English language seminar

Speaker: Edurne Garrido Anes (Huelva)

Title: Lexical Variation and Dialectal Motivation in the Textual Transmission of Middle English Works

Abstract: In the context of an ongoing project on Middle English Word Geography initiated at the University of Huelva, I am currently undertaking the analysis of scribal responses towards specific words in the textual transmission of Middle English works. In exactly the same contexts, whereas some parallel manuscripts of a work tend to maintain the vocabulary found in their source texts, others – at times at least – show lexical variants or avoid particular items by omission or paraphrasing. The accumulation of evidence showing tendencies of rejection of an item in certain areas is the condition that must be met in order to be able to confirm the dialectal premise. However, some conditioning factors need to be considered first, as they can play an important part in preventing direct correlation between the dialectal localization of a Middle English manuscript based on spelling and morphology and the actual provenance of the lexicon it contains. I am now exploring the possibility of providing a dialectally conditioned distribution pattern for the word ‘dole’ (OF/AF < Late Latin dolium) in Middle English by studying how scribes from different parts of England behaved when confronted with this word. The raw data have been retrieved from parallel copies of three works that have survived in multiple manuscripts that spread over a widespread geographical area: Prick of Conscience, Cursor Mundi and Poema Morale.