Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of Medieval England

From the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, French was one of England's main languages of literature, record, diplomacy and commerce and also its only supra-national vernacular. As is now recognised, the large corpus of England's French texts and records is indispensable to understanding England's literary and cultural history, the multilingualism of early England, and European medieval French-language culture at large. This is the first collection of texts and facing translations from England's medieval French. Through its selection of prologues and other excerpts from works composed or circulating in England, the volume presents a body of vernacular literary theory, in which some fifty-five highly various texts, from a variety of genres, discuss their origins, circumstances, strategies, source materials, purposes and audiences. Each entry, newly edited from a single manuscript, is accompanied by a headnote, annotation, and narrative bibliography, while a series of general introductions provide further context and information. Also included are essays on French in England and on the prosody and prose of insular French; Middle English versions of some of the edited French texts; and a glossary of literary terms. By giving access to a literate culture hitherto available primarily to specialists in Anglo-Norman only, this book opens up new possibilities for taking English francophony into account in research and teaching.