Glossary
Terms and Definitions for the Study of the French of England
Anglo-French
The French spoken
in England
in the 14th and 15th centuries. In this period, it was not usually
the first language of those who spoke it, but it was a frequently-taught second
language, and an important language of record. The term may also be used
to describe continental French texts circulating in copies made in England, and
for French used as a language of record on the Continent by English
speakers. More recently, Anglo-French has been used to refer to all the
types of French associated with England.
Anglo-Norman:
Linguistically and historically, the
question of what can be called 'Anglo-Norman' is a complicated one. The
broadest definitions, perhaps, are the easiest. For scholars of language
and literature, Anglo-Norman refers to the variety of the French language used
in England
from the Norman Conquest to the fifteenth century. For historians, Anglo-Norman
is generally used to describe the period of English history from the Norman
Conquest to King John's loss of Normandy
- or, even more narrowly, the reigns of William the Conqueror and his sons.
The term Anglo-Norman is now used to describe the twelfth-century
aristocracy of England, many
of whom had either been born in Normandy
or whose families retained significant holdings on the Continent. In most
cases, however, the kings of England
after William the Conqueror hardly ever referred to themselves in terms of
their joint possessions in England
and Normandy.
Although the Conqueror often styled himself 'rex Anglorum
et dux Normannorum,' his
son Henry I appears to have operated under the paradigm of a single realm
divided by the Channel, with the assumption that his authority over Normandy was implicit in
his authority as King of England.
When it comes to specific examples, the lines can be a bit blurrier.
For example, the best extant manuscript of the Chanson de Roland, the classic French epic, was actually written in
England,
and its language contains many regional variations specific to the French of
England. Should the Chanson de
Roland - or this manuscript, at least - be counted among Anglo-Norman
literary works? Similarly, since Anglo-Norman was used as a language of
devotional, poetic, and educational literature well into the fifteenth century,
can the historical term Anglo-Norman really be limited to the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries?
Another difficult question is the status of Anglo-Norman in relation to
continental French. Many scholars, especially in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century, assumed that Anglo-Norman was simply an inferior
version of continental French, and that those who used it were trying to speak
or write in continental French and failing. Jordan Fantosme’s
verse Chronicle was long held to be “irregular”
by the standards of continental French versification, but R. C. Johnston’s
recent work on patterns of stress in Fantosme raises
the possibility that his verses were not a deteriorating continental meter but
rather a quite consciously organized, insular form. Similarly, scholars of
language often call forth in support of their view the famous passage from
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales about the hypocritical Prioress who spoke French
"after the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe For Frenssh
of Parys was to hir unknowe."
However, more recent scholarship has questioned this conventional wisdom. Johnston's work on Jordan
Fantosme has raised the possibility that Fantosme's versification was not an inferior form of continental
meter, but a distinctly insular one. Today, many historians and literary
scholars agree, and they approach study of the French of England as the
expression of a culture in its own right, articulating its own aspirations,
sometimes different from those of continental French regions (and that is an
area in sore need of investigation). The French language that developed and
changed in medieval England,
as would be expected in such circumstances, did so
according to local linguistic habits, as would any other language or dialect.
Its purported inferior status as a
language is untenable from a scientific, linguistic perspective, and is a
stance no longer tolerated as intellectually valid.
French of England
A proposed new term, intending to
encompass all of the varieties of French spoken in England (whatever their
territorial origin) and all the English Frenches used abroad (e.g. in Gascony, or in manuscripts
circulating from Britain
to the Continent).
