Middle English literature

There are three main categories of Middle English literature, religious, courtly love, and Arthurian, though much of Geoffrey Chaucer's work stands outside these.

In the late 15th century William Caxton printed four-fifths of his works in English, which helped to standardize the language and expand the vocabulary.

After the Norman conquest of England, the written form of the Old English language continued in some monasteries but few literary works are known from this period.

While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture and administration, English literature by no means died out, and a number of important works illustrate the development of the language.

Early examples of Middle English literature are the Ormulum, Havelock the Dane, and Thomas of Hales's Love Rune.

[5] The Kildare Poems are a rare example of Middle English literature produced in Ireland, and give an insight into the development of Hiberno-English.

The latter portion of the 14th century also saw not only the consolidation of English as a written language, taking over from French or Latin in certain areas, but a large shift from primarily theological or religious subject matter to also include that of a more secular nature.

[6] The reputation of Chaucer's successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleve, and Skelton are widely studied.

Henryson and Dunbar introduced a note of almost savage satire, which may have owed something to the Gaelic bardic poetry, while Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid is one of the early monuments of Renaissance literary humanism in English.

[citation needed] This facilitated the expansion of English vocabulary, the development of inflection and syntax and the ever-widening gap between the spoken and the written word.