Religious And Didactic Writings.
In the 12th century the oldest substantial Anglo-Norman prose work, “The Book of Kings,” was written in England, as were many versions of the Psalter. Sanson de Nanteuil translated into verse the proverbs of Solomon, with commentary; and in the 13th century Robert of Greatham wrote the “Sunday Gospels” for a noble lady. The same century saw the beginning of the magnificent series of Anglo-Norman apocalypses, best known for their superb illustrations, which served as a model for a series of tapestries at Angers, France. Anglo-Norman was rich in literature of legends of saints, of which Benedeit’s “Voyage of St. Brendan” was perhaps the oldest purely narrative French poem in the octosyllabic couplet. Wace led the way in writing a saint’s life in standard form but was followed by Anglo-Norman writers in the 12th century who wrote numerous biographies, many connecting religious houses with their patron saints.
The earliest play entirely in French, the Mystère d’Adam, is Anglo-Norman. The resurrection play La Seinte Resureccion was probably 12th century but was rewritten more than once in the 13th century. There were a few religious allegories, the most important, the “Castle of Love,” being the oldest in French.
The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 led to the compilation of instructive works, the oldest and most attractive being the Merure de seinte église (“Mirror of Holy Church”) by St. Edmund of Abingdon. In the 13th–14th century countless treatises appeared on technical subjects—manuals for confession, agriculture, law, medicine, grammar, and science, together with works dealing with manners, hunting, hawking, and chess. Spelling treatises produced in the late 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries are valuable for the light they shed on continental French as well as Anglo-Norman.
Romances.
Anglo-Norman literature was well provided with romances. In the 12th century one Thomas wrote a courtly version of the Tristan story, which survived in scattered fragments and was used by Gottfried von Strassburg in Tristan und Isolde as well as being the source of the Old Norse, Italian, and Middle English versions of the story. Béroul’s Tristan, also 12th century, was probably written in England, but by a Norman; Waldef, a long, confused story of an imaginary king of East Anglia and his sons, has passages of remarkable originality. In the 12th century some romances were composed in the form of the chanson de geste; for example, Horn, by Master Thomas, which is connected with the Middle English Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild. Yet another Thomas wrote the Roman de toute chevalerie (“Romance of All Chivalry”), an independent version of the Alexander romance and the source of the Middle English romance King Alisaunder. In the 13th century the more courtly type of romance reappeared in Amadas et Idoine and in Amis et Amiloun.
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Lais And Fabliaux.
Marie de France, the earliest named French woman poet, wrote fables based on an English source and 12 narrative lays (dedicated, probably, to Henry II of England) in octosyllabic rhymed couplets. She claimed that they had Breton lays as their originals. The lais combined realistic and fairy-tale elements, and their author was skillful in the analysis of love problems and often showed a keen interest in contemporary life. A few other fabliaux have been found copied in manuscripts from religious houses, probably for exemplary purposes.
Political And Historical Writings.
Fragments of political songs are found in Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle, which begins as a Brut—a complete chronicle of British history—but became a source for the times of Edward I. The Dominican Nicholas Trevet wrote a prose chronicle of European history from which Chaucer derived his “Man of Law’s Tale.” Earlier than these was an Anglo-Norman verse, Estoire des Engleis, by Geffrei Gaimar (c. 1140), which is the earliest chronicle in French. Two magnificent biographies of the 1st Earl of Pembroke (William Marshal) and of Edward, the Black Prince, were written for English patrons by foreigners. Official documents were often in Anglo-Norman, and the Yearbooks, unofficial reports of cases in the common pleas, ran from the reign of Edward I to that of Henry VIII. English began to be used in Parliament alongside French in the late 14th century.
Natural history and science. One of the earliest writers in Anglo-Norman, Philippe de Thaon, or Thaün, wrote Li Cumpoz (The Computus), the first French bestiary, and a work on precious stones. Simund de Freine based his Roman de philosophie on Boethius, to whom the 13th-century Petite Philosophie also owes much.
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William the Conqueror could not speak a word of English. He and his barons spoke the Norman dialect of the French language; but the Anglo-Saxon dialects were not suppressed. During the following 200 years communication went on in three languages:
- at the monasteries learning went on in Latin;
- Norman-French was the language of the ruling class and was spoken at court and in official institutions;
- the common people held firmly to their mother tongue.
In spite of this, however, the language changed so much in the course of time.
The history of English literature shows us how the popular tongue became the language of the educated classes because it was spoken by the majority of the population, by those who tilled the soil, sowed and reaped, by those who produced the goods and struggled against the foreign oppressors.
Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon were moulded into one national language only towards the beginning of the 14th century when the Hundred Years' War broke out. The language of that time is called Middle English.
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