Call for Anglo-Norman papers

Call for Papers:

Anglo-Norman Texts, Language and Contexts

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary (www.anglo-norman.net) is interested in sponsoring a session or series of sessions at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2014 (see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/) devoted to new research on Anglo-Norman texts and their contexts. We will present papers on the subject, but are looking for further contributors.
We are particularly interested in hearing about new texts, new editions of texts, and texts that fall outside of the literary context. Paper topics could include, but are not limited to:

the use of Anglo-Norman in literary and non-literary contexts
the intended audience of Anglo-Norman texts throughout the medieval period
the transmission of Anglo-Norman texts
the revision, annotation or translation of Anglo-Norman texts
the inclusion of Anglo-Norman with texts in other languages
the manuscript context of Anglo-Norman works
the use of Anglo-Norman outside England

If you are interested, please contact us, the session organizers, at anglonormandictionary@gmail.com by September 15 2013, with a short summary of your proposal.

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Word of the month: Nice! An Anglo-Norman insult.

English speakers may be surprised to learn that the etymology of nice is not very nice at all and that its semantic development is unparalleled in the Romance languages. This word, which style guides recommend that you avoid as it both ubiquitous and nearly devoid of all meaning, has a most complicated semantic evolution. The word nice is attested quite early in French – ca 1160 and has its roots in the Latin nescius , an adjective meaning ‘ignorant, unknowing’. [1] The word was used in French (and other Romance languages) in Middle English (c. 1400) to disparage people, actions and sayings as silly or foolish. This is the meaning the word retained in the Romance languages, though in French the word is rather uncommon today though you may find it in some older texts to refer to someone as simple or naive, such as those the TLF cites: Un brave homme, un peu nice, appelé Monthyon ( Pommier, Colères, 1844 , p.66) The semantic development of the word nice in English...

Word of the month: nuncheon

It is mid-afternoon and the editorial team of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary is producing XML files of the latest batch of new entries for N-. They have been sitting in front of their computers and processing the data for about six hours now, and their typing fingers are noticeably slowing down. It is still too early to call it a day, but minds are inevitably beginning to wander. Fortunately, a resolution for the growing three-o’clock malaise is found in the Oxford English Dictionary under the word ‘ nuncheon ’, that is, ‘a drink taken in the afternoon; a light refreshment between meals; a snack’. ‘Nuncheon’ is a word labelled as archaic or regional – the sort of vocabulary encountered in nineteenth-century novels: Sir Walter Scott still wrote ‘I came to get my four-hours’ nunchion from you’ in his novel Fortunes Of Nigel (1822), and in Charlotte Mary Yonge’s Love and Life (1880) a sister tells her siblings ‘I will give you some bread and cheese and gingerbread for noonchin ’. ...

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