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Reviewed by:
  • Present and Future Research in Anglo-Norman: Proceedings of the Aberystwyth Colloquium, July 2011/La Recherche actuelle et future sur l’anglo-normand: colloque d’Aberystwyth, juillet 2011 edited by David Trotter
  • Marianne Ailes
Present and Future Research in Anglo-Norman: Proceedings of the Aberystwyth Colloquium, July 2011/La Recherche actuelle et future sur l’anglo-normand: colloque d’Aberystwyth, juillet 2011. Edited by David Trotter. Aberystwyth: Anglo-Norman Online Hub, 2012. 198 pp.

This collection of twenty-seven conference papers, by almost all the leading scholars in the field, covers a very wide range of subjects, with essays, appropriately, in both English and French. The focus is on linguistic rather than literary questions. As well as [End Page 548] addressing issues specific to Anglo-Norman, several contributions deal with the relationship of Anglo-Norman to other francophone areas: for example, contact with Italian in a mercantile context (Megan Tiddeman); an essay contrasting the fates of Anglo-French and Picard scriptae (Serge Lusignan); a comparison of the linguistic conditions in England and Sicily after what might be described as parallel, but very different, Norman ‘conquests’ (Alberto Varvaro); and a comparison between the different extremities of medieval romance-speaking areas, namely England and Romania (Maria Iliescu). Contact between English and French has received greater attention over the last few decades and is reflected here in several contributions (by Philip Durkin, among others). An essay by William Rothwell looking at specific terms used by Chaucer follows (and balances) a study of the French poetry of the Middle English poet John Gower (Brian Merrilees). Anthony Lodge draws attention to the neglected Anglo-Norman Évangile des Damnées, better known through its Middle English translation. The thought-provoking analysis of metre by David Howlett brings into consideration another juxtaposition, this time with Latin, but also with the compositional habits of other insular languages working with Latin. The ‘future’ of Anglo-Norman studies is represented by essays on the harnessing of new technologies, ranging from the clearly desirable prospect of an online version of Dean and Boulton’s Anglo-Norman Literature (Daron Burrows) to a discussion of the complementarity of print and online editions (Delbert Russell). A number of contributions are concerned with questions of lexicography and dictionary tools (Jennifer Gabel, Michael Beddow, Pierre Kunstmann, Gilles Souvay, Thomas Sta¨dtler, Yan Greub, Max Pfister). Future developments of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary itself offer tantalizing promises of useful tools (David Trotter, Geert De Wilde), while Heather Pagan reminds us of all that remains unedited. Some studies demonstrate how technologies can be used to enhance and facilitate what might be considered more traditional scholarship: Richard Ingham examines a known phonological change — the change in final -e in the thirteenth century — to assess the usefulness of the Anglo-Norman Hub text database as a research tool, while Gilles Roques uses the range of dictionaries available to address the vocabulary of Frère Angier. Pierre Nobel examines the language of a manuscript of the Bible du XIII e siècle, demonstrating the difficulties raised when a continental text is copied by an insular scribe. Some of these issues affect anyone concerned with textual editing and criticism. For this reason the volume deserves a wider readership among French medievalists on both sides of the Channel. Of necessity, each individual paper is brief, but collectively the essays make a scholarly contribution to our developing knowledge of French, not least in pointing the way to further work that needs to be carried out.

Marianne Ailes
University of Bristol
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