Norse-derived vocabulary in La estorie del evangelie

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (s42-s2) ◽  
pp. 461-491
Author(s):  
Sara M. Pons-Sanz
Keyword(s):  
Original Composition ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle English ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Comprehensive Account ◽  
Semantic Fields

Abstract While the study of Norse-derived terms in medieval English has benefitted from recent etymological advances (e.g. the Gersum project), the exploration of their process of integration lags behind. The latter requires the analysis of the dialectal and semantic distribution of the terms, as well as their interactions with other members of their lexico-semantic fields. This paper offers a case study of this approach by presenting the first comprehensive account of the Norse-derived terms included in La estorie del evangelie, an early Middle English poem from south Lincolnshire/north Norfolk. Besides identifying and classifying the Norse loans on the basis of the Gersum typology and the Historical thesaurus of English, the paper examines the different layers of scribal reworking in its seven fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts from various dialectal areas to separate the Norse-derived terms that can be attributed to the original composition from those that represent later lexical substitutions, thus tracing the terms’ fate into the late Middle English period. This work shows that this understudied text offers valuable information on the interaction between native, Norse and French terms both in the early Middle English period of the original Fenland author and the later period of the surviving copies. Given that the methodology showcased here should not be restricted only to the analysis of Norse-derived terms, the paper’s significance transcends its immediate focus, as it also contributes to our understanding of medieval English lexicology more broadly.

A Crooked Mirror for Princes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavlína Rychterová
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
Mirrors For Princes

This chapter examines the growing importance of the vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages in shaping the form, content, and audiences of political discourse. It presents a famously wicked king of the late Middle Ages, Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), as a case study and traces the origins of his bad reputation to a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings. These have often been dismissed as fictions or studied solely as literature, but in fact they represent new modes of articulating good and bad kingship. The chapter shows that, in the context of an increasingly literate bourgeois culture, especially in university cities, these vernacular works transformed Latin theological approaches to monarchy, while rendering mirrors for princes and related literatures accessible to an unprecedented audience.

Words, constructions and corpora: Network representations of constructional semantics for Mandarin space particles

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin Cheng-Hsien Chen
Keyword(s):  
Clustering Coefficient ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Semantic Fields ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Quantitative Properties ◽  
Local Clustering Coefficient ◽  
Linguistic Units

AbstractIn this study, we aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of network science in exploring the emergence of constructional semantics from the connectedness and relationships between linguistic units. With Mandarin locative constructions (MLCs) as a case study, we extracted constructional tokens from a representative corpus, including their respective space particles (SPs) and the head nouns of the landmarks (LMs), which constitute the nodes of the network. We computed edges based on the lexical similarities of word embeddings learned from large text corpora and the SP-LM contingency from collostructional analysis. We address three issues: (1) For each LM, how prototypical is it of the meaning of the SP? (2) For each SP, how semantically cohesive are its LM exemplars? (3) What are the emerging semantic fields from the constructional network of MLCs? We address these questions by examining the quantitative properties of the network at three levels: microscopic (i.e., node centrality and local clustering coefficient), mesoscopic (i.e., community) and macroscopic properties (i.e., small-worldness and scale-free). Our network analyses bring to the foreground the importance of repeated language experiences in the shaping and entrenchment of linguistic knowledge.

Hitherto Unprinted Manuscripts of the Middle English Ipotis

PMLA ◽  
1916 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-160
Author(s):  
Josephine D. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship of the manuscripts of the Middle-English poem Ipotis has been studied in detail by Dr. Hugo Gruber on the basis of the nine mss. known to him. In addition to these there are five others, four of which are printed for the first time below. One of these, unfortunately a fragment, is of the greatest importance, since it carries back the date of the poem at least fifty years. On the basis of the earliest manuscript known to him—ms. Vernon, written about 1385—Gruber assigned the Ipotis to the second half of the fourteenth century. But in the light of the new evidence, the composition of the poem is pushed back to the very beginning of the century.

King Robert of Sicily: A New Manuscript

PMLA ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 78 (5) ◽  
pp. 453-458
Author(s):  
Lillian Herlands Hornstein
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle English ◽  
English Version ◽  
Almost All

The verse romance King Robert of Sicily (King Roberd of Cisyle) is the Middle English version of a well-known legend about The Proud King Humiliated (Deposed)—an arrogant and boastful king whose throne is taken over by an angel-substitute until the beggared monarch learns proper humility. Told of the Emperor Jovinian in the Latin Gesta Romanorum, the story had also appeared in other contexts in almost all the vernacular languages of Europe before the end of the fifteenth century. The tale must have been especially appealing to the English, to judge from the number of extant manuscripts heretofore known, nine manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This paper calls attention to still another manuscript, folio 2 of BM Additional MS. 34801. It has, strangely enough, never been noticed, although its existence was recorded in a catalogue over sixty years ago.

Enculturated, Embodied, Social: Medieval Drama and Cognitive Integration

2019 ◽  
pp. 120-137
Author(s):  
Clare Wright
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Niche Construction ◽  
Cognitive Integration ◽  
Medieval Drama ◽  
Cognitive Work

Highlighting the embodied, collaborative, and spatially and temporally divers nature of medieval English plays, this essay argues that the cognitive work of medieval drama is best understood through the theory of cognitive integration, and in particular niche construction. Using the famous fifteenth-century York Play of the Crucifixion as a case study, the essay illustrates how this pageant constructed its particular niche, and its reliance on social as well as spatial and material affordances. The Play of the Crucifixion, it is argued, created opportunities for highly personal, individual devotional responses in the midst of what was fundamentally, and necessarily, a social and collaborative act. What is more, as a niche created for the purpose of devotion, it was focused on stimulating emotion and feeling, rather than supporting rational problem solving. It also overlapped with, and perhaps influenced, other devotional niches active beyond the frame of performance, contributing to extensive feedback cycles to which it was also subject.

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