Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Introduction
- 27 French, English, and the Late Medieval Linguistic Repertoire
- 28 Aristotle, Translation and the Mean: Shaping the Vernacular in Late Medieval Anglo-French Culture
- 29 Writing English in a French Penumbra: The Middle English ‘Tree of Love’ in MS Longleat 253
- 30 The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context
- 31 The Reception of Froissart's Writings in England: The Evidence of the Manuscripts
- 32 ‘Me fault faire’: French Makers of Manuscripts for English Patrons
- 33 The French Self-Presentation of an English Mastiff: John Talbot's Book of Chivalry
- 34 A ‘Frenche booke called the Pistill of Othea’: Christine de Pizan's French in England
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
27 - French, English, and the Late Medieval Linguistic Repertoire
from Section IV - England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Introduction
- 27 French, English, and the Late Medieval Linguistic Repertoire
- 28 Aristotle, Translation and the Mean: Shaping the Vernacular in Late Medieval Anglo-French Culture
- 29 Writing English in a French Penumbra: The Middle English ‘Tree of Love’ in MS Longleat 253
- 30 The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context
- 31 The Reception of Froissart's Writings in England: The Evidence of the Manuscripts
- 32 ‘Me fault faire’: French Makers of Manuscripts for English Patrons
- 33 The French Self-Presentation of an English Mastiff: John Talbot's Book of Chivalry
- 34 A ‘Frenche booke called the Pistill of Othea’: Christine de Pizan's French in England
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
The linguistic repertoire of late medieval England was complex, unstable, and socially charged. If the languages an individual used – Latin, French, English, or any of the indigenous Celtic languages – were in part functions of birth and upbringing, their use in particular domains helped sustain the dynamics of society. Like individual speech acts, moreover, languages had meaning in relation to one another. The meaning of French within England's repertoire, for example, evolved from not only its uses but also its status in relation to the other languages of the repertoire, individually as well as collectively. And like linguistic history, language dynamics can raise some challenging questions. What did French mean to Anglophones? What did English mean to Francophones? How did these meanings change over time? These are the kinds of questions I want to address here. Specifically, I want to examine how the meaning of French within the English linguistic repertoire changed from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the early modern period. And to do so, in view of the fact that such issues are systemic, I want to consider not just the relations of French and English to one another but also each language's relations to other languages and traditions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and Culture in Medieval BritainThe French of England, c.1100–c.1500, pp. 363 - 372Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009