Middle English Literature & Great Vowel Shift

Great Vowel Shift

Great Vowel Shift: examples

Literature in London

• Chaucer

• John Gower: contemporary and rival

• wrote in Latin, French and English

• background: Kent

• poet laureate

• topics: great catastrophes of classical antiquity

• style: dead serious

The Midlands

• alliterate revival: comeback of Old English Poetry

• Gawain and the Green Knight

→ Arthur - adventure of Gawain

→ author: anonymous “Pearl Poet”

• Marte d’Arthure by Thomas Malory

  → Death of Arthur - end of round table

  → few fantastic elements

• Piers Plowman by William Langlad

  → dream vision - autobiography

  → search for a truly Christian life

  → allegorical characters: Dowel, Dobet and Dobest

North

• Cursor Mundi

  → 30.000 verses

  → history of the world from the Bible’s perspective

• “The Brus” by John Babour

  → life of Robert the Bruce, Scottish king

  → battle of Bannockburn, Scottish war for independence

West

• Harley lyrics: personal love lyrics?

• “Brut” by Layamon/Lawman

  → histioriography: origin of British people

  → Brutus, son of Priam, flees from burning Troy to Britain

  → 16.000 verses - nearly no loan words

reconstructing ME pronounciation

• comparative reconstruction

• internal reconstruction

• analysis of verse

• analysis of spelling

comparative reconstruction

other languages and later stages of the same language to reconstruct the sound system

→ based on the idea that related languages/dialects share common ancestry

→ takes place through analysis of cognates

internal reconstruction

look at the language to reconstruct older examles of the language