MIDDLE ENGLISH • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Middle English

"Middle English" Quotes from Famous Books

... Western Europe, Norman French was the literary language of England during the earlier part of that age and it was not until the second half of the thirteenth century that English lyric poetry appeared. Nevertheless, traces of Provencal influence are unmistakably apparent in this Middle English lyric poetry. But even before this time Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Norman literature was similarly affected. William of Malmesbury says that the Norman Thomas, Archbishop of York, the opponent of Anselm wrote ...

— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... fenced off the whole of our own Middle English and medieval literature—fenced off Chaucer and Dunbar, Malory and Berners—as barbarous and 'Gothic.' They treated these writers with little more consideration than Boileau had thought it worth while to bestow on Villon or on Ronsard— ...

— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... back as the Heptarchy, we find the land mostly owned by Mercians, East Saxons and by the Kings of Kent, and thus there gradually sprang up that "Middle English" population which for so long formed a large proportion of the inhabitants of Hertfordshire, Middlesex and Essex. How thoroughly such persons separated into small communities and settled down in every part of the county may be ascertained by the many "buries" found at a little distance from ...

— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

Words linked to "Middle English" : East Midland, Kentish, West Saxon, English language, southwestern, West Midland, northern, English