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Studies dealing with the linguistic situation that would have obtained in post-Conquest England have long concentrated their attention to a large extent on the contents of the many well-known surviving documents in French to be found there from lo66 onwards, but the present study aims to draw on the no less important evidence that may be taken from other texts that either make no claim to deal with language itself, or which illustrate the complexity of the mixture of languages that resulted from the Conquest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Texts in medieval French and English often string together two or even three (quasi-)synonyms carrying a wide range of senses, a feature commonly regarded by modern scholars as stylistic rather than semantic. However, while for the modern reader the dictionary has become the accepted arbiter of form and meaning, the printing-press which made possible the dictionary came only in the late Middle Ages. In the absence of any such prescriptive authority, the synonyms in a medieval text often play a semantic role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the role of the French language in medieval England and the development of Middle English in the fifteenth century. Nature and scope of the use of Anglo-French; Significance of the language to the Italian ships in Southampton and English monks in Durham; Examples of commonly used French words in trading and commerce; Background on the spice trade in the twelfth century.

The article presents abstracts of literary research. They include "The Secret Life of Della Cruscan Sonnet: William Gifford's "Baviad" and "Maeviad," "Synonymity and Semantic Variability in Medieval French and Middle English," "Paradigms of Peripheral Modernity in Lorca and Yates," "Russian Orthodoxy: A User's Manual. Church Advice Literature as a Reflection of Present-Day Reality," and "In the Bard's Shadow: Shakespearian Affinities as an Obstacle to the Reception of Schiller's Plays in Britain 1945-2005."