In literary culture the Normans were about as far behind the
people whom they conquered as the Romans were when they made
themselves masters of Greece; and it was not till some two generations
after the Conquest, that learning and literature regained in England
somewhat of the position which they had occupied two centuries
earlier. And this new literary culture was naturally confined to the
French dialect of the conquerors, which had become the language of
court and castle, of church and law, of chivalry and the chase; while
the rich and cultured tongue of Alfred and AElfric was left for
generations without literary employment, during which time it lost
nearly all its poetical, philosophical, scientific, and artistic
vocabulary, retaining only the words of common life and everyday
use[4]. And for more than 300 years after the Conquest English
lexicography stood still. Between 1066 and 1400, Wright-Wuelcker shows
only two meagre vocabularies, occupying some twenty-four columns of
his volume. One of these, of the twelfth century, is only an echo of
the earlier literary age, a copy of a pre-Conquest glossary, which
some scribe who could still read the classical tongue of the old West
Saxon Court, transliterated into the corrupted forms of his own
generation.
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