Middle English
Post-Norman literary language
Middle English is the form of English spoken and written roughly from the 12th to the 15th century, after the Norman Conquest transformed Old English and before the standardization of Early Modern English.
Chaucer wrote in Middle English.
The term also describes this historical period in the language's development: The word entered English in Middle English.
Land-for-service social structure
- manorLanded aristocratic residence
- serfdomFeudal bound labor
- peasantryRural working class
- guildProfessional mutual-aid society
Black Death · plague · Hundred Years War · Wars of the Roses · Plantagenet · Norman Conquest · Domesday · monastery
Number after 1099
- 1500One thousand five hundred
- transitionChange from one state
- printing pressMechanical text reproduction device
- standardizationImplementing uniform technical specifications
- Canterbury TalesMedieval English story collection
- GeoffreyMasculine given name
- mystery playsMedieval biblical drama cycles
- morality playsDidactic medieval dramas
Gawain · romance · courtly love · allegory · verse · prose · Julian of Norwich
Hybrid medieval French-English culture
- syntaxRules for arranging words
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- inflectionWord form alteration
- declensionNoun form variation
conjugation · Great Vowel Shift · dialects · Northumbrian · phonology · orthography · spelling · pronunciation
Professional document copiers
- parchmentTreated hide for manuscripts
- vellumPrepared calfskin for writing
- codexAncient bound manuscript
- quillFeather used for writing
illumination · folio · palimpsest · glosses · transcription · scriptorium · marginalia · colophon
feudalism
Land-for-service social structure
guild · Black Death · plague · Hundred Years War · Wars of the Roses · Plantagenet · Norman Conquest · Domesday · monastery · cathedral
1100
Number after 1099
- 1500One thousand five hundred
- transitionChange from one state
- printing pressMechanical text reproduction device
standardization · vernacular · Norman Conquest · periodization
Chaucer
- Canterbury TalesMedieval English story collection
- GeoffreyMasculine given name
- mystery playsMedieval biblical drama cycles
Gawain · morality plays · romance · courtly love · allegory · verse · prose · Julian of Norwich
Anglo-Norman
Hybrid medieval French-English culture
- syntaxRules for arranging words
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- inflectionWord form alteration
declension · conjugation · Great Vowel Shift · dialects · Northumbrian · phonology · orthography · spelling · pronunciation · vocabulary
scribes
Professional document copiers
- parchmentTreated hide for manuscripts
- vellumPrepared calfskin for writing
- codexAncient bound manuscript
quill · illumination · folio · palimpsest · glosses · transcription · scriptorium · marginalia · colophon · abbreviations
- languagesArabic, Chinese, German, French, Japanese
- British LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Austen
- English languagelinguistics, semantics, phonetics, orthography, vocabulary
- English LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, Bronte, Chaucer
- English StudiesBritish literature, American literature, literary theory, literary history, Shakespeare
- etymologyword origins, word history, word origin, etymon, root words
Middle EnglishOld English
Germanic language of early Britain
Modern English · Anglo-Saxon · Early Modern English · Proto-Germanic · Standard English
Middle EnglishOld French
Romance language, 9th-14th century
Latin · Old Norse · Norman French · Anglo-Norman · Celtic