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Language made visible: The invention of French in England after the Norman Conquest [PhD thesis] by David Georgi is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

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French literature, we now know, began in England not in France. The transformation of Old French from an oral vernacular to a language of written literature was perhaps the most momentous result of the collision of languages and cultures in England after the Norman Conquest. This paper seeks to add to our understanding of the event by tracing and analyzing changes in the way the Normans talked about, and conceived of, their vernacular tongue. At the same time, this medieval case study exposes crucial differences between medieval and modern ideas about the triangular relationship of language, nation, and state. The men who stepped off their boats in 1066 were Normans who spoke romanz; two generations later, when Norman men and women in England became the pioneers of Romance vernacular literature, it was as franceis who called their language franceis. The language itself had not changed appreciably, but their metalinguistic construct had. Back on the Continent romanz had been understood as a sprawling not-quite-Latin, spoken everywhere and associated with no particular group. The Anglo-Normans conceived of franceis as a distinct language, proper to their natio. Two methodological pre

Who reads Language made visible: The invention of French in England after the Norman Conquest [PhD thesis]?

Author

David Georgi

Publisher

New York University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Published

2008

Language

EN

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Linguistics, Literary Fiction, Historical & Comparative Linguistics