The period spanning 450 AD to 1485 AD. (From the Anglo-Saxon Conquest to the Tudors; from Beowulf to Malory’s Morte d’Arthur)

The Middle English period followed the Norman Conquest (1066); both Margery and Chaucer spoke Middle English.  Beowulf is in Old English

Influenced by the ruling Norman (Germano-French) culture.

By 13th century, written texts begin to replace oral literature (“orature”) on a large scale.

Greater focus on everyday details and life (as opposed to epic-oriented Old English)

More varieties of forms, more humor

The period of the Arthurian romance

Romances are a large percent of medieval literary texts; the bulk of medieval writing, however, was religious

Constant war (especially w/ France) and plague in the 1300s

War of the Roses (vicious series of civil wars) in 1400

Many different dialects of English, no standard spellings, limited literacy for much of the Middle Ages, most of the period was pre-Gutenberg (1450-6)

Margery would have encountered all of the authors we will discuss in manuscript.