1066-1485

The Medieval Period

1066 The Battle of Hastings :

• Harold, King of the Saxons;

• William, Duke of Normandy - William the Conqueror

The Normans

• Were from Normandy, northwest France

• Good soldiers

• Good administrators

• Centralised Norman government

• Blending cultures

Old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy destroyed

Geoffrey Chaucer

• Held various positions in the home government.

• One of the greatest poets of the English language.

• Was buried in Westminster Abbey. Around his burial spot has grown up the famous Poet’s Corner.

Chaucer’s Poetry

Divided in three periods: French Period, Italian Period, English Period.

During his French Period he translated ‘The Romance of the Rose’.

During Italian Period he produced ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, long narrative poem based on Boccaccio’s retelling of an ancient love story set during the Trojan War.

One of his greatest achievements was writing 'The Canterbury Tales****’, which he wrote during his English Period.

Chaucer’s works are written in Middle English in the 1300s.

The Canterbury Tales

Long poem made up of a general introduction and a series of stories told in verse by a cross section of English men and women. They tell their stories as they travel one April from an inn in a London suburb south-eastward for fifty miles to the cathedral city of Canterbury. They are on a pilgrimage, a journey to a sacred place: Canterbury Cathedral is where Archbishop Thomas Becket had been killed by order of King Henry II.

Arthurian Legends

Stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table had been popular in Wales before the 11th century.

Subjects:

• King Arthur was one of the Celtic chiefs who fought against the Saxons.

• Sir Lancelot and his Queen Guinevere, the love and the quest for the Holy Grail.

These stories were called romances, because they were written in French.

The whole of the legend in English is presented by Thomas Malory in his book ‘Morte d’ Arthur’ (‘Death of Arthur) in late 1485.