This book is a new literary and cultural history of the period 1000–1350, documenting its transformative, foundational importance. These centuries have never before received a comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment, long being perceived not as a discernable period but rather as a series of ruptures and discontinuities—Danish and Norman Conquest, language contact and change, immigrant rule and foreign wars. It was these conditions, however, that engendered and nurtured astonishing multilingual literary creativity and cultural vitality, during a period that saw profound and formative developments in English literature, history, and society. The purpose of this monograph is to provide a complete revisioning of the High Middle Ages in these terms: not only to document developments in literature, but to explore, and seek to explain, some of the vast ideological shifts of the period, which have foundational importance in the emergence of later English culture. These great cultural transformations include the development of literary interiority, affective spirituality, and individuality; the emergence of a public sphere and the notion of kingship and government by consent; new secular ideologies of knighthood, chivalry, and romantic love; new theologies of the incarnation, and man’s relationship with God; and the invention of fiction, and its influence on the ethical and social imagination. Medieval England’s French, Latin, and English writings together form this interwoven narrative of social, cultural, and political change.