Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stace.’ These lines draw on a scene in Dante’s
Inferno. In Limbo, at the threshold of the underworld, Dante and his guide Virgil
meet the spirits of Omer (Homer), Horace, Ovid and Lucan (Chaucer substitutes
Stace, the epic poet Statius, for Horace). The poets welcome Virgil, and beckon
Dante to join them. In instructing his poem to ‘kiss the steps’ of Homer and the
poets of the Western classical tradition, Chaucer joins the queue of Italian aspirants
to poetic fame: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, from all of whom he had translated.
Chaucer’s ambitions for vernacular poetry had been raised by reading the Italian
poets of the thirteen hundreds, the Trecento. He identifies himself as a European
poet, the first to write in English. Furthermore, Chaucer wrote in English only; his
senior contemporary John Gower (?1330–1408), to whom he dedicates Troilus,
wrote in English, French and Latin. After Chaucer, poetry in English is part of the
modern European tradition – though Chaucer’s ease and wit are not found again
until the Latin prose of Thomas More’s Utopia in 1517.New fashions: French and Latin
Chaucer had begun to write in the French fashions native in England since the 12th
century. We must now turn back to the French conquest of English. Within two
generations of the arrival of this romance language came new literary forms and the
humanism of the 12th-century Renaissance, when first Norman and then Gothic
churches arose in England. Poems were about knights, and then about knights and
ladies. For the 12th and 13th centuries a history of English writing has to discard its
English monocle, for writing in the Anglo-Norman kingdom of England was largely
in Latin and French.
Writer s had to be maintained, either by the Church or by secular patrons, who
spoke French. Eleanor of Aquitaine, granddaughter of the first troubadour, William
IX of Aquitaine, was the dedicatee of some of the songs of the troubadour Bernart
de Ventadorn (fl.c.1150–80).Eleanor married first Louis VII ofFrance, then Henry
Plantagenet of Anjou, Henry II of England. Kings of England spoke French rather
than English. The first king of England to insist that the business of the court be
done in English was Henry V (1413–22), though he claimed also to be king of
Fr ance, and was ruler of Wales and lord of Ireland. Much Middle English writing
derives from French writing, which in turn derives largely from Latin.40 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500
Writers in Romance
languages
Provençal Bernart de
Ventadorn (fl.c.1150–80);
Arnaut Daniel
(fl.c.1170–1210).
French Benoît de Ste-
Maure, Roman de Troie
(c.1160); Marie de France,
Lais(?c.1165–80); Chrètien
de Troyes (c.1170–91),
Erec, Yvain, Lancelot,
Perceval; Guillaume de
Lorris, Romande la Rose
(completed c.1277 by Jeun
de Meun).The Beowulfmanuscript
Trecento (the 14th century):
Dante (1265–1326),
Commedia (c.1304–21);
Petrarch made poet laureate
(1341); Boccaccio,
Decameron(c.1351).Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Norman authors
Latin
The Italian-born monk of Bec, St Anselm,
Archbishop of Canterbury (1093–1109) and
theologian: Cur Deus Homo? (‘Why did God
become Man?’).
12th-century Benedictine chroniclers
Orderic Vitalis, an English monk in Normandy,
Historia Ecclesiastica; William of Malmesbury
(d.1143); Jocelin de Brakelonde; Henry of
Huntingdon; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia
Regum Britanniae(1135).Humanists
John of Salisbury, Policraticus(1159); Walter
Map, De Nugis Curialium(‘Courtiers’ Trifles’,
1181–92); Matthew Paris (13th century).
Anglo-Norman
(Anglo-Norman is the French spoken by
Normans in England.) Marie de France and
Chrètien de Troyes may have written some of
their Arthurian romances in England; Wace,
Roman de Rou (1172).