion encouraged a loss of inflection. Element-order became the
indicator of syntax and of sense: subject–verb–object now became more common
than subject–object–verb. All forms of early Middle English show the reduction of
most final inflections towards -e, leading to the survival of only two standard inflec-
tions in nouns,-splural and -s possessive.
The Conquest eventually added thousands of French words to English, some-
times taking the place of Old English words (for example, OE theod gave way to ME
people and nation), but often preserving both Germanic and Latin-derived alterna-
ti ves (shire and county).The cross with French almost doubled the resources of
English in some areas of vocabulary. The Saxon base was enriched with French, espe-
cially in such areas as law and manners; Latin kept its clerical–intellectual prestige.
English, the language of the majority, was in flux.

Literary consciousness

Middle English writing blossomed in the late 14th century, and developed a literary
self-consciousness. A clear example of this comes at the end of Chaucer’s Troilus and
Criseyde: he speaks to his poem in the intimate second person,thee:

And for ther is so gret diversite

In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge,

So prey I God that non myswrite the, thee

Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge. lack of language

He prays that no scribe will miscopy his words, nor substitute a variant form and
spoil the metre.Diversite in Englisshrefers to dialect difference, but Chaucer had
earlier warned his audience about change over time: ‘Ye know eke [also] that in
fourme of speche is chaunge.’ Diversity and change were enemies to this new hope
that English verse might attain the beauty and permanence of the classics.
Just before these lines Chaucer had taken leave of his poem in an en voi: ‘Go, litel
bok, go, litel myn tragedie ... / And kis the steppes where as thow seëst pace /

THE NEW WRITING 39

1 The Peterborough Chronicle

2 The Owl and the Nightingale

3 Layamon’s Brut

4 Ancrene Wisse

5 Sir Orfeo

6 The Cloud of Unknowing

7 Langland: Piers Plowman

8 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

9 Gower: Confessio Amantis

10 The York Play of the Crucifixion

11 Chaucer: The Parliament of Fowls

The dialects of Middle English (drawn after J. Burrow and T. Turville-Petre (eds), A Book of Middle
English, 3rd edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), with probable places of composition of some works.