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Old English is the name given to the earliest recorded stage of the English language, up to approximately 1150AD (when the Middle English period is generally taken to have begun). It refers to the language as it was used in the long period of time from the coming of Germanic invaders and settlers to Britain—in the period following the collapse of Roman Britain in the early fifth century—up to the Norman Conquest of 1066, and beyond into the first century of Norman rule in England. It is thus fir
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Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English.
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Veneneralble Bede composes The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c. 731), a key source of information about Anglo Saxon settlement. It was originally composed in Latin but was later translated to English.
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The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of England by William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 over King Harold II of England. Harold's army was badly depleted in the English victory at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Northern England on 25 September 1066 over the army of King Harald III of Norway.
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Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.
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The event that began the transition from Old English to Middle English was the Norman Conquest of 1066, when William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy and, later, William I of England) invaded the island of Britain from his home base in northern France, and settled in his new acquisition along with his nobles and court. William crushed the opposition with a brutal hand and deprived the Anglo-Saxon earls of their property, distributing it to Normans (and some English) who supported him.
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King John signs the Magna Carta ("Great Charter"), a critical document in the long historical process leading to the rule of constitutional law in the English-speaking world.
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The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language in England. Parliament is opened with its first speech delivered in English.
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Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a frame story, between 1387 and 1400. It is the story of a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury (England). The pilgrims, who come from all layers of society, tell stories to each other to kill time while they travel to Canterbury.
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“Purity in body and heart
May please some--as for me, I make no boast.
For, as you know, no master of a household
Has all of his utensils made of gold;
Some are wood, and yet they are of use.”
The Canterbury Tales
- Geoffrey Chaucer -
Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and businessman from the mining town of Mainz in southern Germany, borrowed money to invent a technology that changed the world of printing. He invented the printing press with replaceable/moveable wooden or metal letters in 1436 (completed by 1440). This method of printing can be credited not only for a revolution in the production of books, but also for fostering rapid development in the sciences, arts and religion through the transmission of texts.
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Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria - out of the Spanish port of Palos on August 3, 1492. His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia (the Indies) where the riches of gold, pearls and spice awaited. His first stop was the Canary Islands where the lack of wind left his expedition becalmed until September 6.
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A major factor separating Middle English from Modern English is known as the Great Vowel Shift, a radical change in pronunciation during the 15th, 16th and 17th Century, as a result of which long vowel sounds began to be made higher and further forward in the mouth (short vowel sounds were largely unchanged). In fact, the shift probably started very gradually some centuries before 1400, and continued long after 1700 (some subtle changes arguably continue even to this day).
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Thomas Wilson publishes The Art of Rhetorique , one of the first works on logic and rhetoric in English.
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"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date".
Sonnet 18
- William Shakespeare -
In November 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare had died at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, a book containing 36 of his plays was published in London. The book was a large folio (a format with pages about as wide as those of a modern encyclopedia, but two or three inches taller). Nothing quite like it had ever been published in folio before.
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Nathaniel Bailey publishes his Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language , a pioneer study in English lexicography : the first to feature current usage , etymology , syllabification , clarifying quotations , illustrations, and indications of pronunciation .
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Also known as the American Revolutionary War and the U.S. War of Independence, the conflict arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their indepe
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The Declaration of Independence is signed, and the American War of Independence begins, leading to the creation of the United States of America, the first country outside the British Isles with English as its principal language.
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Grimm's Law (discovered by Friedrich von Schlegel and Rasmus Rask, later elaborated by Jacob Grimm) identifies relationships between certain consonants in Germanic languages (including English) and their originals in Indo-European. The formulation of Grimm's Law marks a major advance in the development of linguistics as a scholarly field of study.
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Out of the 30,000 lines of literature left from the Anglo-Saxon period, almost 4,000 lines are preserved in the text of Beowulf, the epic poem of the hero with the strength of 30 men in each arm. It is a story of the supernatural as well as a record of Anglo-Saxon history. Because there was little literacy and few books in Medieval England, scops were the key to recording history. They upheld the history of England since the very beginning, along with the ancestry of her first settlers.
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King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) leads the Anglo-Saxons to victory over the Vikings, translates Latin works into English, and establishes the writing of prose in English. He uses the English language to foster a sense of national identity. England is divided into a kingdom ruled by the Anglo-Saxons (under Alfred) and another ruled by the Scandinavians.
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"Nor have I seen
a mightier man-at-arms on this earth
than the one standing here: unless I am mistaken,
he is truly noble. This is no mere
hanger-on in a hero's armour." (244-251)
Beowulf
