Middle English

The Early Middle Ages, from the fifth to the tenth century, is often referred to as the “Dark Ages.” In comparison to the flourishing Roman Empire, many did not believe the Middle Ages to be a time of flourishing literacy and culture. However, learned men during this period were interested in the lost texts of the ancients, especially after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Etymologiae (the Etymologies in English, and also known as “Origins”), by Isidore of Seville, is a compilation of…

Every night before bed, I waited impatiently for my grandma to read me one of her beautiful novels. I would walk into our room, where the shadows of the trees danced around the peach colored walls. The window that overlooked the moon glistened and reflected onto the candles that my grandma would turn off as soon as I fell asleep. We laid on the bed snuggled in my overly large blanket, my leg thrown over her in a way to keep her locked there. Her voice softened as she read me my favorite story…

I remember my kindergarten days, when most of class time consisted of learning phonics in class. I recall doing this as the whole class repeating the sounds of letters in unison. We would all go “st, st, st” as we learned how different sounds came together. The alphabet also started becoming relevant in kindergarten. A fair amount of time was spent tracing letters of the alphabet and remembering how to scribe each one. We would also do rainbow writing, where we traced the letters in all kinds of…

The feedbacks full of praise and approval for my writings weren’t only from my family, but also from my friends, classmates and teachers. After graduating elementary school, I entered my middle school in the Creative Writing Talent with a 98 on the writing section of the entrance exam; I continued to impress my teachers and classmates. I remember a specific time when I read aloud one of my stories that was so gruesomely detailed with gore…

moral and ethical values. Although this story includes tales about many different lifestyles and personalities, when gathered together, Chaucer paints an extremely clear picture of how he viewed men, based on their actions or social class during the middle ages. The Canterbury Tales was written by Geoffrey Chaucer during the late 14th century. This novel was a revolutionary piece of work for many reasons, one being that it was written in…

peasant revolt in medieval France. Not only did the French Jacquiere also revolt around the Black Plague, but was also from Ciompi’s Revolt because it was aspired from the Hundred Years War. The Hundred Year War, was a war between the French men and English men during the fourteenth and fifteenth century, which occurred over a 116-year…

Have you ever wondered which country was better equipped to politically survive the middle ages, between England and Italy? These two countries saw the heighth of their society, the struggles due to catastophie, one remained centralized the other decentralized, and the many legacies brought fourth to help shape, not only their society, but also the western world. England and Italy each had a different structure of government. England used a type of system known as a “nation-state” which is” a…

Feudalism, simply put, was the relationship between a lord and a vassal that changed the way of life during the Middle ages. The relationships between the classes of people. There was no clear hierarchy of who owed service to whom between king, lord, knight, or serf. For example a serf might serve any of these others or a knight might serve a king, but there was no direct level of power except between the vassal and his lord (the giver of property). Feudalism also changed the way England…

The offender would be placed in slabs of wood with their limbs sticking out like their hands, and be placed in the middle of the village, a way to embarrass the offender, and show how poor and desperate they were. Banishment was a type of punishment usually given by a higher power who actually kind of liked the offender, but didn't want to legitly punish them. Being…

I just didn’t care. While I went through first grade I never picked up a book and tried to read, I would just stare at the pictures; they were more interesting. I was in Germany at the time. My father an army soldier station in Germany. The only English speaking people in the U.S. base, including the school I attended. By the end of the school year I was the only student who could not read. My father was angry by this, but he was all talk. He never did anything about it. During the summer, I…