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Medieval Latin-English Dictionary

Author: 
Year:
Pages:492
ISBN:0-7734-6067-5
978-0-7734-6067-6
Price:$279.95
This book is a response to a need often expressed by both students and researchers in philology, medieval studies, church Latin and related fields in the humanities. This modern dictionary gives as exhaustive a list as possible of the words with the variations as they appear in a set of unpublished 15th century manuscripts contained in the British Museum, called Medulla Grammatice. This hard-cover dictionary contains some 20,000 entries over 600 pages. In medieval times, grammar constituted the basis of all fields of study, whatever the subject might have been, whether philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, etc. In fact, in all disciplines, explanatory texts were added and became the authorities in every aspect of knowledge or transmission of that knowledge. That is the reason why monks in the scriptoriums their lives reproducing texts with accompanying glosses and interlinear explanations, glossaries which were called medulla grammatice, or grammaticae, the marrow of grammar. Most of those glossaries are unknown to contemporary scholars. Several years ago, the author of the present dictionary spent over a year in the research library of the British Museum, in London, uncovering the beauty and the importance of some of the Medulla Grammatice manuscripts.

Reviews

“For scholars, researchers, and students of medieval literature, then, a Latin-Middle English Dictionary is an indispensable companion to the lexical, morphological, and syntactical analysis and critical study of such texts ... The author has included key syntactic and morpho-graphemic notes, produced by the monks of the time, to guide the reader ... This work will prove to be an invaluable asset ... The breadth of vocabulary and meticulous compilation found in this dictionary provides even the most demanding user a clearer insight into the English of the second half of the 15th century in Anglo-Norman, Eastern, and Northern regions of England.” – (from the Preface) James Kevin Miller, Chief of Curriculum, Canadian Forces Language School

Table of Contents

Preface by James Kevin Miller
Introduction
A. Material Description
B. A Page of Anglo-Norman History
C. The Syntax of the Medulla Grammatice
D. The Morpho-Graphemic System
Advice to the User
The Dictionary: from A to Z