A Student Guide to Chaucer's Middle English

A Student Guide to Chaucer's Middle English
Author: Peter G. Beidler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-05
Genre: LITERARY CRITICISM
ISBN: 9781603811026

"A direct, clear, and user-friendly introduction to the sound of Chaucer's language, as well as to aspects of Chaucer's vocabulary and principal metrical form."--Back cover.

The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries

The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
Author: Sarah Ogilvie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2020-09-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108568459

How did a single genre of text have the power to standardise the English language across time and region, rival the Bible in notions of authority, and challenge our understanding of objectivity, prescription, and description? Since the first monolingual dictionary appeared in 1604, the genre has sparked evolution, innovation, devotion, plagiarism, and controversy. This comprehensive volume presents an overview of essential issues pertaining to dictionary style and content and a fresh narrative of the development of English dictionaries throughout the centuries. Essays on the regional and global nature of English lexicography (dictionary making) explore its power in standardising varieties of English and defining nations seeking independence from the British Empire: from Canada to the Caribbean. Leading scholars and lexicographers historically contextualise an array of dictionaries and pose urgent theoretical and methodological questions relating to their role as tools of standardisation, prestige, power, education, literacy, and national identity.

Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries

Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries
Author: John Considine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2022-04-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0192568299

This is the first volume in the trilogy Dictionaries in the English-Speaking World, 1500-1800, which will offer a new history of lexicography in and beyond the early modern British Isles. The volume explores the dictionaries, wordlists, and glossaries that were compiled and read by speakers of English from the end of the Middle Ages to the year 1600. These include the first printed dictionaries in which English words were collected; the dictionaries of Latin used by all educated English-speakers, from young children to Shakespeare to adult royalty; the dictionaries of modern languages that gave English-speakers access to the languages and cultures of continental Europe; dictionaries and wordlists documenting other languages from Armenian to Malagasy to Welsh; and a great variety of specialized English wordlists. No unified history has ever surveyed this vast, lively, and culturally significant lexicographical output before. The guiding principle of the book, and the trilogy, is that a story about dictionaries must also be a story about human beings. John Considine offers a full and sympathetic account of those who compiled and used these works, and those who supported them financially, paying particular attention to records of dictionary use and its traces in surviving copies. The volume will appeal to all those interested in the languages and literary cultures of the sixteenth-century English-speaking world.

Chaucer's Early Modern Readers

Chaucer's Early Modern Readers
Author: Devani Singh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2023-05-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1009231103

The first extended study of the reception of Chaucer's medieval manuscripts in the early modern period, this book focuses chiefly on fifteenth-century manuscripts and discusses how these volumes were read, used, valued, and transformed in an age of the poet's prominence in print. Each chapter argues that patterns in the material interventions made by readers in their manuscripts – correcting, completing, supplementing, and authorising – reflect conventions which circulated in print, and convey prevailing preoccupations about Chaucer in the period: the antiquity and accuracy of his words, the completeness of individual texts and of the canon, and the figure of the author himself. This unexpected and compelling evidence of the interactions between fifteenth-century manuscripts and their early modern analogues asserts print's role in sustaining manuscript culture and thus offers fresh scholarly perspectives to medievalists, early modernists, and historians of the book. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary
Author: John A. Simpson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2002-04-18
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9780195218893

The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.