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
30 - The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context
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
I would like to focus on a pair of remarkable trilingual poems from around 1400, which take the fictional form of a pair of letters. One of these, entitled De amico ad amicam in a Latin rubric, is from a lover to his lady and opens with the French verse A celuy que plus eyme en mounde; the other, which purports to be the lady's reply, is headed Responcio, and begins A soun treschere et special. The poems have been edited several times, most recently by Thomas Duncan, on the basis of the two manuscripts that were then known to exist: Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.27 [C] – an important early fifteenth-century anthology once owned by an East Anglian gentry family, and also containing the earliest and arguably best texts of the Parliament of Fowls and the Legend of Good Women – and British Library, MS Harley 3362 [H], a codex containing mostly grammatical texts and probably a student textbook, with marginalia that connect it to the University of Oxford. A few years ago a new manuscript witness came to light in the Armburgh Papers [A], a roll, Manchester, Chetham's Library, MS Mun. E.6.10 (4), consisting principally of letters and legal documents mostly in English related to the Armburgh family. This family originally came from East Anglia, and the roll records their efforts to enhance their ‘worship’ and their portfolio of real estate in the county of Warwickshire.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and Culture in Medieval BritainThe French of England, c.1100–c.1500, pp. 397 - 408Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009