4. Late Medieval Literature

The linguistic diversity of the islands in the medieval period, with each of the languages producing literatures at various times which contributed to the rich variety of artistic production, made British literature distinctive and innovative.

Latin literature circulated among the educated classes. Gerald of Wales’s most distinguished works are those dealing with Wales and Ireland, with his late 12th century two books in Latin on his beloved Wales the most important.

Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, the development of Anglo-Norman literature in the Anglo-Norman realm introduced literary trends from Continental Europe such as the chanson de geste .

Religious literature continued to enjoy popularity. Hagiographies continued to be written, adapted and translated: for example, The Life of Saint Audrey , Eadmer’s contemporary biography of Anselm of Canterbury, and the South English Legendary .

The Roman de Fergus was the earliest piece of non-Celtic vernacular literature to come from Scotland. As the Norman nobles of Scotland assimilated to indigenous culture they commissioned Scots versions of popular continental romances, for example: Launcelot o the Laik and The Buik o Alexander .

While chroniclers such as William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon attempted to weave such historical information they had access to into coherent narratives, other writers took more creative approaches to their material.

Geoffrey of Monmouth was one of the major figures in the development of British history and the popularity for the tales of King Arthur. He is best known for his chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae （History of the Kings of Britain） of 1136, which spread Celtic motifs to a wider audience, including accounts of Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon, wizard Merlin, and sword Caliburnus （named as Excalibur in some manuscripts of Wace）.

Culhwch and Olwen is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors, and is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose tales. It is perhaps the earliest extant Arthurian tale and one of Wales’ earliest extant prose texts.

The 12th century Jersey poet Wace is considered the founder of Jersey literature and contributed to the development of the Arthurian legend in British literature. His Brut showed the interest of Norman patrons in the mythologising of the new English territories of the Anglo-Norman realm by building on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History, and introduced King Arthur’s Round Table⁵to literature. His Roman de Rou placed the Dukes of Normandy within an epic context.

The Prophecy of Merlin is a 12th-century poem written in Latin hexameters by John of Cornwall, which he claimed was based or revived from a lost manuscript in the Cornish language. Marginal notes on Cornish vocabulary are among the earliest known writings in the Cornish language.

At the end of the 12th century, Layamon’s Brut adapted Wace to make the first English language work to discuss the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It wasalso the first historiography written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba is a short chronicle of the Kings of Alba. It was written in Hiberno-Latin but displays some knowledge of contemporary Middle Irish orthography and probably put together in the early 13th century by the man who wrote de Situ Albanie . The original text was without doubt written in Scotland, probably in the early 11th century, shortly after the reign of Kenneth II, the last reign it relates.

Early English Jewish literature developed after the Norman Conquest with Jewish settlement in England. Berechiah ha-Nakdan is known chiefly as the author of a 13th century set of over a hundred fables, called Mishle Shualim , （Fox Fables）, which are derived from both Berachyah’s own inventions and some borrowed and reworked from Aesop’s fables, the Talmud, and the Hindus. The collection also contains fables conveying the same plots and morals as those of Marie de France. The development of Jewish literature in mediaeval England ended with the Edict of Expulsion of 1290.

In the later medieval period a new form of English now known as Middle English evolved. This is the earliest form which is comprehensible to modern readers and listeners, albeit not easily. Middle English Bible translations, notably Wyclif’s Bible, helped to establish English as a literary language. Romances appear in English from the 13th century, with King Horn and Havelock the Dane , based on Anglo-Norman originals such as the Romance of Horn .

William Langland’s Piers Plowman is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight （most likely by the Pearl Poet） during the Middle Ages. It is also the first allusion to a literary tradition of the legendary English archer, swordsman, and outlaw Robin Hood.

The most significant Middle English author was Geoffrey Chaucer who was active in the late 14th century. Often regarded as the father of English literature, Chaucer is widely credited as the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular English language, rather than French or Latin. The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer’s magnum opus, and a towering achievement of Western culture. The first recorded association of Valentine’s Day with romantic love is in Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules of 1382.

Women writers were also active, such as Marie de France in the 12th century and Julian of Norwich in the early 14th century. Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love （circa 1393） is believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the English language. Margery Kempe （c. 1373—after 1438） is known for writing The Book of Margery Kempe , a workconsidered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language, which chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia.

Among the earliest Lowland Scots literature is Barbour’s Brus （14th century）. Whyntoun’s Kronykil and Blind Harry’s Wallace date from the 15th century. From the 13th century much literature based around the royal court in Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews was produced by writers such as Henrysoun, Dunbar, Douglas and Lyndsay. The works of Chaucer had an influence on Scottish writers.

Le Morte d’Arthur , is Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th century compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances, was among the earliest books printed in England, and was influential in the later revival of interest in the Arthurian legends.

Sir Thomas More coined the word “utopia”, a name he gave to the ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in Utopia , written in Latin and published in 1516. The landmark work in the reign of James IV of Scotland was Gavin Douglas’s Eneados , the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglian language, finished in 1513. Another major work, David Lyndsay’s Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis , later in the century, is a surviving example of a dramatic tradition in the period that has otherwise largely been lost.