Poetry Unit Continued…
The Middle English Period
1066-1485
Vocabulary Words:
Norman Conquest
Vassal
Divine Right
Serf
Feudal system
Fief
Code of Chivalry
Lyrics-religious and secular
Popular Ballad
Quatrain
Ballad stanza
Couplet
Internal rhyme
Rhyme scheme
Ubi sunt
Courtly love
Parody
Refrain/chorus
Mood
Narrative poem
Think back to the Anglo-Saxon period…
Alfred the Great united all of England under
one ruler around 886.
He supported Christianity, encouraged
education, etc.
He died in 899.
For over a hundred years after his death,
England was in a weakened state…
The weak gets taken…
The Norman Conquest of1066 - invasion of
England by William the Conqueror.
 Ended the Anglo-Saxons’ control over country.
 Divided the conquered land among Normans, forcing
most Anglo-Saxons to become serfs.
 Ended Anglo-Saxon as the “official” language.
 Norman French became the language of the aristocracy.
 Latin was the language of the Church (Holy Roman Catholic)
William dies…and who takes the throne? There
were lots of kings within 400 years…and lots of
upheavals!
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William II
Henry I
Stephen
Henry II
Richard I (Richard the Lion-Hearted)
John (think Robin Hood!) Magna Carta
Henry III
Edward I 1272 (proclaimed himself king of Scotland, but not for long…the
Scots claimed their independence in the Battle of Bannockburn 1314)
 Edward II
 Edward III 1327 (Hundred Years’ War began)
 Great advances in literature and education during The Hundred Years’ War:
 English poetry became important for the first time
 Geoffrey Chaucer/ William Langland
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Richard II 1377 (Peasant’s Revolt)
Henry IV
Henry V 1413
Henry VI 1422 (House of Lancaster)
 Nobles from the House of York wanted to overthrow him.
 Resulted in The Wars of the Roses.
Edward IV (York - 1461)
Henry VI (Lancaster -1470)
Edward IV (York -1471)
Edward V
Richard III (self-proclaimed king) 1483-1485
Middle English Period ends in 1485, with the ascension of Henry VII to the
throne of England, thereby ending The Wars of the Roses.
Society of the Middle Ages
 Society was organized into a social pyramid based on a
feudal system (which was imported from France).
 A feudal society is a world where oaths and obligations,
vows and promises, and established expectations and
customs provide the only stability possible. Loyalty to
others and fulfilling one's oaths are the most important
values in a feudal society. If these ties break down then anarchy is possible.
 Feudalism reached its height between the 800s-1200s.
It disappeared in the 1400s.
Social Structure
• Medieval society was organized in a feudal tree or pyramid system.
It was based on the level of command each man had. The King was
the highest and most important in command. The King gave fiefs or
grants of land to his noblemen, they were called Barons and
Bishops. In return for the land, each noble promised to supply the
King with soldiers in time for war. The idea of loyalty and service
was important in feudal society. Anyone who had land took an oath
to serve the person who gave it to him.
• A noble pledged himself to be a King’s vassal, or a servant at a
ceremony. They kneeled before the King and swore an oath of
loyalty. This was known as an act of homage and fealty. The oath of
loyalty was meant to be binding for life. Anyone who broke it would
be regarded as a traitor.
• At the bottom of the feudal system were
the people who made up the social class,
this included peasants (freeman),
servants, serfs (slaves), craftsmen, etc…
• Everyone owned a service to a person
higher up on the feudal pyramid. They
either farmed or fought for that person
above them. In return for their service
they were given either protection or land.
King
 Somewhat of a “figurehead ruler.”
 Kings ruled by divine right- people believed God had
chosen them to be king. The theory claimed that kings
were answerable only to God and it was sinful for their
subjects to resist them.
 That, however, did not stop all of the rebellions!
 If a king was a strong leader, he could control the barons. If he
was weak or indecisive, the barons would control him!
 *Magna Carta 1215- Nobles trying to control the unlimited power of the king.
 Kings used lords to control parts of the country.
Lords
 Swore loyalty to the king.
 Gave wealth and support to their vassals: money, land,
or whatever treasures or goods were taken in battle.
 Were responsible for protecting the family of any vassal
who was killed.
 The children were protected as wards of the feudal
lord until they married (if a daughter) or became a
vassal (if a son).
 Widows, and their property, were also protected by
the feudal lord.
 In essence, the vassal achieved a kind of insurance
for his family by entering the service of a feudal lord.
Vassals
 Had to swear an oath of loyalty to the king.
 Had to provide soldiers (knights) to fight so many
days per year.
 Had to pay homage to their lord - promising to always
defend him/his lands.
 After paying homage, the vassal received his fief.
 Fiefs were estates granted by the lord (including the
land, the buildings on it, and the peasants who
worked it.)
 He only received possession of the fief, not ownership.
The vassal could:
receive what the land produced
 collect taxes
 hold court & execute sentences
obtain labor as needed on the castle,
other buildings and roads of the fief
(estate.)
Knights
Were granted land from their lord for their
military service.
 At first the knights lived with the lords & were fed, clothed
& armed by them.
 Later, some knights were given fiefs from the lordvassal’s own fief estates.
Followed the Code of Chivalry. (see handout)
Code of Chivalry
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To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valor and faith
To protect the weak and defenseless
To give succor to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honor and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honor of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honor of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe
The knights promised to defend the weak, be courteous to
all women, be loyal to their king, and serve God at all
times. HOWEVER…
 The code of chivalry did not always extend to the
peasants. The "weak" was widely interpreted as "noble
women and children." The knights were often brutal to
common folk. They could sometimes even rape young
peasant women without fear of reprisal, all because they
were part of the upper class.
 The code of chivalry stated that knights must give mercy
to a vanquished enemy. However, the very fact that
knights were trained as men of war belied this code.
They often plundered villages or cities that they
captured, often defiling and destroying churches and
other property.
Merchant class
By 1250, the steady growth of trade and
industry led to a rising middle class-the
merchants.
Merchant guilds
Craft guilds
Peasants
 Worked the lord/vassal’s land and received a place to
stay and some of the food they produced.
 Half of the work week was spent on working the land
belonging to the lord and the church: maintenance,
wood cutting, land clearing, road building, etc.
 The rest of the time they could work on their own land.
 Sundays and saints’ days were holidays.
 Had to give 1/10 of everything they produced to the
church (crops, eggs, animals)…There were lots of rich
bishops!
 Huts were shared with livestock.
Serfs
 Not technically a slave, but bound to a lord for
life.
 Couldn’t own property.
 Needed the lord’s permission to marry.
 Couldn’t leave the land without the lord’s
permission.
 If a serf ran to a town and managed to stay for 1 year
+ a day, he was a free man.
 Worked just as hard as a peasant, but had no days
off/received no payment of crops, etc.
The Church and State
 Medieval society was dominated by two great
institutions: feudalism and religion.
 The idea of your social and legal obligations to your lord
pervaded all aspects of daily life for all the lower levels of
society.
 The idea of the afterlife, and where you would be
spending it, pervaded all aspects of society (and was
used to manipulate all levels of society.)
 Literature of the period can be grouped around these two
institutions.
The Church
 King
 Pope
 Cardinals
 Archbishops
 Bishops
 Monsignors
 Priests
 The people
What was the net impact of all of this
on our language?
 Many new words, literary forms, and social
attitudes had entered England from France, and
the whole character of English language and
literature had been altered.
 The net effect was to enrich (rather
than to impoverish) English language and
literature.
 Latin (the language of the church and of scholars)
influenced our language.
 Church controlled education
 Oxford and Cambridge universities were established during
this time period.
 French was the official language of England and the
language of the aristocracy.
 English vocabulary greatly enlarged; more than 10,000
French words were added to the English language.
 “English in the barn, French in the kitchen.”
 Words relating to culture, gov’t and “polite” terms
generally have French or Latin roots, while the “little
words of house and home” derive from Anglo Saxon
roots.
 cow, sheep, pig (Old English)
 beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon (French)
 It wasn’t until the 14th century that English again
emerged as a literary and political language.
Partly due to the war with France, the English
began to take a nationalistic pride in their
country and their culture.
English (instead of French) began to be
taught regularly in schools.
Principal Differences between Old
and Middle English:
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Grammar was simplified.
 In the year 1000 the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer
were written in Old English:
Faeder ure thu eart on heafunum, si thin nama
gehaigod…
In Wycliffe’s Bible (1389) it begins:
Our fadir that aart in hevenes, halwid be thi name…
 English thus made a giant stride from its Germanic
heritage toward the language we speak today.
AS vs. ME literature
Vocab. & language
seems foreign to us
Northern, Scandinavian
influences-vigorous,
virile, stirring, but rather
stark, humorless and
forbidding
Language is more
recognizable to us
Southern influencesstressing love and
tenderness as much as
strength and courage;
possesses a gaiety and
delicacy
Hero of the old epic was Hero of the new
the warrior
romance was the Knight
Warrior vs. Knight
Warrior
– Brave
– Male
– Physically strong
Knowledgeable
offensive
Codes they lived by…
loyalty to tribal king
personal commitment
Boasting was acceptable
Knight
– Brave
– Male
– Physically strong
Knowledgeable/Educated
defensive
Codes they lived by…
feudalism
code of chivalry
Knights were expected to
be humble before others;
boasting was not
acceptable.
Poetry
Four types of poems were popular during the
Middle Ages:
Religious lyric
Secular lyric(Ubi sunt, nature & love)
Popular ballad
Narrative poem
Lyrics
 The introduction of Latin hymns and the songs
from the French troubadours (after the Norman
Conquest) provided the English lyric with a new
style an a new subject-matter:
 Instead of alliteration—poems started to rhyme.
 The new subject-matter: courtly love, the
transitoriness of human life and nature
description… although religion continued to be
the chief subject.
Before you get the poem, you have to have some
strategies to figure out HOW analyze the poem.
WTF & FRIDTM handout
All the lyric poems are in handout form, too!
Religious Lyrics
Religious lyrics basically glorified the
Virgin, a saint, or Jesus Christ.
Read: I Syng of a Myden
– (handout)
Secular Lyrics
Not all literature of the period was Christian
in inspiration.
Some secular lyrics included topics about:
 courtly love
 life’s transitoriness
 natural scenery or earthly love.
Secular Lyric ~ Courtly Love
Courtly love was a concept that originated in the Middle
Ages in Europe. There were certain assumptions
associated with the idea of courtly love:
1. The characters involved must be of a higher social
class- must be from the Court.
2. There must be a certain amount of "ritual" associated
with their relationship:
a. the man must suffer, and it must show in the form of
physical manifestations-i.e. lack of sleep, pallor, loss of
appetite, etc.
b. the woman must present herself as indifferent to his
grief- at least in the beginning
c. there must be a rival for the woman's affections
d. there must be an element of secrecy involved in their
relationship-it may be caused by politics, other
relationships, social differences, etc.
e. there may not be any physical expression of love
f. it is unlikely the characters involved will marry
(marriage was for political, monetary or social benefit)
3. The love object was all the virtues personified- not a
"real" person, but rather the embodiment of all the
elements that make the “ideal” woman.
Courtly Love (handout)
Read Alysoun
(handout)
Secular Lyric-Nature/Earthly
Love
 The nature lyric describes nature…duh!
 The Cuckoo Song was sung as a round. (handout)
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wode nu,
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu.
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu, wel sings thu cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu.
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!
Summer has come in,
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
The seed grows and the meadow blooms
And the wood springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
The ewe bleats after the lamb
The cow lows after the calf.
The bullock stirs, the stag farts,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing, cuckoo;
Don't you ever stop now,
Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.
Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!
"bucke uerteþ" means "the stag farts", a gesture of virility indicating the stag's potential for creating new life, echoing
the rebirth of Nature from the barren period of winter.
Secular Lyric ~ Ubi Sunt
Ubi Sunt poems lamented the
transitoriness of human life.
Used to convey sadness about the
temporary nature of life and beauty.
Ubi sunt literally means where are…?
Ubi Sunt Qui Ante Nos Fuerunt?
Where beth they beforen us weren,
Houndes ladden and havekes beren,...?
They beren hem well swithe heye,
And, in a twinkling of an eye,
Hoere soules weren forloren.
--Anon (later 13th century)
Where are they, who were before us, led
hounds and bore hawks ...?
They bore themselves very loftily,
and in the twinkling of an eye, their souls
were lost.
Popular Ballads
 Popular ballads-are songs that tell a story.
 Popular ballads/traditional ballads have
unknown authors.
 Most were passed down orally.
 They relate violent or pathetic events of
everyday experiences in a simple, memorable,
repetitive style.
 Their subject matter usually includes: love,
battles, jealousy and/or revenge.
 Most are written about upper-class individuals or
families.
 The material is drawn from history or from folklore.
 Bright colors and magic numbers (such as 3 or 7) often
occur.
 Ballads are unlike lyrics because they are objective
poems, and the attention is on the characters and events
of the story rather than on the personal views or feelings
of the narrator.
 They are usually composed of rhyming couplets or the
ballad stanza.
Rhyming couplet: two lines that rhyme.
There were three ravens that sat on a tree,
They were as blacke as they might be.
Ballad stanza: a stanza of 4 lines.
 Lines 2 & 4 almost always rhyme
 Lines 1 and 3 sometimes rhyme.
“Late late yestreen I saw the new moone,
Wi the auld moone in hir arme,
And I feir, I feir, my deir master,
That we will cum to harme.”
The Three Ravens
- Andreas Scholl’s version.
-Our Literary Heritage or handout
• There were three ravens sat on a tree,
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downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe,
• There were three ravens sat on a tree,
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with a downe,
• There were three ravens sat on a tree,
• They were as black as they might be.
- with a downe, derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.
• The one of them said to his mate, Where shall we our breakfast
take?
• Down in yonder green field, There lies a Knight slain under his
shield.
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His hounds they lie down at his feet,
So well they can their Master keep,
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His hawks they fly so eagerly,
There's no fowl dare him come nie.
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Down there comes a fallow doe,
As great with young as she might go.
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She lift up his bloody head,
And kissed his wounds that were so red.
• She got him up upon her back,
• And carried him to earthen lake.
• She buried him before the prime,
• She was dead herself ere evening-song time.
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God send every gentleman,
Such hawks, such hounds, and such a Leman.
The Three Ravens…Interpreted
Look at your notes about the Popular
Ballad.
Which characteristics of the Popular
Ballad are portrayed in this poem?
What is this poem about?
 The ballad takes the form of three scavenger birds
conversing about where and what they should eat. One
mentions a recently slain knight, but they find he is
guarded by his loyal hawk and hound.
 A doe (often interpreted as the knight's mistress in
supernatural form) comes upon him, cleans his wounds,
bears him away, and buries him, leaving the ravens
without an apparent meal.
 The narrator, however, gradually departs from the
ravens' point of view, ending with “God send every
gentleman/Such haukes, such hounds, and such a
Leman”.
The Twa Corbies
An Drasda from the 1999 Atlanta Celtic
Festival.
Our Literary Heritage
The Twa Corbies
What characteristics of the Popular Ballad
are apparent in this poem?
What is this poem about?
What are the similarities and differences
between this poem and The Three
Ravens?
What is one of the prevalent themes in this
poem? (Back up your answer!)
The Three Ravens and The Twa Corbies
There are only two scavengers in “Twa
Corbies”, but this is the least of the
differences between the songs, although
they do begin the same.
Rather than commenting on the loyalty of
the knight's beasts, the crows mention that
the hawk and the hound have abandoned
their master, and are off chasing other
game, while his mistress has already
taken another lover.
 These ravens are guaranteed an undisturbed
meal, as no one else knows where the man lies,
or even that he's dead. They discuss in some
gruesome detail the meal they will make out of
him, plucking out his eye and using his hair for
their nests.
 Some themes believed to be portrayed in "Twa
Corbies" are: the fragility of life, the idea that life
goes on after death, and a more pessimistic
viewpoint on life.
Narrative Poem
A poem that tells a story.
An epic is a type of narrative, as is a ballad,
etc..
Another example of a narrative poem is
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Things you need to know for the
CT:
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Iambic pentameter
Pilgrimage
Satire
Fabliau
Exemplum
– Intro
– Prologue
– Pardoner’s Tale
– Miller’s Tale
The Canterbury Tales
• Oral notation
• Read the prologue
• Find out about the people going on this
pilgrimmage!!! Take notes!