could write. It was only a man of genius that could lift up one of
these dialects into a preëminence over the rest, or could ever give to
the scattered forces existing in any one of them the unity and vigor
of life. This was the work that Chaucer did." For this reason he
deserves to be called our first modern English poet. At first sight,
his works look far harder to read than they really are, because the
spelling has changed so much since Chaucer's day.

SUMMARY

The period from the Norman Conquest to 1400 is remarkable (1) for
bringing into England French influence and closer contact with the
continent; (2) for the development of (_a_) a more centralized
government, (_b_) the feudal system and chivalry, (_c_) better civil
courts of justice and a more representative government, _Magna Charta_
being one of the steps in this direction; (3) for the influence of
religion, the coming of the friars, the erection of unsurpassed Gothic
cathedrals; (4) for the struggles of the peasants to escape their
bondage, for a striking decline in the relative importance of the
armored knight, and for Wycliffe's movement for a religious
reformation.

This period is also specially important because it gave to England a
new language of greater flexibility and power. The old inflections,
genders, formative prefixes, and capability of making self-explaining
compounds were for the most part lost. To supply the places of lost
words and to express those new ideas which came with the broader
experiences of an emancipated, progressive nation, many new words were
adopted from the French and the Latin. When the time for literature
came, Chaucer found ready for his pen the strongest, sincerest, and