Tracing the cultural legacy of the Norman Conquest in England from 1350 to 1600, Deanne Williams demonstrates how English literature emerged out of a simultaneous engagement with, and resistance to, the presence of French language and culture in medieval and early modern England. Chapters on Chaucer, the Corpus Christi Plays, William Caxton, early Tudor poetry, and Shakespeare examine a variety of English responses to, and representations of, France and "the French".