HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY GIFT OF PROF. JOHN TUCKER MURRAY Copyright 1906 By The Macmillan Company PREFACE THIS is the first of two volumes concerning the literary history of England from the Norman Conquest to the time of Elizabeth. covers particularly the period down to the birth of Chaucer, but deals also with such later productions (romances, tales, legends, and the like) as are written in early medieval styles. In treating the vernacular literature of this period I have adopted an arrangement which differs from any hitherto followed in a history of Middle English literature, though it is not uncommon in histories of contemporaneous works in Old French-that, namely, of bringing all writings of one kind together and tracing separately the evolution of each type. This method I decided upon, as Chaucer would say, "of ful avysement." After careful deliberation, it seemed to me to be the one most perspicuous and illuminating, because of the peculiar characteristics of the literary productions of the epoch: as I shall point out again in the Introduction, these are in large part anonymous in composition, impersonal in expression, international in currency, and static in type-wherefore their relations to one another are of a more intimate and persistent character within specific classes than at any later period of European history. Naturally, the second volume will follow a different plan: after a broad consideration of the general tendencies of the era, it will treat particularly of the chief writings of prominent individuals, and will emphasise their personal qualities rather than the origin and development of their themes. In this first volume, it will be seen, nearly all of Chaucer's works are mentioned, because of their connection with earlier documents of similar kind; but no attempt is made to describe Chaucer as a person, to trace the growth of his powers, or to examine the characteristics of his art. The position of Troilus and Cressida in the history of the Troy-legend is indicated here, where it is a matter of genuine interest; and, consequently, irrelevant facts on this point will be omitted from the treatment of the poem as a literary creation when the suitable time comes to view it in that regard. Not only in arrangement, but also in subject matter, I have ventured to differ from my predecessors, by considering attentively all works written in mediæval England, no matter in what language, and by comparing them with similar Continental productions. I have tried always to keep in mind the peculiar historical conditions which make familiarity with Old French literature necessary to an understanding of almost everything in the Middle English vernacular. In order to counteract any confusion that a division of the matter according to its nature might occasion, I have appended a chronological table of all documents mentioned in the text, with as accurate a statement as is now possible of the dialect in which they were written. The extant manuscripts of medieval works are so various, and show so much revision and transformation, |