Middle English

And long to sue it is a wery thing": Legal Commentary in The Assembly of Ladies

by Wendy Matlock

General productivity: How become waxed and wax became a copula

by peter petre

This article provides an analysis — within the framework of Radical Construction Grammar — of how BECOME developed... more This article provides an analysis — within the framework of Radical Construction Grammar — of how BECOME developed into a copula ‘become’ out of an original sense ‘arrive’, and WAX, originally ‘grow’, also came to be used as a copula ‘become’. Importantly, it explains why these verbs successfully became fully productive copulas in a very short period of time. It is argued that this happened after a pre-copular stage had reached a cognitive threshold value. The occurrence of this threshold is related to the fact that the copular constructions featuring BECOME and WAX were not the end result of a single diachronic lineage of constructions (i.e. one construction developed out of another one, one at a time). Instead, the copularization of these verbs was the result of an interaction between lineages of constructions, belonging to two groups: (i) constructions involving BECOME or WAX, which gradually changed and interacted with each other; (ii) constructions involving already existing copulas, notably WEORÐAN ‘become’, which provided a generally productive analog upon which the newly emerging copulas could graft. Generally, the article calls attention to the importance of multiple source constructions and thresholds in understanding grammaticalization processes and productivity.

Il 'Trattato dell'Astrolabio' di Chaucer

by Nazario Pierdominici

published in: Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia,
Università di Macerata, XXV-XXVI (1992-1993), pp. 45-57

"‘Who so wilneþ to be wijs?’ - Concerning some major features of Orm’s orthographical system of Middle English," Concilium medii aevi 10 (2007), 43-52.

by Christian Michael Zottl

Vernacularisation of the lexicon in the Wycliffe Bible: The Book of Ruth in MSS. CCC 4 and BL Royal I. C. VIII

by Marcin Krygier

To appear in: Joanna Janecka and Anna Wojtyś (eds.) A Festschrift for Jerzy Wełna. Warsaw: Warsaw University Press.

Refusing the Medieval Other, and a case study of Pre-modern Nationalism and Postcoloniality in the Middle English St Erkenwald.

by Helen Young

Published in The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal. Ed. Caroline Hamilton, Michelle Kelly, Elaine Minor, and Will Noonan. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2007. pp. 146-64.

Athelston and English Law: Plantagenet Practice and Anglo-Saxon Precedent

by Helen Young

Published in Parergon - Volume 22, Number 1, January 2005, pp. 95-118

The Middle English romance Athelston deals with an issue that was extremely topical to the time of writing at the end... more The Middle English romance Athelston deals with an issue that was extremely topical to the time of writing at the end of the fourteenth century, that is, treason. Two concepts of treason, personal and institutional, are opposed in the text. The work seeks to retrieve the Anglo-Saxon past through the operation of historical nostalgia in which Saxon history shown as a time of divine blessing and intervention. It also speaks directly to contemporary concerns by establishing an opposition between established English custom and foreign innovation in terms of royal power and prerogative. This is done through the treatment of the law and legal procedure, specifically surrounding the issue of treason. As a result the work can be read as an assertion of English national identity through the deployment of Anglo-Saxon history and the affirmation of English law in comparison to French models.

Wodewoses: the (In)Humanity of Medieval Wild Men.

by Helen Young

Published in AUMLA: Journal of the Australian Universities Modern Language Association Special Issue (2009): 37-49.

Line 33 of St Erkenwald

by Helen Young

Published in Notes and Queries 54.2 (2007): 124-125

“I haf sen a selly, I may not forsake”: una lettura todoroviana del Sir Gawain e il Cavaliere Verde

by Omar Khalaf

to appear in the XXXVI AIFG Conference Proceedings

This paper aims at investigating Arthur's and Gawain's different reactions to the Green Knight's figure and prodigies... more This paper aims at investigating Arthur's and Gawain's different reactions to the Green Knight's figure and prodigies through Todorov's theory of fantastic. The results are that a new category should be considered besides the "strange" and the "marvellous" - the "magic" one, a merging of natural and supernatural which were seen as sides of the same coin in the Middle Ages, and consequently cannot be distinguished as clearly as our modern vision of the world usually does.

Alcune considerazioni sulla riscrittura in chiave cristiana della "Lettera di Alessandro ad Aristotele" medio inglese

by Omar Khalaf

to appear shortly

The aim of the essay is to account for the dynamics of re-elaboration the Middle English translation of the Latin... more The aim of the essay is to account for the dynamics of re-elaboration the Middle English translation of the Latin Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem underwent with respect to its source-text and the reasons that may have caused this process. In fact, what the criticism defines an awkward work of translation actually hides a subtle – even though not always conscious – process of rewriting that can be defined “Christian-oriented”. Such re-elaboration will be analyzed through the Descriptive Translation Studies’ theoretical framework: textual differences between source and translation will be considered through Gideon Toury’s normative approach, whereas the possible reasons that induced this process of rewriting will be investigated following André Lefevere’s concept of “ideology”.     

THE SCOTS-NORTHERN ENGLISH CONTINUUM OF MARKING NOUN PLURALITY

by Joanna Kopaczyk

‘for ye vrangus haldyn of thre bollis of beire fra hyre': Nominal plurals in south-western Middle Scots

by Joanna Kopaczyk

This paper presents an analysis of plurality markers in the first extant text from the South-West of Scotland, the... more This paper presents an analysis of plurality markers in the first extant text from the South-West of Scotland, the Wigtown Burgh Court Book (1512-1534). The inflectional endings for the plural are often included among the Middle Scots diagnostic features so it is quite important to establish what form they had in particular areas. The paper begins with an outline of the Middle Scots dialectal divisions. Next, the geographical position of Galloway is taken into consideration, with special attention paid to the alleged persistence of Gaelic and the possibility of including this region into the map of the sixteenth-century Scots dialects. Then, the presentation concentrates on the Linguistic Profile of Wigtownshire in LALME which was compiled using the same source of textual material as the present paper. The reseach shows that the profile in the atlas should be revised in terms of the {S}-morpheme markers to acknowledge the prevalence of the Scots marking in <-is/-ys>. The feature <-us>, given by the atlas but non-existent as a morphological marker in the textual material, should be removed from the profile.

Bot Wothes Mo Iwysse Ther Ware: On the Nightmarish Bliss of the Pearl Vision

by Piotr Spyra

MLA annotation:
Spyra, Piotr. "Bot wothes mo iwysse ther ware: on the Nightmarish Bliss of the Pearl Vision." PASE Papers 2008. Vol. 2. Studies in Culture and Literature. Ed. Anna Cichoń and Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak. Wrocław: ATUT, 2009. 191-197.

Tradução comentada do poema “Against Women Unconstant”, atribuído a Geoffrey Chaucer

by Gustavo Sartin

Translation into Portuguese of the poem "Against Women Unconstant", atributed Geoffrey Chaucer published in Scientia Traductionis, n. 9 (2011)

“Parlement of Foules” and “New Council”: medieval assemblies of animals in an Anglo-Bohemian perspective.

by Matous Turek

BA Thesis at the English Studies Department at Charles University in Prague (2011)

The thesis compares two late 14th century animal allegories, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Parliament of Fowls on the English... more The thesis compares two late 14th century animal allegories, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Parliament of Fowls on the English side and Smil Flaška of Pardubice's The New Council on the Bohemian. After an introduction dealing with the datings and possible genetic relationship between the texts, they are approached in search of parallel structural features and of commonly shared topoi.
Chapter 1 demonstrates how the two authors use the identical devices to persuade the reader to comprehend nature as an allegory, chiefly the antrophomorphisation of animals – the beasts and birds gain human attributes, human attitudes, but also human physique; on the basis of their natural and symbolical properties, animals represent human values and social classes, while systems of natural classification and hierarchy are transposed into human social organisations.
Chapter 2 looks at how the human community is allegorised in the two poems as a body politic in practical terms, how the animals are made to deliberate, debate and take part in a sophisticated social arrangement. Each of the two imaginary assemblies mimics surprisingly closely those held by the political representatives of the two realms at the time of composition; representing real-world power structures and communicative frameworks, the allegories portray the Bohemian and English polities in striking detail – from the monarch's
position through to the decision-making process as such. Close comparison then shows that the political philosophy behind the two texts, concerning the management of human polity, is fundamentally identical.
In chapter 3, with the help of late medieval philosophical and theological concepts, a transition is made from common political ideology towards features the two poems share in the areas of cosmology and eschatology. The analysis shows how the political message is in both poems complemented with and presupposed by a spiritual one, how both poems set forth universal belief systems before the reader and attempt to aid him to make the right decisions in problems which these belief systems pose.

'Your Ensaumple and Your Mirour': Hoccleve's Amplification of the Imagery and Intimacy of Henry Suso's Ars Moriendi

by Steven Rozenski

The Effects of Spencer's Appropriation of Chaucer, and the Various Relationships of Those Appropriations

by Michael Yasui

published in "Journal of Social Sciences and the Humanities", 2008 No.404

ln this essay, l examine how the much used rhetorical strategy of appropriation causes the text of the poet to... more ln this essay, l examine how the much used rhetorical strategy of appropriation causes the text of the poet to disseminate the intended meaning of the poem. l also examine the reasons that necessitated those appropriations on the part of the poet as a means of creating authority for the text that is created. Specifically，l examine Edmund Spenser's use of text from the poems of Chaucer to inustrate the ways in which appropriated text cause the discourse of the created text to undermine itself thfough dissemination of meaning.

'Walking (between) the Lines: Romance as Itinerary Map.'

by Robert Rouse

in _Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts_, Ed. Michael Cichon and Rhiannon Purdie (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011), pp. 135 - 47.

'‘What can we know of the world? What quantity of space can our eyes hope to take in between our birth and our death?... more '‘What can we know of the world? What quantity of space can our eyes hope to take in between our birth and our death? How many square centimetres of Planet Earth will the soles of our feet have touched?’

As Georges Perec observes, our personal experience of the world is lamentably finite. As much – or as little – as one seeks to travel, one will never experience the entire world. The only way we can know the world outside of our personal experience is necessarily at a remove. Our geographical knowledge of the overwhelming majority of the world is thus mediated through text, image, narrative. No less true for the modern age, this was particularly the case during the medieval period, where the geographical radii of peoples’ lives, as well as their exposure to geographical media, were commonly more restricted than today. However, just as we today experience the world through National Geographic, travel shows and the aspirational reading of Lonely Planet guidebooks, the people of the medieval period also revelled in travel narratives. In the Auchinleck manuscript narrative of Guy of Warwick, the eponymous protagonist travels throughout Europe, from Warwick to Normandy, through Spain, Germany, Lombardy and thence onwards to more exotic locales such as Constantinople, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Alexandria. His travels chart his development as first a chivalric and later a Christian hero, transforming him from an ideal lover-knight into the embodiment of the pious martial pilgrim. But these places are not simply an arbitrary series of stages through which the romance hero moves. They represent real places, more or less familiar to the text’s audience. As much as it is a narrative of the development of the ideal knight, the romance also participates in the articulation of geographical knowledge. For the medieval audience of these romances, what did these places represent What did the act of journeying to them or through them signify How were these distant and dimly-known cities and lands given meaning by the texts in which they were narrated? Through an analysis of the way in which geography is deployed in
Guy of Warwick, I hope to frame both a series of questions and a methodological approach through which to explore the important role that medieval romance plays within the medieval English geographical imagination....'

'Romancing the Past: Reimagining Brunanburh in the Fourteenth Century.'

by Robert Rouse

in _The Battle of Brunanburh. A Casebook_. Ed. Michael Livingston (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2011), pp. 315-24.

'For a post-conquest Latin historiographer such as William of Malmesbury, the Battle of Brunanburh occupied an... more 'For a post-conquest Latin historiographer such as William of Malmesbury, the Battle of Brunanburh occupied an important place in the received history of England, and was therefore recorded and embellished as a significant episode in his narrative of England’s formation as a discrete kingdom.  Given this initial importance of Brunanburh in post-conquest historiography, it is curious that accounts of the battle play no lasting role in the vernacular narratives of England’s past that begin to appear during the fourteenth century.  Patrizia Lendinara goes as far as commenting that:

"The battle of Brunanburh did not feature either in the Middle English romances of the so-called Matter of England or the French chronicles, which do not mention the battle but, in their account of the reign of Athelstan, dwell on more personal and courtly details."

While Lendinara perhaps goes too far in such an assessment,  the accounts of England’s past that appear in Middle English romance and chronicle during the fourteenth century point towards the disappearance of the Battle of Brunanburh from the stage of celebrated national history, presenting a fascinating study in the processes of the transformation of cultural memory and history.  This chapter will examine the rise of a competing romance narrative tradition to Brunanburh that – for some few hundred years – elides the battle from popular accounts of Athelstan’s reign, and establishes an alternative account of the Anglo-Saxon past within English history: the romance legend of Guy of Warwick and his defeat of the Danes at the behest of Athelstan...'