Rewriting English Literary History 1042–1215

Abstract

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.

7. Code-switching in the long twelfth century

“…subsection 4.2.4 on the switchingborrowing issue and the case study in chapter 7). Faulkner (2012b) calls for a multilingual perspective on literature in post-Conquest England but does not directly discuss code-switching, and Treharne (2012), analysing manuscripts containing English, contemplates the multilingual situation but does not mention code-switching as such. Considerably more attention has indeed been paid to other outcomes of language contact at this time, and the question of multilingualism itself: the importance of French in the medieval linguistic landscape (e.g.…”

“…Although the concept of "long century" seems to have been used less frequently by historical linguists than by historians, there are several recent publications in which a "long twelfth century" appears with reference to the history of English between, approximately, the Norman Conquest and the second quarter of the thirteenth century (e.g. Skaffari 2009;Faulkner 2012b;Kwakkel 2012; cf. Treharne 2012).…”

Linguistica Silesiana

“…The loss of status coincided with significant morphological and morphophonological changes -some took place after 1066, others resulted from earlier historical events, such as the establishment of Danelaw, but were first attested only after the Conquest. Moreover, the nature and scope of those changes were highly varied in terms of their geographical distribution (Faulkner 2012: 280, Thomas 2003: 379, Bartlett 2000. The period between the 11th and 13th centuries is thus often referred to as "transitional" English (Faulkner 2012: 276, Bartlett 2000.…”

“…Moreover, the nature and scope of those changes were highly varied in terms of their geographical distribution (Faulkner 2012: 280, Thomas 2003: 379, Bartlett 2000. The period between the 11th and 13th centuries is thus often referred to as "transitional" English (Faulkner 2012: 276, Bartlett 2000. Although the term transitional deserves a separate discussion -there are valid arguments both for and against compartmentalization of language historyconsidering those (roughly) two centuries as a separate stage in the history of English is nonetheless useful, especially that it was neglected for a long time, considered unworthy of academic attention (Da Rold 2006).…”

“…This significant volume of uncovered material has been intensely analysed applying new approaches, methodologies and perspectives, such as postcolonialism (see especially Living through Conquest by Elaine Treharne), communities of practice, multilingualism, etc. The corpus also testifies to the longevity of Old English after the Conquest, as there is ample evidence that it was still used well into the 12th century and beyond (Faulkner 2012), for a number of purposes, such as: "teaching, preaching, chronicling, and carrying out all ecclesiastical and pastoral duties" (Treharne 2012: 97).…”