Enti Arends (College of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Award)

Thesis title: Sociocultural Implications of French in Middle English Texts

Biography

Background

After a BA in English language and culture at Groningen University, Enti first came to Edinburgh for an MSc in Medieval Studies. She returned to Groningen for an MA in English language teaching and meanwhile worked on a PhD proposal, which led to a return to Edinburgh for a part-time PhD in Medieval Studies. 

Undergraduate teaching

Since three years, Enti has a part-time teaching position in the English teacher training degree programma at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences in Zwolle, the Netherlands. She teaches literature and didactics modules as well as coaching students in research projects and teaching practice.

Research summary

Enti’s PhD is on the “Socio-cultural implications of French in Middle English texts, c. 1250 – c. 1350”, supervised by Philip Bennett and Meg Laing and supported by a College of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Award. This topic is the result of, on the one hand, a refusal to study language and literature separately and, on the other, an interest in multilingual situations, especially as reflected in texts. Currently this interest is focused on the relation between French and English in medieval England. The century around 1300 saw an increasing number of texts written in or translated into English. The aim of this PhD is to gain a better understanding of the relationship of these texts with the French literary culture of England. This will be done by studying French elements in three Middle English texts (Kyng Alisaunder, Lawman’s Brut and Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne). In addition, through my teaching I have become involved in EFL research on grammar and literature.

‘Literatuur,’ in Vreemdetalenonderwijs geven [Teaching Foreign Languages]. Eds. Linda Boersma, Inge Elferink and Matthias Mitzschke. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum (2015). [Chapter on teaching literature in foreign language classrooms for didactics handbook]

‘The effectiveness of deductive, inductive, implicit and incidental grammatical instruction in second language classrooms,’ System 45 (August 2014), 198-210 (with Marjon Tammenga-Helmantel and Esther Canrinus).

‘French Elements in Middle English Translations: Laȝamon's Brut,’ Medieval Translation: Theory and Practice I, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (14 May 2015).

‘Lawman’s Brut: French in a Twelfth-Century Antiquarian History of Britain?’ , English Literature Work in Progress, University of Edinburgh (5 November 2014).

‘Writing for the “lewed”: the French vocabulary of Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne’, Linguistics and English Language Postgraduate Conference, University of Edinburgh (30 May 2014).

‘The Implications of Language-Mixing for Medieval European Identities’, Imagining Europe, Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines Graduate Conference (27 January 2011).

This article was published on