Overview

French Lessons in Late-Medieval England presents two fifteenth-century manuals designed to support facility in French among the English, the Liber donati and Commune parlance. These texts treat the grammar, lexis, and orthography of French as well as compiling a selection of entertaining dialogues that model the language in action. Together, they paint a vivid picture of the kinds of French that English learners might desire to wield and of the high levels of fluency that they could achieve. Critten's comprehensive introduction discusses his materials' relevance both for histories of language education and for recent reassessments of the longevity of French in medieval England. His pairing of first-time modern-English translations with facing-page original text makes these fascinating works newly available for a twenty-first-century audience.

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9781641894210

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L’intérêt de cette nouvelle édition réside, nous semble-t-il, dans trois aspects: premièrement, sa diffusion vaste grâce à la publication en ligne; deuxièmement, un imposant apparat de notes et de commentaires qui mettent surtout l’accent sur les questions didactiques, sociolinguistiques et historiques, sans pour autant ignorer le contexte représenté par la tradition manuscrite; troisièmement, une traduction en anglais, imprimée en regard des deux manuels et destinée aux étudiants anglophones, mais peut-être utile aussi à un public peu à l’aise avec l’anglo-normand médiéval. -- Maria Colombo Timelli * Studi francesi 202 [68, no. 1] (Jan. 2024): 163-64 *

Author Information

Rory G. Critten teaches medieval literature in the English Department at the University of Lausanne. His recent publications treat French teaching in medieval England, medieval English multilingualism, and the cultural history of the medieval home. 

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