{"id":303,"date":"2025-11-13T15:35:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T15:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/learninganglofrench\/?page_id=303"},"modified":"2025-11-17T16:39:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T16:39:51","slug":"anglo-french","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/learninganglofrench\/anglo-french\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Anglo-French&#8217;?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The label \u2018Anglo-French\u2019 (found in our project title) may be unfamiliar to readers.&nbsp;When pressed, we usually define \u2018Anglo-French\u2019 as\u202f<strong>the French language as used in Britain in the centuries following the Norman Conquest<\/strong>, but&nbsp;it is worth noting that the terminology to describe this distinctive variety of French is far from&nbsp;uniform.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Users of French in medieval Britain typically describe the language that they use as either <em>fran\u00e7ais<\/em>\u202f(\u2018French\u2019) or\u202f<em>romanz<\/em>\u202f(\u2018Romance\u2019). In academic circles, however, the predominant term used to describe the form of French used in the British Isles during the medieval period has, since the 19th century, been\u202f<strong>\u2018Anglo-Norman\u2019<\/strong>. The term has a strong institutional pedigree, associated with both the\u202f<a href=\"http:\/\/anglo-norman-texts.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Anglo-Norman Text Society<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(which publishes editions of texts in French from medieval Britain) and the\u00a0closely-related\u202f<a href=\"http:\/\/anglo-norman.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Anglo-Norman Dictionary<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0In\u00a0the first half of the twentieth century,\u00a0\u2018Anglo-Norman\u2019 was occasionally used to\u00a0refer specifically to French\u00a0from\u00a0the Norman Conquest to the loss of Normandy to the Kingdom of France in 1204, with the term \u2018Anglo-French\u2019\u00a0used to\u00a0designate\u00a0the language as used\u00a0after the events of 1204.\u00a0On this account, \u2018Anglo-French\u2019 was\u00a0characterised\u00a0by a greater degree of influence from continental French dialects, in keeping with the received wisdom that the language rapidly ossified and declined in use in Britain from the thirteenth century\u00a0onwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recent years, however, have seen a wholesale reassessment of the status of French in later medieval Britain, as the corpus of sources discussed by historians and linguists has expanded beyond literary works to pay greater attention to administrative, diplomatic, didactic, and legal texts.\u00a0The language of decline and demise\u00a0has\u00a0largely been\u00a0abandoned.\u00a0Instead, current research broadly agrees on three principles: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>the multilingualism of medieval Europe requires us to think about languages functioning in contact rather than in competition; <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the French used in Britain\u00a0formed part of the medieval French dialect continuum;\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>a mounting body of evidence demonstrates that the use of French in Britain flourished and spread well into the fourteenth century, and that the language retained multiple cultural and professional roles\u00a0right\u00a0into the Early Modern period.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>New&nbsp;paradigms call forth new terminologies, and&nbsp;questions have been raised about the implications of \u2018Anglo-Norman\u2019 as an umbrella term.&nbsp;Specifically, it implies&nbsp;a&nbsp;privileged&nbsp;relationship withthe Norman dialect, with the British variety an isolated descendant, distanced from other&nbsp;Continental dialects.&nbsp;This&nbsp;model reinforces unhelpful ideas about&nbsp;its&nbsp;supposed eccentricity&nbsp;and&nbsp;places undue emphasis on the Conquest and its aftermath,&nbsp;rather than the&nbsp;subsequent&nbsp;centuries in which the bulk of surviving texts were produced.&nbsp;Thus, while many scholars have been happy to extend the label \u2018Anglo-Norman\u2019 to the whole medieval period,&nbsp;others have felt the need to search for alternative terminology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this spirit, a\u00a02009 chapter by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne\u00a0coined the term\u202f<strong>\u2018French of England\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0to\u00a0\u2018embrace medieval\u00a0francophony\u00a0in England, from the eleventh century to the fifteenth\u2019\u00a0in a way that tied it more clearly to the full\u00a0linguistic spectrum of the francophone world. Nevertheless, as Wogan-Browne herself acknowledges,\u00a0talking about \u2018the French of England\u2019 runs the risk of overlooking its use in Scotland,\u00a0Ireland\u00a0and Wales. Indeed, the use of the language in these regions has begun to see sustained attention in recent years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another term\u00a0found in scholarship, which\u00a0may appear to sidestep the overemphasis on England, is \u2018<strong>Insular French<\/strong>\u2019.\u00a0Yet this name\u00a0may be swapping one problem for another: while more capacious in acknowledging the language\u2019s use\u00a0across the British Isles, both literally and connotationally it\u00a0threatens to reinforce the old unhelpful idea of\u00a0its exceptionality\u00a0with regard to Continental dialects. (Moreover, it may\u00a0itself\u00a0obscure\u00a0differences in the uses and values of French across different regions of the British Isles, an issue that is only now beginning to be considered in scholarship<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We make no&nbsp;pretence&nbsp;that&nbsp;<strong>Anglo-French<\/strong>&nbsp;is a perfect solution to the question of terminology.<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>It suffers to an extent from&nbsp;some of the objections to&nbsp;<strong>French of England&nbsp;<\/strong>and&nbsp;<strong>Insular French&nbsp;<\/strong>discussed above. Nevertheless, we adopt it&nbsp;as an acceptable compromise between&nbsp;accuracy (it&nbsp;designates&nbsp;a dialect&nbsp;of French&nbsp;whose particularities derive in large part from contact with English),&nbsp;intelligibility&nbsp;(its&nbsp;scope&nbsp;is&nbsp;immediately&nbsp;graspable)&nbsp;and&nbsp;convenience&nbsp;(it is&nbsp;quick&nbsp;to write&nbsp;and read).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our conception of the competing terms \u2013\u00a0Anglo-Norman\u2019,\u00a0\u2018Anglo-French\u2019,\u00a0\u2018 Insular\u00a0French\u2019 and \u2018the French of England\u2019 \u2013 is that they can be\u00a0used and\u00a0understood\u00a0largely interchangeably.\u00a0In a recent review of a volume of essays entitled\u202f<em>The French of Medieval<\/em>\u202f<em>England<\/em>, Ardis Butterfield stresses that \u2018terms, especially retrospective\u00a0ones, are partial and provisional, and there is no point insisting on only one.\u2019\u202fIn a similar vein,\u00a0we hope that our term of choice \u2014\u00a0<strong>Anglo-French<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 will be understood\u00a0as a statement\u00a0of open dialogue rather than of dogmatic\u00a0conviction.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<details class=\"wp-block-details has-light-green-cyan-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow\"><summary>Further Reading<\/summary>\n<ul>\n<li>Keith Busby, <em>French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two Worlds<\/em> (Brepols, 2017)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ardis Butterfield, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/27292871?seq=1\">review<\/a> of &#8216;<em>The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne<\/em>&#8216;, <em>Speculum<\/em> 96 (2021), 813-16<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Carolyn Collette and Thelma Fenster, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.7722\/j.ctt1pwt4h2.7\">&#8216;Introduction: Recognizing the French of Medieval England&#8217;<\/a>, in The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ed. by Carolyn Collette and Thelma Fenster (Boydell &amp; Brewer, 2017), pp.&nbsp;1-12<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Matthew Si\u00f4n Lampitt, <a href=\"https:\/\/liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk\/doi\/full\/10.1093\/fs\/knac119\">&#8216;The &#8216;French of Wales&#8217;? Possibilities, approaches, implications&#8217;<\/a>, <em>French Studies<\/em> 76 (2022), 333-49<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ian Short, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brepolsonline.net\/doi\/abs\/10.1484\/J.RPH.1.103932\">&#8216;<em>Deinz certeins boundes<\/em>: where does Anglo-Norman begin and end?&#8217;<\/a>, <em>Romance Philology <\/em>67 (213), 139-77<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.7722\/j.ctt81zsz.7\">&#8216;General Introduction: What&#8217;s in a Name: The &#8216;French&#8217; of &#8216;England&#8221;<\/a>, in <em><em>Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100-c.1500<\/em><\/em>, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (York Medieval Press, 2009), pp.&nbsp;1-14<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\">Feature image: &#8216;The first rule techeth to wrtyte, the second to rede, the thryde to understand; and also hit techeth many dyfferencez of Frensche.&#8217; Cambridge, Trinity College, Wren Library, MS B.14.39-40, fol.&nbsp;139r<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The label \u2018Anglo-French\u2019 (found in our project title) may be unfamiliar to readers.&nbsp;When pressed, we usually define \u2018Anglo-French\u2019 as\u202fthe French language as used in Britain in the centuries following the Norman Conquest, but&nbsp;it is worth noting that the terminology to describe this distinctive variety of French is far from&nbsp;uniform.&nbsp; Users of French in medieval Britain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1301,"featured_media":323,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-sidebar-boxed-feature-img.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;Anglo-French&#039;? 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