English language in Europe following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Anglo-Norman language was the language of administration and few Kings of England spoke English. A large number of French words were assimilated into Old English, which lost most of its inflections, the result being Middle English. Around the year 1500, the Great Vowel Shift marked the transformation of Middle English into Modern English. The most famous surviving work from Old English is "Beowulf", and from Middle English is Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales". The rise of Modern English began around the fifteenth century, with Early Modern English reaching its literary pinnacle at the
Anglo-Saxon art between them left virtually nothing in England except for books and archaeological finds. Metalwork is almost the only form in which the earliest Anglo-Saxon art has survived, mostly in Germanic-style jewelry (including fittings for clothes and weapons) which was, before the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England, commonly placed in burials. After the conversion, which took most of the 7th century, the fusion of Germanic Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Late Antique techniques and motifs, together with the requirement for books, created Hiberno-Saxon style, or Insular art, which is also seen in illuminated manuscripts and some carved stone and ivory, probably mostly drawing from