My dissertation demonstrates the importance of an examination of the literary works included as part of the curriculum in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English grammar schools both for understanding the instruction of generations of schoolchildren and for reading the Middle English literature created and read by those trained in these schools. As Chapter 1 explains, thirty-four extant manuscripts used in an educational context in late medieval England, listed with their contents in the Appendix, suggest the identification of seven literary works that appear to have been taught most often: Disticha Catonis, Stans puer ad mensam, Cartula, Peniteas cito, Facetus, Liber Parabolarum, and Ecloga Theoduli. Considering these schoolbooks both individually and as a group reveals their usefulness for teachers and the instruction that they share: an emphasis on epistolary conventions, an awareness of the malleability of selves and social hierarchies, and the prioritization of ordinary human experience. As this project shows, the influence of the lessons of the grammar classroom pervades the production of vernacular literature and the reading practices of contemporary audiences. In Chapter 2, a reading of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde informed with a knowledge of the formal features of letter writing, particularly the attention to audience stressed in the grammar schoolbooks, reveals Criseyde’s control of both the story’s ending and the responses of readers through her final letter to Troilus. Chapter 3 offers a reexamination of The Book of Margery Kempe that argues against Kempe’s presumed illiteracy and demonstrates how she utilizes classroom teachings on self presentation in both her lived experience and the writing of her Book to manipulate her reception by her contemporaries and readers of the text. The final chapter turns to the works of John Lydgate to show how he incorporated the schoolroom’s emphasis on the diversity of ordinary human experience into his influential Fall of Princes, thereby spreading grammar school lessons to new audiences. Appreciating the teachings of the literary schoolbooks thus enables not only a better understanding of the grammar curriculum that shaped schoolchildren for two centuries but also a recognition of schoolbooks’ profound effect on authors and audiences in late medieval England. / text

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Vollst. zugl.: Marburg, Univ., Diss., 2007

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abstract: In this study, I explore to what extent an erotic orientation toward others’ spiritual characteristics, specifically with regard to “clean” souls, was strongly idealized in at least two medieval English locales, the central Midlands and the North Riding of Yorkshire. Where a hetero-genital orientation was pervasively considered proper with regard to erotic attraction then as today, I propose that, additionally, a desire to associate on a spiritual level with not only those of the same religion but also of like spiritual purity governed desire. As I will argue, this orientation to a spiritual sameness stemmed from a meme of preferred association in life with other Christians with clean souls. I refer to this desire for association with Christian sameness as a homo-spiritual orientation. As I will argue, this homospirituality was the primary basis of erotic desire portrayed and prescribed in the evidence considered in this study. In sum, I argue that fifteenth-century English ways of knowing and feeling desire, reflected in models of desire in romance poetry in these two locales, evidences an erotic orientation based on homospiritual lines of attraction. Moreover, in each area, the models of lay homospiritual erotics were preceded by and coincided with religious writings on the subject that contributed to an overall intellectual current. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017

4 ABSTRACT This thesis provides a description of the incipient grammaticalization of like between the end of the Old English period and the beginning of the Middle English period. During the examined time period, like was gradually losing the attributes that defined its categorial status as an adjective and began to function as the head of a prepositional phrase. Since the process of grammaticalization is inherently gradual, both the adjectival and the prepositional like were found to coexist as a result of the process of layering. Therefore, 10 parameters were established to determine which instances of like were more adjective-like and which were more preposition- like. The empirical part is based on the analysis of the 371 instances of the OE variants of like found in The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) and the 232 instances of the ME variants of like found in The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition (PPCME2). The sample is examined from the morphological as well as the syntactic point of view. Compared to the YCOE corpus, the findings in the PPCME2 corpus revealed a more advanced stage of grammaticalization. While some of the changes are not specific to like and affected other adjectives as well (the loss of inflectional endings, the fixed...

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.

[From Preface]. Any study centred in the exploratlon and analysis of the medieval and Elizabethen images of the Jew might, with some justification. seem redundant and impertinent to a modern reader; for the third quarter of this century has witnessed the almost total obviatlon of a great many such time-honoured images and symbols. The immemorial figure of the Wandering Jew, to cite a sIngle instance, has for the past two decades, attained his country and place of destination - history no longer condemning him to tarry until the Second Coming of the Messiah. Even the deicide Jew has been granted complete absolution, by an offlcial decree from the Vatican, for his complicity in the killing of Christ. It would seem, moreover, that the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews during the course of the Second World War have resulted in an alteration of the Jewish image radically transforming It from one of contempt into one of compassion a living symbol of "man's inhumanlty to man"; and the modern European dramatist has revived the Jewlsh figure on the stage as an instance of almost personal atonement or, alternatively, as a means of scourging the state of middle-class mind which abetted the persecution of the Nazi regime, attacking state policies of inactio and deploring the failure of influentlal powers to resist the blatant inhumanlty perpetrated within Its boundaries. Max Frisch's Andorre and Rolf Hochhuth's The Representative embody, each in its own way the 2Oth century's sense of shame and horror at those events with which the century has yet to come to terms. They are both extreme reactions agalnst the image of the Jew whlch the Nazi propogandized in the 1930s. And the image which the Nazis propogandized was curiously consistent wlth the medieval and Elizabethan images of the Jew.

The present thesis deals with the construction and testing of a web-based tool for analysis of Early Middle English texts, created from the data available in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME). The introductory theoretical overview of research into Middle English texts focuses on dialectology and the relation between spoken & written language and it serves as a springboard for the development of the tool. The thesis further presents a detailed explanation of the methodology behind the tool. It describes the structure of the database containing the transformed data from LAEME and then it moves on to the semi-automatic data processing and types of output data. This processing consists mainly in the segmentation of LAEME spelling variants into smaller units and in determining which segments in a group of variants correspond to one another. The thesis also describes the individual functions available within the tool and tests their use on short sample analyses. Although more extensive testing and modifications of the tool are required, it has so far revealed no crucial errors and the tool can be described as useable. The project succeeded in opening new possibilities of faster access to LAEME data. Furthermore, the tool is prepared for future upgrades, including the addition of data...