Speaker: Professor Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham University)
Location: South School, Examination Schools
The history of the Bible in medieval England becomes a different story once the plethora of French-language scriptural translations enters the picture. Early twelfth-century psalters and their commentary, vigorous reworkings and commentary for individual books of the bible, and whole bibles and theological encyclopaedias in French in the later Middle Ages are an important part of the history of doctrine and devotion and lay-ecclesiastical relations. Their existence complicates historical narratives about English-language translation in England, especially in relation to the so-called ‘Wyclifite’ Bible, that have been in place since the sixteenth century.
French in Medieval Britain: Cultural Politics and Social History, c. 1100-c. 1500
Professor Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham University)
French played a major, though not the only role, in the pervasive multilingualism of British history and culture. As Britain’s only medieval ‘global’ vernacular, it was also important to a wide range of people for their participation in external theatres of empire, trade, culture, conflict, and crusade. Displacing the long shadow of nineteenth-century nationalizing conceptions of language and their entrenchment in modern university disciplinary divisions, emerging histories of French in England and increasingly of French in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland offer new ways of understanding language and identity. These lectures trace francophone medieval Britain in a chronological sequence across its four main centuries, interpolating two thematic lectures on areas especially needing integration into our histories, medieval women and French in Britain, and French Bible translation in medieval England.
