The Conquest and its Consequences
In 1066 Duke William of Normandy invaded England. The reigning king, Harold Godwinson, was slain at the Battle of Hastings, and William became William I of England, aka William the Conqueror.
The Norman Conquest is the traditional dividing line between the Old and Middle English periods of literary history.
William rewarded his French-speaking followers with lands and titles. French became the language of power and culture, and English acquired French characteristics. (Those of you who are interested in linguistics may enjoy this succinct overview of Middle English by David Crystal.)
Three languages were current in post-Conquest England: Latin, French, and English. Most authors writing in late medieval England were polyglots, conversant with all three, and many manuscripts include works in two or three languages. In fact, a single text might move between them, as does this account of the Nativity, which begins in French, moves to English, and concludes with Latin:
Coment les pastureus de leur Cheverie
Feseyent ioye a la Vyrge Marie.
E le chant que le angel out chaunté
En le honour de la nativité
Songen alle wid one steuene
Also the angel song that cam fro heuene:
“Te deum et Gloria.”
[Translation: How the shepherds with their bagpipes rejoiced in the Virgin Mary and the song that the angel had sung in honor of the nativity they all sung with one voice as the angel sang that came from heaven, “Glory to you God.”]
Some of you will know first-hand the experience of traversing linguistic boundaries. Some of you may have experienced it through such modern classics as Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987).
The Bayeux Tapestry
Shortly after the Battle of Hastings, a remarkable 230-foot account of the events leading up to the Conquest in about seventy scenes was embroidered. This work of art is known as the Bayeux Tapestry, though experts point out that it is not technically a tapestry because it is embroidered rather than woven.
With its combination of word and image to tell a story, the Bayeux Tapestry it is considered an early example of a comic.
This tapestry has had enormous influence and has been appropriated in various ways. Are you a Game of Thrones aficionado? If so, you may be familiar with this summary of the series, embroidered in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.
A particularly haunting appropriation is Joe Sacco’s The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of Somme (2013; follow the link and you’ll see details of this amazing comic with annotations by Sacco). Whereas the Bayeux Tapestry celebrates conquest, The Great War mourns in 24 feet of illustrations the death of almost 20,000 British soldiers and the wounding of another 40,000 on the first day of the Battle of Somme in World War I (1914-18).
Mastery Check:
- Which three languages were written and spoken in post-Conquest England?
- What event does the Bayeux tapestry commemorate, and why is that event significant?
- The Bayeux tapestry is considered an early example of what popular genre?
Harold Godwinson (c. 1022 – 14 October 1066), often called Harold II, was the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England. Harold reigned from 6 January 1066 until his death at the Battle of Hastings, fighting the Norman invaders led by William the Conqueror during the Norman conquest of England. His death marked the end of Anglo-Saxon rule over England. (source: Wikipedia)
The Battle of Hastings was fought on 14 October 1066 between the Norman-French army of William, the Duke of Normandy, and an English army under the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson, beginning the Norman conquest of England. It took place approximately 7 miles (11 kilometres) northwest of Hastings, close to the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex, and was a decisive Norman victory. (source: Wikipedia)
William I (c. 1028 – 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman King of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 1087. He was a descendant of Rollo and was Duke of Normandy from 1035 onward. His hold was secure on Normandy by 1060, following a long struggle to establish his throne, and he launched the Norman conquest of England six years later. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands and by difficulties with his eldest son, Robert Curthose. (source: Wikipedia)
Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin's series of fantasy novels, the first of which is A Game of Thrones. The show was both produced and filmed in Belfast and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Filming locations also included Canada, Croatia, Iceland, Malta, Morocco, and Spain. The series premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011, and concluded on May 19, 2019, with 73 episodes broadcast over eight seasons. (source: Wikipedia)
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies. More than three million men fought in the battle and one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. (source: Wikipedia)
World War I (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war that lasted from 1914 to 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated 9 million combatant deaths and 13 million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the related 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 17–100 million deaths worldwide.