Chapter Fifteen. Making Their Presence Felt: Readers Of Ælfric, C. 1050-1350

Treharne, Elaine

doi:10.1163/ej.9789004176812.i-468.92

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“…40 Cf. Franzen (1991);Laing (1993: 4-6); Treharne (2003) and(2012: 129-146); and a study by Dance (2011b) on Norse loans in the Lambeth Homilies. 41 On Laʒamon's likely audience, see Allen (1994).…”

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Norse Loans in Middle English and their Influence on Late Medieval London English

Lutz

2017

Anglia

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Most of the Norse legal and administrative terms attested in Old English were replaced by equivalents from the French superstrate soon after the Norman Conquest, whereas a remarkable number of more basic terms are known to have become part of the very basic vocabulary of modern Standard English. This paper focuses on Norse lexical loans that survived during and beyond the period of French rule and became part of this basic vocabulary. It explores (1) the regional and textual conditions for the survival of such loans and (2) their expansion into late medieval London English and into the emerging standard language. Based on selective textual evidence it is argued that they were not quite as basic originally, that they typically survived and developed in regional centres far away from the French-dominated court, and eventually infiltrated the area in and around late medieval London owing to its growing attraction as an economic and intellectual centre. Both the survival of Norse loans and their later usage expansion are shown to be in harmony with the principles of comparative contact linguistics. The textual evidence for Norse influence on Old English mostly reflects the special situation in the Danelaw from the 9th until the 11th century but some of it also betrays the expansion of Danish rule under Cnut (1016-1035), e. g. the usage extension of OE lagu and eorl (< ON jarl) beyond the Danelaw.1 It is known that the distinction between words inherited from West Germanic and words borrowed from closely related Old Norse is occasionally difficult and sometimes impossible (for detailed discussions, see Peters 1981; Townend 2002: chs. 2, 3; and Durkin 2014: ch. 10). Nevertheless, most of the late Old English lexical evidence for Norse influence can be shown to reflect an asymmetrical contact between a Norse superstrate and an Anglo-Saxon substrate. This linguistic assessment is in harmony with the historical evidence for the period before the Norman Conquest, in particular with regard to the Danelaw and to Cnut's reign (see Mack 1984;Keynes 1994Keynes , 1997Brink 2008;and Treharne 2012).Cross-linguistically, language contact between a conquering power and a subjected population is known to be asymmetrical: Lexical borrowing occurs mostly from the superstrate into the substrate, typically from lexical fields having to do with the execution of power, e. g. in warfare, in legal and administrative acts, and in all sorts of daily affairs; see Vennemann (1984Vennemann ( , 2003, where numerous parallel examples for such superstratal influences are presented, among them for Old French influence on English, Visigothic and Arabic influences on Spanish, and Turkish influences on several Balkan languages. In Lutz ( Conquest in England, particularly in the Danelaw. As the most obvious lexical evidence for superstratal influence from Old Norse on Old English, I adduce legal and administrative terms that are attested in Old English texts as detailed word families, e. g. those of OE lagu 'law, right, legal privilege' and ...

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Norse Loans in Middle English and their Influence on Late Medieval London English

Lutz

2017

Anglia

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“…Homilies are dominant, with one scholar counting 122 such texts for the period 1100–1225 alone (Greenfield 284). Some of these homilies, such as the translation of Ralph d’Escures’ sermon for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, were undoubtedly composed after the Conquest (Treharne ‘Life of English’), but many are based on earlier models, with difficult content and outdated lexis or syntax replaced whenever the homilist’s meaning was liable to be misunderstood (Swan ‘Old English Made New’; Treharne ‘Life and Times’; Faulkner ‘Archaism, Belatedness, Modernisation’). While it is recognised that copying these texts was a pragmatic imperative, not an exercise in archival preservation (Treharne ‘English in the post‐Conquest Period’ 404; pace Hahn 72n24), there been little agreement on their likely readership, with scholars variously suggesting monastic pueri or conversi , members of the lower clergy with little Latin and no French, viri idonei employed to preach vicariously on behalf of the cathedral clergy and secular vowesses (Treharne ‘Reading from the Margins’ 353–4; Fischer ‘Vocabulary of Very Late Old English’ 31; Millett ‘Pastoral Context’ esp.…”

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Rewriting English Literary History 1042–1215

Faulkner

2012

Literature Compass

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The last 10 years have seen a swathe of revisionary scholarship on the afterlife of Old English texts in the 12th century. This article places this research beside work on the earliest Middle English texts and contemporary writing in Latin and French to suggest that the time is now ripe for a new, synthetic literary history of the period. In particular, the article identifies three key aspects of post‐Conquest literary culture which have been neglected because they chafe against the conventional paradigms of literary history, with its expectation of a literature national, monolingual and constantly original. The 12th‐century norms, by contrast, were regionalism, multilingualism, and the habitual recycling of older texts. Medievalists must insist these differences should inform wider discussions about the form and purpose of literary history in the 21st century.

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2013

A History of Old English Literature

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Chapter Fifteen. Making Their Presence Felt: Readers Of Ælfric, C. 1050-1350

Cited by 5 publications

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Norse Loans in Middle English and their Influence on Late Medieval London English

Norse Loans in Middle English and their Influence on Late Medieval London English

Rewriting English Literary History 1042–1215

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