The Norman Conquest
Today's class talked about the Norman Conquest. There are several websites devoted to the topic: The Essential Norman Conquest seemed particularly well-done. And there's a contest to win a free book!
You can find hundreds of images of the Bayeux Tapstery on-line. The Google Images search results are here.
Thursday's Lecure note:
The Norman Conquest
*The house of Wessex (descendents of King Alfred the Great) ended with Edward the Confessor, who died with no children.
*Kingship was mostly hereditary in these days, but not strictly father-son. Often a king would designate an heir, but the more powerful family member could also take control. The acclimation of the other powerful families could also make a difference.
*All this came into conflict when Edward died. He had previously designated his kinsman, William of Normandy, his heir. His wife’s kinsman, Harald Godwinson, declared himself king, claiming that William had elected him (Harald) on his death bed. The nobility acclaimed Harald was king. William started to put together an invasionary force to go claim his kingdom.
*Meanwhile, Harald’s troublesome brother, Tostig, got together with the King of Norway, Harald Hardrada, and convinced him that he should be king of England! So the Vikings (plus Tostig) land in the north of England. Harald went screaming up with his army and dealt them a decisive blow at the battle of Stanford Bridge (just outside of York)
*William, despite the late season, put his men and their horses on ships, and landed in Pevensey while H was north.
*H came back down at top speed, leaving his archers behind in order to travel faster (a key mistake, as it turned out).
*The two armies came together at a place the Anglo-Saxons called “Senlac”, just a few miles from the town of Hastings. After a long fight (all day), the Normans won. Harald and most of the other Anglo-Saxon nobility were killed, and the age of the Anglo-Saxon hegemony over England came to an end.
*How do we know? In addition to written sources, we have one of the most amazing medieval artifacts in existence—the Bayeux Tapestry. This name is a misnomer, as it’s actually embroidery. It shows the events of the sucession debate and the battle.
II. Language and the Normans
*The Normans (who were descended from Vikings) spoke Old French, which very quickly became “Anglo-Norman” as a specialized dialect in England. They did not have the developed literary vernacular or legal culture that the AS had.
*They had all the influential positions in the Church and the government (which wasn’t yet very centralized). English was the conquered people’s language. Eventually, over the centuries, the ties between the Normans and their (intermarried) descendants and their continental French counterparts weakened, and English began to take on its own identity as a national language again.
*This is one of the major reasons why modern English has such redundant vocabulary—we have Germanic words from OE, and Latinate words from French.
III. Middle English
*Is a merger of Old English and Old French into a new language, patterned basically after English grammatically but with some French elements (like “of” for possessives)
*Sounds began to change (mostly simplifying), and words begin to look more like modern English (see p. 98 and 100)
*Inflectional endings simplified—all plurals were –es, and all the singular except the genitive is the same
*Pronouns simplified and look more like MdE
*Several French loan words (some of which have now dropped back out)
You can find hundreds of images of the Bayeux Tapstery on-line. The Google Images search results are here.
Thursday's Lecure note:
The Norman Conquest
*The house of Wessex (descendents of King Alfred the Great) ended with Edward the Confessor, who died with no children.
*Kingship was mostly hereditary in these days, but not strictly father-son. Often a king would designate an heir, but the more powerful family member could also take control. The acclimation of the other powerful families could also make a difference.
*All this came into conflict when Edward died. He had previously designated his kinsman, William of Normandy, his heir. His wife’s kinsman, Harald Godwinson, declared himself king, claiming that William had elected him (Harald) on his death bed. The nobility acclaimed Harald was king. William started to put together an invasionary force to go claim his kingdom.
*Meanwhile, Harald’s troublesome brother, Tostig, got together with the King of Norway, Harald Hardrada, and convinced him that he should be king of England! So the Vikings (plus Tostig) land in the north of England. Harald went screaming up with his army and dealt them a decisive blow at the battle of Stanford Bridge (just outside of York)
*William, despite the late season, put his men and their horses on ships, and landed in Pevensey while H was north.
*H came back down at top speed, leaving his archers behind in order to travel faster (a key mistake, as it turned out).
*The two armies came together at a place the Anglo-Saxons called “Senlac”, just a few miles from the town of Hastings. After a long fight (all day), the Normans won. Harald and most of the other Anglo-Saxon nobility were killed, and the age of the Anglo-Saxon hegemony over England came to an end.
*How do we know? In addition to written sources, we have one of the most amazing medieval artifacts in existence—the Bayeux Tapestry. This name is a misnomer, as it’s actually embroidery. It shows the events of the sucession debate and the battle.
II. Language and the Normans
*The Normans (who were descended from Vikings) spoke Old French, which very quickly became “Anglo-Norman” as a specialized dialect in England. They did not have the developed literary vernacular or legal culture that the AS had.
*They had all the influential positions in the Church and the government (which wasn’t yet very centralized). English was the conquered people’s language. Eventually, over the centuries, the ties between the Normans and their (intermarried) descendants and their continental French counterparts weakened, and English began to take on its own identity as a national language again.
*This is one of the major reasons why modern English has such redundant vocabulary—we have Germanic words from OE, and Latinate words from French.
III. Middle English
*Is a merger of Old English and Old French into a new language, patterned basically after English grammatically but with some French elements (like “of” for possessives)
*Sounds began to change (mostly simplifying), and words begin to look more like modern English (see p. 98 and 100)
*Inflectional endings simplified—all plurals were –es, and all the singular except the genitive is the same
*Pronouns simplified and look more like MdE
*Several French loan words (some of which have now dropped back out)
posted by Rebecca Brackmann at
11:50 AM
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