ABSTRACT
Literature in the ‘Age of Chaucer’ has, so far in this survey, been mainly discussed in terms of its poetry, yet even a superficial look at the extant texts shows that the great majority of writing in his period was actually in prose. To concentrate exclusively on poetical texts posterity has privileged by reprinting, re-editing, anthologising and including in the academic syllabus would give a rather misleading picture of what at the time was actually read, copied and ‘used’. Moreover, in the centuries after the Norman conquest, English prose was subject to political forces and to the overruling official status of French and Latin to no lesser extent than English poetry and had to reassert itself in many areas, from political controversy and commerce to philosophical debate, from homiletic instruction to private communication. Naturally, there was an increasing need for translation, and this activity in turn was an essential factor in the development and the shaping of Middle English prose.1
