The Familiar Enemy

Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years War
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-0-19-965770-4
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 480 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 694 g

The Familiar Enemy re-examines the linguistic, literary, and cultural identities of England and France within the context of the Hundred Years War. During this war, two profoundly intertwined peoples developed complex strategies for expressing their aggressively intimate relationship. This special connection between the English and the French has endured into the modern period as a model for Western nationhood. Ardis Butterfield reassesses the concept of 'nation' in this period through a wide-ranging discussion of writing produced in war, truce, or exile from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, concluding with reflections on the retrospective views of this conflict created by the trials of Jeanne d'Arc and by Shakespeare's Henry V. She considers authors writing in French, 'Anglo-Norman', English, and the comic tradition of Anglo-French 'jargon', including Machaut, Deschamps, Froissart, Chaucer, Gower, Charles d'Orléans, as well as many lesser-known or anonymous works. Traditionally Chaucer has been seen as a quintessentially English author. This book argues that he needs to be resituated within the deeply francophone context, not only of England but the wider multilingual cultural geography of medieval Europe. It thus suggests that a modern understanding of what 'English' might have meant in the fourteenth century cannot be separated from 'French', and that this has far-reaching implications both for our understanding of English and the English, and of French and the French.

Zielgruppe

Students and scholars of Medieval French and English Literature, especially Chaucer, historical linguistics and historians of the Hundred Years War

Autoren/Hrsg.

Butterfield, Ardis

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations and maps
Bibliographical note
List of Abbreviations
Preface
I Nation and Language
1: Introduction: Pre-nation and post-nation
2: Origins and language
3: A common language?
II Exchanging Terms: War and Peace
4: Fighting talk
5: Exchanging Terms
6: Trading languages
7: Lingua franca: the international language of love
III Vernacular Subjects
8: The English subject
9: Mother tongues
10: Betrayal and Nation
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ardis Butterfield has published widely on English and French medieval literature and music. Her books include Poetry and Music in Medieval France from Jean Renart to Guillaume de Machaut (Cambridge, 2002), an edited collection of essays, Chaucer and the City (Cambridge, 2006). She has recently been awarded a Major Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2008-2011) to work on 'The Origins of English Song'. She has given several talks and interviews on medieval literature and music for Radio 3 and Radio 4.