![]() ![]() ![]() Let's look at some important authors and poets from the Middle English period. ![]() Let's look at three essential works created during this period. There are many surviving examples of Middle English fiction from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that tell us a lot about language use, the way writers constructed texts, and the themes that medieval authors were concerned with. Aside from some exceptions dated to the thirteenth century, like Layamon's Brut, English only made a complete resurgence within written work during the fourteenth century. Hymns, sermons, laws and documents are the most readily available texts for scholars who want to learn more about life in the Middle Ages.įor hundreds of years after the Norman invasion, most literature was written in either Latin or French. Most of the surviving literature we have from both the Middle English and Old English period is either administrative or religious. This helped regulate the written word, eventually making spelling, punctuation and grammar consistent throughout the country. The invention of the printing press in 1436 allowed texts to be mass-printed. The primary difference between Middle English and Modern English is the amount of standardisation in the language. Combined with the fixed word order, this makes Middle English much easier to understand for a modern English speaker when compared with Old English, which is almost impossible to comprehend without study. Middle English saw the transition towards the prepositional constructions that we find in our language today. This makes sense, as Old English is derived from the West Germanic language family! ![]()
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