Note:

My doctoral thesis, "Producing Piers Plowman to 1475: Author, Scribe, and Reader," charts a new material history of William Langland's fourteenth-century dream vision, Piers Plowman, from its earliest composition to the onset of print in England. The study is divided into three sections, which examine the production of Piers from three perspectives: textual history, manuscript circulation, and medieval reception. The first section of the thesis conducts a study of Langland's revisionary process, presenting a new theory of authorial revision from the A to B version that has important implications for our understanding of authorship in Piers Plowman and for the future editing of the poem. The second section transitions into an examination of the early circulation of the Piers manuscripts in various geographical and social milieux. It examines two case studies of manuscript circulation in the Southwest Midlands and East Anglia, linking them to regionalized networks of scribes and patrons. Finally, Section III moves into a discussion of the literary contexts in which Piers circulates, particularly in multi-text manuscripts, examining how the poem's reception by a medieval audience affected its development as a literary text. This section treats production from a more theoretical standpoint, investigating the relationship between the poem's audience and the "production" of meaning in a social and historical context. As I will argue, each of these sections acts as an important frame of reference for understanding the multifaceted formation of Piers Plowman as a literary text and cultural landmark. In particular, the thesis emphasizes the importance of Piers's various contexts, from its textual genesis in the author's composition and revision to its circulation and reception in an unstable manuscript culture. It suggests that the people and the places that surrounded Piers Plowman in its early development fundamentally shaped the poem we have today.

M.A. (English) / The treatise on horses that forms the basis of this study is a composite text found in a 15th century manuscript previously owned by HRH Duke of Gloucester (MS G). Although sections of this text have been partially edited from other witnesses, it has hitherto been unedited from this witness. This study offers a critical edition of this treatise, including a semi-diplomatic transcription of the text, the edited text together with a textual apparatus, textual commentary and a glossary. The purpose of this study is to provide a transparent reflection of the process of editing this text. The introduction includes an overview of the relevant components and history of the text, other witnesses, previous studies and relevant theory and text-editing practices. The semi-diplomatic transcription is provided to offer the reader a point of reference, which may be used to check against the conservative critical edition and the textual apparatus. The textual apparatus provides information on textual issues and changes within the text, as well as observations concerning the features of the manuscript as deducible from the microfilm copy. The textual commentary elaborates on unfamiliar or problematic phrases and terms, and reflects on how these terms were interpreted. The glossary is selective, and includes technical or uncommon terms, along with words and phrases with unusual spellings or forms. Although this study is by no means exhaustive, the aim of this dissertation is to deal with the text as it appears in MS G, in the manner and for the purposes stated above. Since this manuscript is now in an unknown, private collection, this study will also allow for further work to be done regarding this text.

O objetivo geral desta tese é fazer um estudo do léxico no município de Paranaguá-PR, propondo uma discussão sobre manutenção, tendência à manutenção, desuso e tendência ao desuso de lexias extraídas de fontes manuscritas setecentistas, datadas da mesma localidade. Para a realização deste estudo são utilizados, além dos documentos manuscritos digitalizados, dicionários da Língua Portuguesa e material oral. A base teórico-metodológica que norteia esta pesquisa é a da Dialetologia, mas aproxima-se também das utilizadas em pesquisas filológicas (edição de documentos), sociolinguísticas (pesquisa de campo e análise das lexias considerando células sociais) e lexicográficas (elaboração do glossário). Os objetivos específicos são: (i) traçar o panorama histórico da área estudada para auxiliar na compreensão dos aspectos socioculturais, (ii) fazer a edição semidiplomática, acompanhada da reprodução fac-similar dos documentos manuscritos, servindo de base para a caracterização do estado da língua setecentista; (iii) elaborar o glossário visando apresentar a definição dos itens lexicais selecionados com acepções e abonações extraídas do corpus escrito; (iv) investigar as lexias selecionadas por meio dos dados orais coletados com auxílio do questionário semânticolexical, adotando para a seleção dos informantes as variáveis sociais: faixa etária, sexo, naturalidade e grau de escolaridade; e, por fim, (v) verificar, a partir das lexias testadas, o grau de manutenção, tendência à manutenção, desuso e tendência ao desuso, em relação às acepções registradas nos documentos em questão. Tomando por base a análise do contexto de fala dos informantes de Paranaguá, constatou-se que há, no geral, a tendência ao desuso das lexias extraídas do corpus escrito, principalmente por parte dos informantes da primeira faixa etária. Em suma, espera-se que os resultados dessa pesquisa possam contribuir e, ao mesmo tempo, fornecer dados confiáveis aos estudos linguísticos sobre o estado de língua escrita no período setecentista e seus ecos na variedade portuguesa falada em Paranaguá e, por extensão, no Brasil. / The overall objective of this thesis is to study the lexicon in the city of Paranaguá-PR, proposing a discussion on maintenance, tendency to maintenance, disuse and tendency to disuse of lexicon extracted from eighteenth-century manuscript sources, dating from the same locality. For this study, in addition to scanned handwritten documents, dictionaries of Portuguese and oral material are used. The theoretical and methodological basis that guides this research is the Dialectology, but also the basis used in philological research (document editing), sociolinguistic research (field research and analysis of lexicon considering social cells) and lexicographic research (preparing the glossary) .The specific objectives are: (i) to trace the historical background of the study area to assist in understanding the socio-cultural aspects, (ii) to do the semi-diplomatic editing, followed by facsimile reproduction of the handwritten documents, providing the basis for characterizing the state of eighteenth-century language, (iii) to select the lexicon to be tested in the city of Paranaguá, and, from them, to prepare the glossary seeking to present the definition of lexical items with meanings and accreditations extracted from the written corpus , (iv) to collect oral data with the aid of a lexical-semantic questionnaire, adopting for the selection of informants the following social variables: age, sex, place of birth and education level, and finally (v) to verify, from the lexicon tested, the level of maintenance, tendency to maintenance, disuse and tendency to disuse, regarding the meanings recorded in the documents in question. Based on the analysis of the context of the speech of informants from Paranaguá, it was found that, in general, there is a tendency to disuse of lexicon extracted from the written corpus, especially by the informants from the first age group. In short, it is expected that the results of this research can contribute and, at the same time, provide reliable data for linguistic studies on the state of written language during the eighteenth century and its echoes on the Portuguese variety spoken in Paranaguá and, by extension, in Brazil.

O objetivo geral desta tese é fazer um estudo do léxico no município de Paranaguá-PR, propondo uma discussão sobre manutenção, tendência à manutenção, desuso e tendência ao desuso de lexias extraídas de fontes manuscritas setecentistas, datadas da mesma localidade. Para a realização deste estudo são utilizados, além dos documentos manuscritos digitalizados, dicionários da Língua Portuguesa e material oral. A base teórico-metodológica que norteia esta pesquisa é a da Dialetologia, mas aproxima-se também das utilizadas em pesquisas filológicas (edição de documentos), sociolinguísticas (pesquisa de campo e análise das lexias considerando células sociais) e lexicográficas (elaboração do glossário). Os objetivos específicos são: (i) traçar o panorama histórico da área estudada para auxiliar na compreensão dos aspectos socioculturais, (ii) fazer a edição semidiplomática, acompanhada da reprodução fac-similar dos documentos manuscritos, servindo de base para a caracterização do estado da língua setecentista; (iii) elaborar o glossário visando apresentar a definição dos itens lexicais selecionados com acepções e abonações extraídas do corpus escrito; (iv) investigar as lexias selecionadas por meio dos dados orais coletados com auxílio do questionário semânticolexical, adotando para a seleção dos informantes as variáveis sociais: faixa etária, sexo, naturalidade e grau de escolaridade; e, por fim, (v) verificar, a partir das lexias testadas, o grau de manutenção, tendência à manutenção, desuso e tendência ao desuso, em relação às acepções registradas nos documentos em questão. Tomando por base a análise do contexto de fala dos informantes de Paranaguá, constatou-se que há, no geral, a tendência ao desuso das lexias extraídas do corpus escrito, principalmente por parte dos informantes da primeira faixa etária. Em suma, espera-se que os resultados dessa pesquisa possam contribuir e, ao mesmo tempo, fornecer dados confiáveis aos estudos linguísticos sobre o estado de língua escrita no período setecentista e seus ecos na variedade portuguesa falada em Paranaguá e, por extensão, no Brasil. / The overall objective of this thesis is to study the lexicon in the city of Paranaguá-PR, proposing a discussion on maintenance, tendency to maintenance, disuse and tendency to disuse of lexicon extracted from eighteenth-century manuscript sources, dating from the same locality. For this study, in addition to scanned handwritten documents, dictionaries of Portuguese and oral material are used. The theoretical and methodological basis that guides this research is the Dialectology, but also the basis used in philological research (document editing), sociolinguistic research (field research and analysis of lexicon considering social cells) and lexicographic research (preparing the glossary) .The specific objectives are: (i) to trace the historical background of the study area to assist in understanding the socio-cultural aspects, (ii) to do the semi-diplomatic editing, followed by facsimile reproduction of the handwritten documents, providing the basis for characterizing the state of eighteenth-century language, (iii) to select the lexicon to be tested in the city of Paranaguá, and, from them, to prepare the glossary seeking to present the definition of lexical items with meanings and accreditations extracted from the written corpus , (iv) to collect oral data with the aid of a lexical-semantic questionnaire, adopting for the selection of informants the following social variables: age, sex, place of birth and education level, and finally (v) to verify, from the lexicon tested, the level of maintenance, tendency to maintenance, disuse and tendency to disuse, regarding the meanings recorded in the documents in question. Based on the analysis of the context of the speech of informants from Paranaguá, it was found that, in general, there is a tendency to disuse of lexicon extracted from the written corpus, especially by the informants from the first age group. In short, it is expected that the results of this research can contribute and, at the same time, provide reliable data for linguistic studies on the state of written language during the eighteenth century and its echoes on the Portuguese variety spoken in Paranaguá and, by extension, in Brazil.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished