EN 205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Old English, Breton Lai, England In The Middle Ages
29 Aug 2016
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August 29th: Anglo-Norman and Medieval Romance
•Who were the Anglo-Normans?
•Descendants and inheritors of the Normans who invaded England in 1066
•Led by William the Conquerer, defeated Harold II and the English at the Battle of Hastings in 1066
•Spoke a form of medieval French (France was part of Roman empire for 500 years)
•Language and customs and laws were very different from Anglo-Saxons (who had been in England
for 500 years)
•Established themselves as the rulers
•Nobility educated their children in French for the next 250 years
•Norman conquest is important
•Formed British culture
•Developed modern English (blend of old English and French)
•During this period, languages in use were
•Latin for church and school
•Gallic in the Celtic areas of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall
•Various Old English dialects
•French spoken by only nobility
•Marie de France
•Anglo-Norman writer, inventor of “romance”
•Lived in late 1100s
•Wrote in Lais (Anglo-French), but could also read and write English, French, and Latin
•Lay: short narrative poem or verse
•Couplet: two successive lines of rhyming verse, generally of the same meter
•Wrote 12 short romances/poems called Breton lays (took Celtic tales and adapted them for her
aristocratic audience)
•Deals with event or crisis in lives of noble lovers
•Breton lais derive from stories told by Breton minstrels
•Tradition of romantic love comes to us from a long process of cultural and linguistic transfer dependent
on the French influence on Medieval England
•The term romance referred to stories about knights, courtly love, and chivalry (very specific kind of
story)
•Was connected to court culture
•Literary phenomenon
•Major feature of the Arthurian romance
•Focused on chivalry
•Audience for these was noblewomen
•Narratives followed the specific pattern of integration, disintegration, and reintegration
•Pair falls in love at first sight
•Male lover is unworthy
•Idealization of the lady
•Man is inspired by love to perform great deeds and be worthy of her affection
•Knight is a servant to his beloved, needing to please her and venerate her
•Love does not lead to marriage (is conceived in opposition to marriage)
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