When Did Middle English Begin?

The Transition from Greek to medieval philosophy that speculated on religion, nature, metaphysics, human being and society was rather a rough transition in the history of English literature. Although the literature content of this age reflected more religious beliefs, the love and hate relationship of medieval philosophy that was mostly based on the Christianity with Greek civilization was exhibited clearly. The modern philosophical ideologies are the continuation of this period’s ideologies. Without a well understanding of the philosophical issues related to this age, it is not possible to understand the modern ones well. The catholic tradition as well as the religious reform against church called Protestantism was organized in this age. In Medieval Period, philosophy and theoretical thoughts related to the Christianity were well-organized and the philosophy, science and theoretical thoughts served religion. Philosophy had different forms and orientations in various stages of this period. One of these philosophical thoughts was the Augustinian philosophy which was strongly in favor of church with its different practices and styles. It used Platonic and Neo-Platonic traditions to prove that faith is the result of divine dispensations, not the result of human will power and wisdom. On the other hand, according to Aquinas, we experience different types of the effects that existed in the world around us. He believed that we assign an effective cause to each effect we experienced around us. Additionally, he claimed that reasoning was the only way to reach the real faith. In fact, philosophy of Medieval Period attempted to prove that religious assertions and ideologists were in search of matching their philosophical beliefs with the beliefs of Christianity. Christianity as the dominant factor in Middle English Literature helped English to be stablished as a literary language.

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“…Some changes in two layers of word and grammar were shown statistically by some scholars (e.g. Fries, 1940;Malone, 1930;Moore, 1927Moore, & 1928.…”

Section: Medieval Englishmentioning

confidence: 95%

An Introduction to the Medieval English: The Historical and Literary Context, Traces of Church and Philosophical Movements in the Literature

Behtash

Toroujeni

Samani

2017

ALLS

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“…This data bears comparison to two earlier, smaller studies. Malone () found five non‐<‐an> spellings for infinitives in the four major Old English poetic codices (cp. Marckwardt : 87), though absent a count of <‐an> spellings, it is difficult to evaluate the significance of these five forms.…”

Section: The Spelling Of Morphemes: Verb Infinitivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the Consistency of ‘Standard’ Old English Spelling

Faulkner

2019

Trans of the Philol Soc

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This paper presents two large datasets, one of over 19,000 morphemes from 100 texts, the other of over 91,000 spellings from 941 texts across 198 manuscripts for one phonological segment, with a view to providing an empirical basis for discussions of the homogeneity with which the vernacular was written in late Anglo‐Saxon England. These show the infinitive morpheme was spelt <‐an> 96.1 per cent of the time and the diphthong /æa, æ:a/ was written 96.5 per cent of the time. Such consistency, over time and across dialect boundaries, suggests that recent scepticism about the existence of a homogenous, conservative, supraregional variety of written Old English, perhaps a ‘standard’ Old English, is unwarranted.

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“…174–96; Traxel), but a comprehensive overview of 12th‐century English spelling to replace Schlemilch’s early 20th‐century doctoral dissertation is an absolute desideratum. Moreover, while historical linguists have zealously traced the processes by which ‘Old’ English became ‘Middle’ English (Moore ‘Loss of Final n ’; ‘Earliest Morphological Changes’; Malone; Marckwardt; Jones; Kitson ‘OE Dialects’; ‘When did ME Begin?’), less attention has been paid to the sociolinguistic implications of the collapse of the Schriftsprache . Space constraints mean it is only possible to treat two of the most important of these consequences in detail here: texts’ lack of national vision, and their self‐conscious belatedness.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rewriting English Literary History 1042–1215

Faulkner

2012

Literature Compass

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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.

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When Did Middle English Begin?

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

An Introduction to the Medieval English: The Historical and Literary Context, Traces of Church and Philosophical Movements in the Literature

An Introduction to the Medieval English: The Historical and Literary Context, Traces of Church and Philosophical Movements in the Literature

Quantifying the Consistency of ‘Standard’ Old English Spelling

Rewriting English Literary History 1042–1215

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