Hayward, Paul Antony (2017) The Norman Conquest. In: The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain. Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature . Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. ISBN 9781118396988
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
After briefly outlining the main events that comprise the Norman Conquest of England (1066 to c.1100), this essay addresses four questions: to what extent and in what ways did the Conquest transform the country; in what ways did it affect the production of high status literary texts; to what extent did the Norman regime produced licence and constrain literary expression; and how was the Conquest itself represented, criticised and defended in near-contemporary texts. The essay argues that Conquest created a literary sphere fraught with tensions that are typical of colonial societies.