An Introduction to Middle English: Grammar and Texts

by Robert D. Fulk

An Introduction to Middle English combines an elementary grammar of the English language from about 1100 to about 1500 with a selection of texts for reading, ranging in date from 1154 to 1500. The grammar includes the fundamentals of orthography, phonology, morphology, syntax, regional dialectology, and prosody. In the thirty-eight texts for reading are represented a wide range of Middle English dialects, and the commentary on each text includes, in addition to explanatory notes, extensive linguistic analysis. The book includes many useful figures and illustrations, including images of Middle English manuscripts as an aid to learning to decipher medieval handwriting and maps indicating the geographical extent of dialect features. This introduction to Middle English is based on the latest research, and it provides up-to-date bibliographical guidance to the study of the language.

Genres: Nonfiction, Linguistics

544 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2012

About the author

Robert Dennis Fulk is a medievalist and a linguist, specializing in Germanic and Celtic languages and literatures, the history of the English language, and comparative Indo-European linguistics. He is Class of 1964 Chancellor’s Professor of English at Indiana University and teaches particularly in the areas of Old and Middle English language and literature, as well as medieval Irish and Welsh language and literature.