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In this monograph, Caroline Laske traces the advent of consideration in English contract law, by analysing the doctrinal development, in parallel with the corresponding terminological evolution and semantic shifts between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is an innovative, interdisciplinary study, showcasing the value of taking a diachronic corpus linguistics-based approach to the study of legal change and legal development, and the semantic shifts in the corresponding terminology. The seminal application in the legal field of these analytical methodologies borrowed from pragmatic linguistics goes beyond the content approach that legal research usually practices and it has allowed for claims of semantic change to be objectified. This ground-breaking work is pitched at scholars of legal history, law & language, and linguistics.
Susanna Fein’s long and distinguished scholarly career has helped to redefine how we understand the role of scribes and manuscripts from late medieval England. She has carried out groundbreaking research on seminal manuscripts (e.g., Harley 2253, the Thornton Manuscripts, John Audley’s autograph manuscript, and the Auchinleck Manuscript). She has written extensively on the more complex and challenging metrical forms the period produced. And she has edited foundational primary texts and collections of essays. A wide range of scholars have been influenced by Fein’s work, many of whom present original research—much of it following trails first laid down by Fein—in this volume.
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A bold new history of the rise and expansion of the Norman Dynasty across Europe from Byzantium to England In the eleventh century the climate was improving, population was growing, and people were on the move. The Norman dynasty ranged across Europe, led by men who achieved lasting fame, such as William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard. These figures cultivated an image of unstoppable Norman success, and their victories make for a great story. But how much of it is true? In this insightful history, Judith Green challenges old certainties and explores the reality of Norman life across the continent. There were many soldiers of fortune, but their successes were down to timing, good luck, and ruthless leadership. Green shows the Normans' profound impact, from drastic change in England to laying the foundations for unification in Sicily to their contribution to the First Crusade. Going beyond the familiar, she looks at personal dynastic relationships and the important part women played in what at first sight seems a resolutely masculine world.
This book shows how depictions of etymology were used by twelfth-century poets, translators, bureaucrats and historians to portray Britain's past.
Along with its companion volume, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into the current avenues of research into colour, a phenomenon which daily affects all our lives in often surprising ways. The majority of the papers originated in a 2004 conference entitled 'Progress in Colour Studies' which was held in the University of Glasgow, U.K. The contributions to this first volume, which is principally linguistic and anthropological in content, and to its companion on the psychological aspects of colour, present either summaries of state-of-the-art colour research in various disciplines, or in-depth accounts of certain aspects of such work. This volume includes approaches such as Natural Semantic Metalanguage, social network analysis, quantitative analysis, type modification, vantage theory, the centrality of social norms of inference, place-names and heraldry. In the process, new insights are offered into the following languages: English, French, Portuguese, Sorbian, Burarra, Cape Breton Gaelic, Tzotzil, and others.
This book offers a vivid account of English academic life. The author describes her first weeks in England as a postgraduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and recounts in detail her encounter and challenges with the Winchester Psalter (British Library, MS Cotton Nero C. IV), a profusely illustrated manuscript that ranks among the undisputed treasures of English Romanesque art. Following this biographical account, an essay provides readers with an insight into the processes involved in the production of medieval miniatures and their creative fantasy. The prologue to this paper is written by Dr John Lowden, a leading researcher and historian of medieval art.
"This study looks at a wide range of medieval Englisih romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas." --Book Jacket.
In the century before Chaucer a new language of political critique emerged. In political verse of the period, composed in Anglo-Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English, poets write as if addressing the king himself, drawing on their sense of the rights granted by Magna Carta. These apparent appeals to the sovereign increase with the development of parliament in the late thirteenth century and the emergence of the common petition, and become prominent, in an increasingly sophisticated literature, during the political crises of the early fourteenth century. However, very little of this writing was truly directed to the king. As David Matthews shows in this book, the form of address was a rhetorical stance revealing much about the position from which writers were composing, the audiences they wished to reach, and their construction of political and national subjects.
The first grammatical descriptions of the French language were produced in England, several centuries before the first grammar written in French (but also several centuries after the Norman Conquest). This book describes the status of French in England during the period from the marriage of Emma of Normandy to thelred (1004) to the fixing of a (relatively) standard pedagogical scheme for the teaching of French of English speakers (ca. 1600). During this period French passed from a native language to a second language, became the official language of the legal profession, and ultimately fell back to a position of social accomplishment. At the same time, different pedagogical and descriptive traditions developed to meet these various needs. Here Kibbee traces the interaction of cultural, intellectual, social and technological history with the elaboration of a grammatical tradition. The book includes a bibliography and indexes of names, titles and subjects.