Anglo-Norman Dictionary. Second Edition. A-C & D-E (review)

The publication of the second edition of the A-C and D-E volumes of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (or AND) is a major event in the historiography not just of French but also of English. It marks the culmination of decades of intelligent and meticulous scholarship, and the opening up of a thrilling new mode of dictionary-compilation. It might seem odd to regard the appearance of a dictionary dealing only with the letters A-E as a culmination, but the word is justified when we consider the history of the AND. Lexicographical material began first to be assembled by a group of Anglo-Norman specialists in the decades following the Second World War. They were led, initially, by Louise Stone (1947 – 1973) and later by Timothy Reid (1973 – 1981), for ever under the keen eye of William Rothwell (1963 – 1992), who brought the first edition to completion in 1992 with Fascicule 7 (T-Z). Dictionaries, even of languages no longer spoken, are organic and, thanks to the bequest of a large amount of non-literary material collected by J. P. Collas, the scope of the AND widened, to such an extent that by the time Fascicule 7 appeared, the first fascicules (A-C and D-E) required major overhaul to bring them into line with the more recent sections. This revision took 13 years to complete, a pivotal role being played by David Trotter. The second edition reflects not simply the addition of new material (presented with exemplary clarity), but the sea-change in our view of language effected by developments in sociolinguistics. Living languages are protean entities within which no one variety can claim precedence, and which are being permanently adjusted to suit the needs of their users. Societal monolingualism is a widely accepted norm in the modern world, but it was completely unknown in medieval Europe. Britain in particular was profoundly multi-lingual, with Celtic, Germanic and Romance languages jostling each other to different degrees in different parts of the archipelago. This is wonderfully reflected in the AND. The history of medieval English cannot be understood in isolation from Anglo-Norman, and it may be that the principal users of the AND are historians of English. It may also be that future editors of Anglo-Norman texts will have to be recruited primarily among Anglicists.

The AND (second edition) closes one lexicographical chapter, but it also opens another. Dictionary-writing is like painting the Forth Bridge, and the advent of computerisation triggered a quantum-leap which enables not just permanent up-dating, but also reader-access to all the documentary material previously truncated for hard-copy publication. The online version of the AND (www.anglo-norman.net), pioneered in particular by Andrew Rothwell, is a delight to use, and keeps UK lexicography fully in step with dictionaries of medieval languages currently being developed on the Continent, notably the Dictionnaire du moyen fran-çais (http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/). What is surprising, however, is that a dictionary of the quality of the AND has emerged from such a precarious sequence of relatively small grants. This does great credit to the AND team, for many of their Continental colleagues are in receipt long-term funding permitting the recruitment of permanent research staff and premises designed for their needs. The one lacuna I see in the AND is the failure to tie in each lexical entry with the relevant section of the lexicological treasure-house which is the Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, now regarded as the central reference-point of historical dictionaries of French. To include such references would make manifest the idea that Anglo-Norman was not some insular oddity, but a perfectly normal regional dialect of a medieval French language which only existed in its various dialectal forms.