What is the best strategy to start reading Middle English? I don't really see the value in a translation for a stage of English so similar to our own. Should I just sit down with a well-annotated edition of Chaucer and read until I get it? How should I approach texts like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight whose language is made more difficult by borrowing from Norse?
>>7825787
What you need to understand is that Middle English, all the way up until Chaucer, isn't really its own independent language so much as a clusterfuck of Anglo-Norman, French, German, Scandinavian, Latin and then further hindered by a lack of any established overarching grammatical rules. Even in reading the later works I would highly recommend either a grammar guide book or a Middle English dictionary through the internet.
While it does initially make the language seem like a meaningless transitory stage lacking in sophistication and very few great literary works, in actuality it lends it a fluidity and creativity that few languages have ever been able to equal.
Take "Mayden, moder milde" from the Harley manuscript as an example.Notice the symmetrical line switches between French and English, the fluid rhyming structure and the complex portrayal of Mary as both mother of Jesus and mother of a son who chose to die for reasons she can't fully understand:
¶ Mayden, moder milde,
Oiez cel oreysoun.
From shome thou me shilde,
E de ly mal feloun;
For love of thine childe,
Me menez de tresoun.
Ich wes wod ant wilde;
Ore su en prisoun.
Thou art feyr ant fre,
E plein de douçour.
Of the sprong the ble,
Ly soverein Creatour.
Mayde, byseche Y the
Vostre seint socour.
Meoke ant mylde, be with me
Pur le sue amour.
Tho Judas Jesum founde,
Donque ly beysa;
He wes bete ant bounde,
Que nous tous fourma.
Wyde were is wounde
Qe le Gyw ly dona.
He tholede harde stounde,
Me poi le greva.
On ston ase thou stode,
Pucele, tot pensaunt,
Thou restest the under rode:
Ton fitz veites pendant;
Thou seye is sides of blode,
L'alme de ly partaunt.
He ferede uch an fode
En mound que fust vivaunt.
Ys siden were sore;
Le sang de ly cora.
That lond was forlore,
Mes il le rechata.
Uch bern that wes ybore
En enfern descenda;
He tholede deth therfore,
En ciel puis mounta.
Tho Pilat herde the tydynge,
Molt fu joyous baroun;
He lette byfore him brynge
Jesu Nazaroun.
He was ycrouned kynge
Pur nostre redempcioun.
Whose wol me synge
Avera grant pardoun.
The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and Le Mortre D'Arthur are all some of the greatest stories ever written, but they are written in a later Middle English that doesn't really capture the many faceted creative clusterfuck that is real Middle English lit.
Check out Ancrene Wisse, The Ormulum and The Peterborough Chronicle for some real Philological adventure.
>>7825831
Did people seriously use this as a language? This is literally half French and half English with what seems like German randomly thrown in
>>7825910
Absolutely, this was a time when the large majority of the population spoke what was spoken around them, and England was the most multicultural country in Europe.
