The Norman Conquest

By the year of 1066 William, the Duke of Normandy, invaded the Kingdom of England, defeated the English king Harold II and became the king. This historical fact is also known as the Norman Conquest, this incident changed the course English history and culture. The immediate consequence of the Conquest was the introduction of feudalism, a new kind of aristocracy. Along with this came the Northern dialect French as the normal language of the aristocracy, this continued to be used until the 15th century. English, however, remained the language of the mass, of the uncultivated. Again, all the important positions in the church were given to the French clergy, who would use Latin as the language for learning. This provided the much-needed stimulus to the intellectual life of the English people, as it opened their ways to the classical worlds of Greece and Rome. By the beginning of the 14th century English became universal for all practical purposes, but it was no longer purely a tongue of the Anglo-Saxons; Now it was the transformed English also known as Middle English forming the base for the Modern English. The most prominent change in the field of literature was that the Old English poetic themes and forms were replaced by the French romance and allegory. The love poetry of the troubadours of Southern France and the war poetry of the trouveres of the Northern France together in combination produced a new kind of poetry called romance. In this Chanson de Roland became the model of the romances. On the other hand, Roman de la Rose became a model for the medieval allegorical love poetry. In consideration of the type of production, the literature following the conquest can roughly be divided in some groups:
1. “The matter of Britain”, dealing with the stories of King Arthur
2. “The matter of England”, celebrating the English heroes
3. “The matter of France”, connected with the French king Charlemagne the Great
4. “The matter of Greece and Rome”, connected with the classical heroes like Alexander.
The period following the Conquest saw the rise of a body of popular tales, a great majority of which is in verse often having a moral. Some of them are short anecdotes, called exemplum, teaching a lesson or illustrating a point. There are also the writing of some chronicles, mainly based on legends and imagination. The striking exception is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, describing the miseries of the English under their ruthless French rulers. The Norman Conquest caused the death of the Old English lyrics Age.