Late Middle Ages (Literary period)
The Late Middle Ages, spanning approximately from 1300 to 1500 CE, was a significant literary period characterized by societal upheaval, including wars, the plague, and social unrest. This era saw a shift in literary expression as authors began to incorporate individuality and modern ideas into their works, while still drawing on traditional genres and subjects. A notable advancement was the adoption of vernacular languages, enabling literature to become more accessible to the common people.
Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" stands out as the most influential literary work of this time, offering a diverse collection of stories that provide insight into the social dynamics of medieval life. Other important texts include William Langland's "Piers Plowman," Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy," and "The Book of Margery Kempe," which is recognized as one of the earliest autobiographies in English. The period also produced allegorical works like "Pearl" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," both of which reflect the cultural and moral complexities of the time. Overall, the Late Middle Ages marks a critical transition in literature that foreshadowed the Renaissance and the modern literary landscape.
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Late Middle Ages (Literary period)
Many scholars classify the literature of the late Middle Ages as written works produced from about 1300 to 1500 CE. Great societal change sparked by wars, plague, and social unrest marked this period. The authors of the period continued to use many of the genres and subjects of earlier literature but began to inject a sense of individuality and more modern ideas into their works. Another important aspect of late Middle Ages literature was that it fully adopted writing in the vernacular, the language spoken by the majority of the common people. The most influential literary work from this period is Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories that offers a unique window into life in the Middle Ages and is considered one of the founding works of English literature. Other notable works from the late Middle Ages include Piers Plowman by William Langland, the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe, and Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by unknown authors.
Background
Historians generally date the beginning of the Middle Ages (also known as the medieval period) to about 476 CE, the year the Western Roman Empire fell. The end of this era is usually placed around the year 1500, by which time the artistic rebirth known as the Renaissance had spread throughout most of Europe and the age of global exploration had begun. At the start of the Middle Ages, writing and literacy were confined to the learned elite and religious monks, who wrote exclusively in classical languages such as Latin and Greek. In many places across Europe, cultures still passed down their traditions, folklore, and history orally.
A distinct body of medieval literature began to develop about the seventh century, when some of these folktales and stories were first written down. In Britain, literature was first written in the Old English vernacular about the seventh century, with the most famous work from this period being the epic poem Beowulf. However, after the Norman Conquest of 1066, French became the accepted language of the upper class and was used almost exclusively in literature from the period.
For much of the Middle Ages, literature had a strong connection to religion, with many stories using allegory as a way to teach moral and spiritual lessons. Fables were another way to teach moral lessons, with animals such as wolves, foxes, and rabbits playing the roles of human antagonists and protagonists. Histories were also popular, although these often wove elements of legend and folklore with historical tradition.
Overview
Historians view the fourteenth century as the beginning of a slow period of change from the Middle Ages to the modern era. England and France engaged in the deadly Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), the Renaissance had begun in Italy, and the bubonic plague wiped out millions across Europe in the 1340s and 1350s. These events and others helped erode the dominance of the Catholic Church and raise the importance of human individuality in society. The literary works of the late medieval period reflected a mixture of these new ideas with the long-standing traditions of the earlier Middle Ages.
Undoubtedly, the most influential work of the period is The Canterbury Tales by English author Geoffrey Chaucer. Written between 1388 and Chaucer’s death in 1400, The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four stories presented as tales told by pilgrims traveling from London to a holy site in Canterbury. The book is notable as being the first major work from the time to depart from French or Latin and use vernacular English.
The work was extremely popular in its day and is seen by modern scholars as providing a literary “snapshot” of fourteenth-century medieval society, showcasing the social attitudes, human behaviors, and language of the time. The stories range from serious and pious to humorous and bawdy. For example, The Miller’s Tale tells of a young couple who try to consummate their illicit affair with comical, and painful, results.
Piers Plowman, which was written about 1380 by English author William Langland, is an allegorical tale about a man named Will who experiences a series of dream visions. In these visions, he meets the symbolic representatives of Truth, Reason, the Holy Church, Repentance, the Seven Deadly Sins, and many others. Langland uses these images to criticize the main elements of medieval society, such as the Church, England’s rulers, and the peasant class.
Poet Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, which was written in his native Italian about 1321, is a three-part narrative consisting of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each part of the highly allegorical story tells of the narrator’s journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. Dante uses his work to comment on medieval Italian society, placing both real people from his time and historical figures from the past in hell, purgatory, or heaven as a way to condemn or praise their actions.
The Book of Margery Kempe was finished about 1436 and relates the life of the author as dictated to a scribe. Margery Kempe was a Christian spiritualist who chronicled her religious pilgrimages and mystical conversations with God. Her work is considered the first autobiography in the English language and a look into the lives of women in the late Middle Ages.
Pearl is another allegorical poem set within a dream vision. This time, the dreamer is a grieving father whose young daughter, Pearl, has died. The father awakens in a beautiful garden along the banks of a stream, where he sees his daughter on the other side. He longs to cross over to be with her, but she reassures him that she is happy in heaven and that he may join her one day if he follows God’s will.
The author of Pearl is unknown, as is the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a tale connected to the legend of King Arthur. The story of Arthur grew out of a pseudo-history published in the twelfth century. By the time Gawain was written in the fourteenth century, the story had been embellished and romanticized into an epic tale of chivalric knights and royal courts. Gawain is a young knight in Arthur’s court who accepts a challenge from a mysterious knight. Gawain is allowed to strike one blow on the knight, but in return, the knight can strike a similar blow in a year’s time. Gawain beheads the knight, but the wound does not kill him. As the anniversary of the incident approaches, Gawain rides off to face the knight, knowing that keeping his part of the bargain may mean his death.
Bibliography
Blauvelt, Christian. “Dante and The Divine Comedy: He Took Us on a Tour of Hell.” BBC, 5 June 2018, www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180604-dante-and-the-divine-comedy-he-took-us-on-a-tour-of-hell. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
Livingstone, Jo. “The Strange Power of a Medieval Poem About the Death of a Child.” The New Yorker, 16 June 2016, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-strange-power-of-a-medieval-poem-about-the-death-of-a-child. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
Mark, Joshua J. “Medieval Literature.” World History Encyclopedia, 20 Mar. 2019, www.worldhistory.org/Medieval‗Literature/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
Mark, Joshua J. “The Canterbury Tales.” World History Encyclopedia, 8 May 2019, www.worldhistory.org/Canterbury‗Tales/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
Morgan, Frederick. “The Vision of Piers Plowman by William Langland.” University of Oxford, 2018, www.english.ox.ac.uk/ten-minute-book-club/langland-the-vision-of-piers-plowman. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
Snell, Melissa. “The Early, High and Late Middle Ages.” ThoughtCo., 17 Feb. 2021, www.thoughtco.com/defining-the-middle-ages-part-6-1788883. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
“The Dawn of Modernity: Late Middle Ages & Italian Renaissance Literature.” Kinnu, kinnu.xyz/kinnuverse/culture/introduction-to-literature/the-dawn-of-modernity-late-middle-ages-italian-renaissance-literature/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.