French Before France

"From the end of the thirteenth to the first decades of the sixteenth century, Guyart des Moulins's Bible historiale was the predominant French translation of the Bible. Enhancing his translation with techniques borrowed from scholastic study, vernacular preaching, and secular fiction, Guyart produced one of the most popular, most widely copied French-language texts of the later Middle Ages. Making the Bible French investigates how Guyart's first-person authorial voice narrates translation choices in terms of anticipated reader reactions and frames the biblical text as an object of dialogue with his readers. It examines the translator's narrative strategies to aid readers' visualization of biblical stories, to encourage their identification with its characters, and to practice patient, self-reflexive reading. Finally, it traces how the Bible historiale manuscript tradition adapts and individualizes the Bible for each new intended reader, defying modern print-based and text-centred ideas about the Bible, canonicity, and translation."

Medieval French literature encompasses 450 years of literary output in Old and Middle French, mostly produced in Northern France and England. These texts, including courtly lyrics, prose and verse romances, dits amoureux and plays, proved hugely influential for other European literary traditions in the medieval period and beyond. This Companion offers a wide-ranging and stimulating guide to literature composed in medieval French from its beginnings in the ninth century until the Renaissance. The essays are grounded in detailed analysis of canonical texts and authors such as the Chanson de Roland, the Roman de la Rose, Villon's Testament, Chrétien de Troyes, Machaut, Christine de Pisan and the Tristan romances.

Sarah Kay is one of the most influential medievalists of the past fifty years, making vital, theoretically informed interventions on material from early medieval chansons de geste, through troubadour lyric, to late medieval philosophy and poetry, in French, Occitan, Latin, and Italian.

It offers innovative studies on topics that may include, but are not limited to, manuscript and book history; languages and literatures of the global Middle Ages....
The field of medieval francophone literary culture outside France was for many years a minor and peripheral sub-field of medieval French literary studies (or, in the case of Anglo-Norman, of English studies)...arguments in Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad are grounded in readings of texts in manuscript (rather than in modern critical editions), and sustained attention is paid throughout to manuscripts that were produced or travelled outside the kingdom of France.

A concise but unusually comprehensive handbook for the students of Old French. Based on Dr Einhorn's very successful introductory lecture course for undergraduates, this book describes the phonology, morphology and syntax of standard Old French, paying attention also to the main dialect forms. There are numerous examples in the text; the book also gives representative passages of some length, and a glossary. Students taking university courses and scholars teaching themselves should find in this book an ideal combination of features in a handy format.

Les ouvrages d''envergure portant sur l''histoire de la langue française ont plus de cinquante ans et se caractérisent par une approche largement a-théorique. Plus de cent ans après le début de la parution de l''ouvrage monumental de F. Brunot, la Grande Grammaire Historique du Français a l''ambition de rendre compte de l''évolution du français dans son ensemble, en s''appuyant sur les acquis des recherches descriptives et théoriques des dernières décennies. Elle présente par ailleurs plusieurs aspects novateurs. C''est un ouvrage conçu par thèmes et non pas par siècles, et qui intègre l''ensemble des grands domaines reconnus actuellement par la linguistique (phonétique / phonologie, graphies, morphologie, syntaxe, sémantique, énonciation, lexique, ainsi que l''histoire externe). De plus, la Grande Grammaire Historique du Français s''appuie sur un corpus raisonné de treize millions de mots. La prise en compte de ce corpus et la quantification systématique de certains faits permettent une mise en rapport étroite entre variation et changement, l''interaction entre les deux constituant la clé de voûte de l''évolution du français.

Title taken from Christie's London; named after Philippe Languet and the de la Grange family, who owned the manuscript since at least the 16th century Rubricated in red; 3 small and 6 large miniatures with full borders.
Handwritten notes in French on first pages
Contains prayers; records of the de la Grange family from the 16th and 17th centuries; Philippe Languet's family birth and deaths Miniatures may be the work of a local Burgundian illuminator.
https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/2005/beyond-words

5 volumes. Diced calf binding with double gilt fillets. Spine decorated in gilt. Two red morocco spine leather pieces with partial title and tome number in gilt. Turkish Combed pattern marbled endpapers. Red and blue paste colored edges. Running titles; head-pieces; guide words; signatures; side-notes.

Though Latin dominated medieval written culture, vernacular traditions nonetheless started to develop in Europe in the eleventh century. This volume offers six essays devoted to the practices, habits, and preferences of scribes making manuscripts in their native tongue. Featuring French, Frisian, Icelandic, Italian, Middle High German, and Old English examples, these essays discuss the connectivity of books originating in the same linguistic space. Given that authors, translators, and readers advanced vernacular written culture through the production and consumption of texts, how did the scribes who copied them fit into this development?