The influence of french on the middle english lexicon after the norman conquest

Treballs Finals del Grau d'Estudis Anglesos, Facultat de Filologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2019-2020, Tutora: Emilia Castaño[eng] As a consequence of the Norman Conquest in 1066, the French language influenced to a high extent the Middle English lexicon, since English borrowed a high number of words. Literature on the topic has widely explored domains such as law, religion or administration. Nonetheless, the domain of Agriculture and Horticulture has not received much attention. Given the importance that agriculture had in England’s society at that time, whose economy was based on a feudal system, a research using the Oxford English Dictionary was conducted to explore some of the most important borrowings from that domain. Moreover, in a selection of those words, which originally had the same meaning both in French and English, semantic changes were analysed to account for their current meanings in Present Day English and Present Day French. The results show that words which are widely used in PDE and whose current meanings are not always connected to the semantic field of agriculture and horticulture were used with meanings related to agriculture in the 14th century. Furthermore, both PDE and PDF show similar meanings for those words, having followed similar patterns of semantic change. Keywords: Norman Conquest, Middle English lexicon, French borrowings, Agriculture and Horticulture.[spa] Como consecuencia de la Conquista Normanda en 1066, el francés influenció en gran medida el vocabulario del inglés medio, que tomó prestadas una gran cantidad de palabras. La literatura sobre el tema ha explorado extensivamente áreas como la ley, la religión o la administración. Sin embargo, el área de Agricultura y Horticultura no ha recibido demasiada atención. Dada la importancia que la agricultura tenía en Inglaterra para la sociedad de aquella época, ya que su economía se basaba en un sistema feudal, se ha llevado a cabo un estudio utilizando el Oxford English Dictionary con el fin de explorar los préstamos más importantes de dicha área. Además, en una selección de estos préstamos, los cuales originalmente tenían el mismo significado en francés y en inglés, también se han analizado los cambios semánticos que explican su significado en ambas lenguas en la actualidad. Los resultados muestran que palabras que hoy en día son de uso muy corriente en la lengua inglesa y cuyos significados no siempre están relacionados con la agricultura y la horticultura, en el siglo XIV se utilizaban con significados relacionados con dicho campo. Además, ambas lenguas comparten significados similares para estas palabras en la actualidad, habiendo seguido caminos similares en cuanto a cambios semánticos

Revisiting Constructional Changes in Uni-directional Copulative Perception Verb Constructions

認知・機能言語学研究（5

Selections from Old, Middle and Early Modern English : [õppevahend inglise keele erialal]

http://www.ester.ee/record=b1218753*es

Arthurian Literature

From the beginnings of Arthurian romance there has apparently been no subsidence of interest in the stories, both principal and secondary, which are connected with the name and exploits of the main character and the satellites swinging around him as a center. The production has not always been constant, nor do we find in each century reproductions of the tales and versions of the preceding century. This may be indicative of the real situation, or it may be due to the fact that all the copies of a certain version have been lost, or, if extant, still lie undiscovered in some hidden recess. The whole corpus of the literature belonging to the Arthurian cycle, and to the still more extensive one, the Celtic or Breton, must have been enormous. What relation the entire number of versions we now possess bears to the whole production will never be known. We have knowledge of certain versions which have been lost, and, in some cases, also of the names of the authors. It is the purpose of this article to determine, as well as can be done with the material available, the condition and progress of the literature and its geographical distribution, to show its chronological development, and to present the names and titles belonging to each century. Only literature, as such, will be considered, and no account will be taken here of the progress of critical literature: studies, editions, and similar productions

The Gawain-Poet and the Textual Environment of Fourteenth-Century English Anticlericalism

The 14th-century Middle English poems Cleanness and Patience, homiletic retellings of biblical stories which appear in the same manuscript as Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, offer moral lessons to a general Christian audience, but the introduction to Cleanness, with its reference to men whom prestez arn called, suggests that a central feature of their rhetoric is anticlerical critique. Priests do not appear as exemplars but as potentially filthy hypocrites who inspire God\u27s harshest wrath, since their sins may contaminate Christ\u27s body in the Eucharist. Using Cleanness\u27s opening lines as a guide, this dissertation reads both poems as a set of warnings and exhortations aimed particularly at clerics. Throughout Cleanness, priest-like characters such as Noah, Abraham, and Daniel struggle against ritual defilement, and Patience presents an extended example of a single character, the prophet Jonah, who shirks his duties as an absentee priest. These contextual readings situate the poems within the rich textual environment of 14th-century anticlericalism, including the works of archbishop Richard FitzRalph; poets John Gower, William Langland, and Geoffrey Chaucer; Oxford dissidents and Bible translators such as Nicholas Hereford; and, most notably, John Wyclif, the Oxford philosopher and preacher who inspired the heretical Lollard movement. The opening chapters present an overview of the anticlerical tradition in England and a summary of the central issues driving critique in the late 14th century. Subsequent chapters present close readings of Cleanness and Patience which foreground congruences between the Gawain-poet\u27s rhetoric and the anticlerical polemic favored by his contemporaries. Since anticlericalism became identified in the late 14th century with heretical positions on the sacraments such as Donatism and Lollardy, this analysis pays close attention to the poet\u27s references to baptism, penance, and the Eucharist, and concludes that, though he embraces clerically administered sacraments as essential elements of the Christian life, he shares many of the Lollards\u27 concerns about priestly corruption and its effects. The final chapter gives a similarly contextual reading to the two canonical works of the poet, Pearl and Sir Gawain, in which references to the priesthood are often overlooked, yet, I argue, crucial to each poem\u27s meaning

Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, their presence, status and origins

The book Blackamoores Africans in Tudor England: Their Presence Status and Origins is now the leading book on this subject. It kick-started a campaign to include Black Tudors in the curriculum and has now gained over five thousand signatures. This book in conjunction with the Blackamoores International Book Tour helped Narrative Eye win the Haringey Diversity Award for 2014. This book is now used as a teaching and reference tool worldwide in a range of Universities and teaching institutions and its finding have been referenced by historians and other academics internationally. The article contained in this document supports the findings of this book and is about whether Englishmen believed that Africans in Tudor England were cursed black as a result of the Curse of Ham. Blackamoores contains original research conducted over twenty-three years. Some of that period was spent doing research at Middlesex University. This book is revised and different from that initial research as this was mostly concerned with an African presence in Tudor England. Blackamoores is about the status and origins of Africans in Tudor England and for the first time draws on evidence from an African presence in Stuart England. This evidence has not been made available to the public before and it is the first time that it has been used to examine the status and origins of Africans in Tudor England. I have found Africans in cities and towns such a Hertford, London, Plymouth, Bristol and Northampton, Norwich. I have proved in this book that Africans did not automatically occupy the lowest positions in Tudor society. This book shows that Africans in Tudor England were not all slaves, or transient immigrants who were considered as dangerous strangers and the epitome of otherness. Blackamoores also reveals that some Africans in England had important occupations in Tudor society, and were employed by powerful people because of the skills they possessed. These people inherited some of their skills from the multicultural societies that they came from. I show that some Africans in England were born in other countries. This is the first time that this kind of tracing has been done in a systematic and detailed way on this population. I also prove that Africans were not all foreign and that most were integrated members of their local parishes. The arguments in the book Blackamoores and this article are supported by evidence from a variety of sources both manuscript and printed, most of which has never been seen before whilst other evidence is discussed within a new context