Language and Community in Early England

This book examines the development of English as a written vernacular and identifies it as a process of community building that occurred in a multilingual context. Moving from the 8th-13th centuries, to the 16th-century antiquarians who collected medieval manuscripts, it suggests that this period in the history of English can only be understood if we loosen insistence on a sharp divide between Old and Middle English and place the textuality in the framework of a multilingual matrix. It argues that the tension of linguistic distance provides necessary energy for the community-building activities of annotation and glossing, translation, compilation, and other uses of texts and manuscripts.

Emily Butler, Assistant Professor of English at John Carroll University, USA, is an Anglo-Saxonist working on attitudes to language and how such attitudes shape textual communities and impinge on textual production. Recent work includes articles and papers on the Old English Prose Psalms, Matthew Parker's medieval collection, and the Encomium Emmae Reginae.

Introduction: Community and Distance Chapter 1: Latinity and the English People Chapter 2: Crafting a Textual Kingdom in Wessex Chapter 3: Preaching and Politics in a Time of Conquest Chapter 4: Old and Newer English in the West Midlands Chapter 5: Shewing the Auncient Fayth: An Elizabethan Sequel Conclusion