Thorlac Turville–Petre is Reader in Early English Studies at the University of Nottingham. He is currently working on a book on nationalism and language in early fourteenth–century English writings.
The authors set out the essential characteristics of the language as written in different parts of the country, giving guidance on pronunciation, metre and vocabulary, and provide a lucid account of the forms of the language and their evolution over three centuries. Part one also includes a description of the way a manuscript text is edited and of how decisions relating to punctuation and scribal errors can materially affect meaning and interpretation.
The texts are, where possible, printed here complete: the 1137 entry for the Peterborough Chronicle, Sir Orfeo, Patience, St Erkenwald, John Trevisas Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk and the York Play of the Crucifixion. The book also includes substantial and selfcontained extracts from The Owl and the Nightingale, from Lazamons Brut, The Cloud of Unknowing, William Langlands Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and John Gowers Confessio Amantis.
The texts have been freshly edited from manuscript sources. Each one is prefaced by an introductory headnote and accompanied by explanatory notes set at the foot of the page. The book concludes with a substantial glossary. It has been designed overall to make reading the literature of medieval England an enjoyable experience.
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