BOOK II RELIGION AND ROMANCE (1066-1500) CHAPTER IV THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD (1066-1360) Middle Eng BETWEEN the Anglo-Saxon Period, which we have just traversed, and the Middle English Period, upon which we are about to enter, there is for the student of From Angloliterature a great gulf fixed. The Norman Con- Saxon to quest had intervened, and under the stress of lish conditions created by that great historic event, literary utterance in the English tongue was all but silenced. For about a century and a half there is practically no literature in English except the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; and it is not until near the close of the twelfth century that a new native literature begins to appear. The language, too, under similar influences, has undergone marked changes; and the Middle English literature almost seems. to be written in a new speech. Yet all these changes had been gradual, and the life of the race had been continuous from the close of the one age to the beginning of the other. The race had passed over the gulf and had reappeared on the other side, ready to take up again the task of expressing through literature its ever moving life. It had passed through great experiences and had been subjected to new and powerful foreign influences; but it had not been radically changed. Indeed, it was still essentially the same race, with much the same ideals. In a word, the thread of literary development had been broken by the accident of foreign conquest, but the thread of racial life had remained intact. By what impulses shall we now find this life and this literature determined? The question is not so easy to answer as in the case of the preceding period; for the situation is a more complicated one. The Norman Conquest, of course, powerfully affected the conditions of English national and social life; but it was not in itself a great literary influence, except in the purely negative sense that it helped to bring the old order to a close and to hinder a native literary revival. Yet the Conquest brought with it conditions which did in time have a positive and very important influence on literary production. In the English and first place, it brought a new race into England Normans - a race originally Teutonic, but transformed by the infusion of French blood into the most brilliant and masterful race in Europe. The Normans, moreover, were a romantic, an artistic, and a poetic people; and their presence could not fail to affect literary conditions and movements. Furthermore, Normans and English were brought into close contact with each other in almost all departments of life. At first the relation was one of hostility; but gradually the two races drew together until at last the one was merged in the other. It was not the mingling of two equal streams; for doubtless the native English element was much the larger and more important. The old race, however, was in time profoundly modified, just as the Normans themselves had been modified before by their union with the French. The new union was a most fortunate one; for it joined the brilliant, emotional, and imaginative Norman temper with the more solid and steadfast qualities of the Anglo-Saxon nature. This contact of races, in all its stages, so profoundly affected the conditions of life and the growth of racial character that it necessarily exerted a dominating influence on literature as well. Indeed, we may fairly say that the literature of the whole Middle English Period, and espe - cially of what we have here called the Anglo-Norman Period, was mainly shaped and controlled-perhaps we may add, to some extent repressed and hindered by the relations which existed between two races, two languages, two national and literary ideals. English Temper In order to appreciate still more definitely the impulses now working toward the making of literature, we must observe the direction in which the genius of each race was urging it to literary expression. The English literary temper was still, as it had been throughout the Anglo-Saxon Period, chiefly religious. Under Religious the existing conditions, it seems natural to expect the utterance of a national or racial passion, asserting English sentiment against alien conquerors. This English spirit does find voice, to some extent, in songs and ballads; but the dominant note is a religious one. It is as though the race had accepted its lot and was seeking compensation for its woes in the consolations of its religion. Indeed, there is comparatively little of English literary protest against Norman rule; and the patriotic note is strongest at a time when Englishmen and Normans were sufficiently united to feel a common pride in a common country. Norman As contrasted with English religious feeling, the Norman literary temper was essentially romantic. When William the Conqueror advanced against the English army at the battle of Hastings, the Norman minstrel, Romantic Taillefer, rode in front, tossing his sword in Temper the air and catching it again while he chanted the Song of Roland. He was the first to strike and the first to fall. The Norman valor was there, but there also was the Norman romantic spirit. The incident is finely symbolic of the new element which the Normans were to bring into English literature. We may say, therefore, that the literature of the Middle English Period was guided, not merely by the contact of |