Топик: The History of English
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote
When April with his sweet showers has stuck to the roots the
dryness of March…
There are five main beats in each line, and the reader will notice that rhyme has taken the place of Old English alliteration. Chaucer was a well-educated man who read Latin, and studied French and Italian poetry; but he was not interested only in books. He traveled and made good use of his eyes; and the people whom he describes are just like living people.
The Canterbury Tales total altogether about 17,000 lines – about half of Chaucer’s literary production. A party of pilgrims agree to tell stories to pass the time on their journey from London to Canterbury with its great church and the grave of Thomas a Becket. There are more than twenty of these stories, mostly in verse, and in the stories we get to know the pilgrims themselves. Most of them, like the merchant, the lawyer, the cook, the sailor, the ploughman, and the miller, are ordinary people, but each of them can be recognized as a real person with his or her own character. One of the most enjoyable characters, for example, is the Wife of Bath. By the time she tells her story we know her as a woman of very strong opinions who believes firmly in marriage (she has had five husbands, one after the other) and equally firmly in the need to manage husbands strictly. In her story one of King Arthur’s knights must give within a year the correct answer to the question “What do women love most?” in order to save his life. An ugly old which knows the answer (“to rule”) and agrees to tell him if he marries her. At last he agrees, and at the marriage she becomes young again and beautiful.
A good deal of Middle English prose is religious. The Ancren Riwle teaches proper rules of life for anchoresses (religious women) how they ought to dress, what work they may do, when they ought not to speak, and so on. It was probably written in the thirteenth century. Another work, The Form of Perfect Living, was written by richard rolle with the same sort of aim. His prose style has been highly praised, and his work is important in the history of our prose.
john wycliffe, a priest, attacked many of the religious ideas of his time. He was at Oxford, but had to leave because his attacks on the Church could no longer be borne. One of his beliefs was that anyone who wanted to read the Bible ought to be allowed to do so;
but how could this be done by uneducated people when the Bible was in Latin? Some parts had indeed been put into Old English long ago, but Wycliffe arranged the production of the whole Bible in English. He himself translated part of it. There were two translations ! 1382 and 1388), of which the second is the better.
It is surprising that Wycliffe was not burnt alive for his attacks on religious practices. After he was dead and buried, his bones were dug up again and thrown into a stream which flows into the River Avon (which itself flows into the River Severn):
The Avon to the Severn runs,
The Severn to the sea,
And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad,
Wide as the waters be.
An important Middle English prose work, Morte D'Arthur [= Arthur's Death], was written by sir thomas malory. Even for the violent years just before and during the Wars of the Roses, Malory was a violent character. He was several times in prison, and it has been suggested that he wrote at least part of Morte D'Arthur there to pass the time.
Malory wrote eight separate tales of King Arthur and his knights but when Caxton printed the book in 1485 (after Malory's death) he joined them into one long story. Caxton's was the only copy of Malory's work that we had until, quite recently f1933-4;. a handwritten copy of it was found in Winchester College.
The stories of Arthur and his knights have attracted many British and other writers. Arthur is a shadowy figure of the past. but probably really lived. Many tales gathered round him and his knights. One of the main subjects was the search for the cup used by Christ at the East Supper. (This cup is known as The Holy Grail. Another subject was Arthur's battles against his enemies, including the Romans. Malory's fine prose can tell a direct story well, but can also express deep feelings in musical sentences. Here is part of the book in modern form. King Arthur is badly wounded:
Then Sir Bedivere took the king on his back and so went with him to the water's edge. And when they were there. close by the bank, there came a little ship with many beautiful ladies in it; and among them all there was a queen. And they all had black head-dresses, and all wept and cried when they saw King Arthur.
III. Modern English (1500-to the present day)
By the beginning of 20th century, Britain was no longer the world's richest country. Perhaps this caused Victorian confidence in gradual reform to weaken. Whatever the reason, the first twenty years of the century were a period of extremism in Britain. The Suffragettes, women demanding the right to vote, were prepared both to damage property and to die for their beliefs; the problem of Ulster in the north of Ireland led to a situation in which some sections of the army appeared ready to disobey the government; and the government's introduction of new types and levels of taxation was opposed so absolutely by the House of Lords that even Parliament, the foundation of the political system, seemed to have an uncertain future in its traditional form. But by the end of the First World War, two of these issues had been resolved to most people's satisfaction (the Irish problem remained) and the rather un-British climate of extremism died out.
The significant changes that have taken place in this century are dealt with elsewhere in this book. Just one thing should be noted here. It was from the beginning of this century that the urban working class (the majority of the population) finally began to make its voice heard. In Parliament, the Labour party gradually replaced the Liberals (the 'descendants' of the Whigs) as the main opposition to the Conservatives (the 'descendants' of the Tories). In addition, trade unions managed to organize themselves. In 1926, they were powerful enough to hold a General Strike, and from the 1930s until the 1980s the Trades Union Congress (see chapter 14) was probably the single most powerful political force outside the institutions of government and Parliament.
From about 1600, explorers, adventurers, settlers and soldiers went out from Britain to found settlements and colonies overseas. They took the English language with them. At the height of their power, during the 19th century, the British could claim that the sun never set on their Empire. Today almost all the countries of the old Empire have become independent. However, most of them are now members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and English continues to be an important language for them.
After the Second World War the United States became what Britain had been in the 19th century: politically and economically one of the most powerful nations in the world. As its power spread, so the English language spread.
Five hundred years ago they didn't speak English in North America. The American Indians had their own languages. So did the Inuit (often called 'Eskimos') and Aleuts in Canada. So did the Aborigines in Australia, and the Maoris in New Zealand.
The English arrived and set up their colonies. And then other people came from all over the world, bringing many different languages and cultures.
The USA has the biggest mixture of all: it is often called a 'melting pot' of cultures. In 1619 a small ship arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty slaves from Africa. For over two hundred years, the Americans imported, bought and sold African slaves. Today there are over 29 million black Americans living in the USA.
In 1848 the population of the United States was still very small. Then two important things happened: they discovered gold in California and a new law, the Homestead Act, gave free land to farmers. Suddenly millions of immigrants came to America, 'The Land of Opportunity'.
At first they were English, Irish, German and Scandinavian. Then Italians, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Russians and Poles came. Most immigrants came because economic conditions at home were bad. But there were also other problems in Europe. About three million Jews came to the USA between 1880 and 1910 because of religious persecution in Russia and other countries.
Today the USA is still much richer than most of its neighbors. Its most recent new citizens are many Spanish-speaking people from Puerto Rico, Mexico and South America.
The population of Britain is only about 58 million. But throughout the world English is spoken by over 700 million people.
About 350 million people speak English as their first language in 12 countries such as Britain, the USA. Canada Australia. New Zealand. South Africa.