English Literature / Unit 4 ENL 0302 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Middle English and How to Read It
Captions available
The idea
Middle English is the language from after the Conquest to about the end of the fifteenth century: closer to ours than Old English, with French vocabulary and older spellings. The General Prologue's "When that Aprilis, with his showers swoot" can be read with a gloss.
In practice
Readable with a gloss.
Where people slip
Spelling dates a passage before meaning does.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for English Literature