Mugglestone - The Oxford History of English
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Alice’s usage is of interest for a number of reasons, not least because her spelling—while bearing in mind the oft-cited complexity of the relationship between written and spoken modes—seems to relate fairly closely to what we can reconstruct of contemporary pronunciation. Thus the stressed vowels in gud (‘good’) in line 5 and knawlyge (‘knowledge’) in line 8 seem to reXect the fronted reXexes of the Old English long vowels o¯ and a¯ which are characteristic of Northern English accents both during the Middle English period and in the present day. Similarly typical of Northern speech would be a voiceless alveolar fricative consonant [s] in place of the palato-alveolar [$] in shall, represented in the spelling sall (‘shall’, ‘must’) in line 8. Analysis of Cusack’s collection not only shows that a dialect map of the early modern period along the lines of the LALME would not be impossible; it also shows that it is possible to reconstruct something of the informal and dialectal speech which mapped onto this writing.
Nevertheless, such an enterprise would depend much more on such ‘everyday English’ as Cusack has collected than on the major literary texts which form the core of LALME’s analyses. Public writing during the period is comparatively more homogeneous, for the reasons Xagged above, and there is good evidence that the elaboration of English during the period correlated with the emergence of prestigious forms of pronunciation.
The clearest statement to this eVect is in the famous chapter ‘Of Language’ in The Arte of English Poesie (1589) by the Tudor courtier-critic George Puttenham (c1520–90). The poet, advises Puttenham, should avoid the usages of ‘marches and frontiers, or in port townes, where straungers haunt for traYke sake’; also to be avoided are the ‘peeuish aVectation of words out of the primatiue languages’ used by scholars in the universities, or the usage of ‘poore rusticall or vnciuill people’, or
the speach of a craftes man or carter, or other of the inferiour sort, though he be inhabitant or bred in the best towne and Citie in this Realme, for such persons doe abuse good speaches by strange accents or ill shapen soundes, and false ortographie. But he shall follow generally the better brought vp sort, such as the Greekes call [charientes] men
5ciuill and graciously behauoured and bred. Our maker [i.e. poet] therfore at these dayes shall not follow Piers plowman nor Gower nor Lydgate nor yet Chaucer, for their language is now out of vse with vs: neither shall he take the termes of Northern-men, such as they
vse in dayly talke, whether they be noble men or gentlemen, or of their best clarkes all is a matter: nor in eVect any speech vsed beyond the riuer of Trent, though no man can deny
10that theirs is the purer English Saxon at this day, yet it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our Southerne English is, no more is the far Westerne mans speech: ye shall therfore take the vsuall speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within lx. Myles, and not much aboue. I say not this but that in euery shyre of England
there be gentlemen and others that speake but specially write as good Southerne as we of 15 Middlesex or Surrey do, but not the common people of euery shire, to whom the
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gentlemen, and also their learned clarkes do for the most part condescend, but herein we are already ruled by th’English Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men, and therefore it needeth none other direction in that behalfe.
The passage is of considerable interest for a number of reasons. It indicates a codifying stage in the standardization of English (the ‘bookes written by learned men’ of line 17), an awareness of linguistic change (see lines 5–7), and a sense that non-standard varieties have certain archaic features (see lines 10–14). It also suggests that a ‘standard’ usage has yet to penetrate beyond the River Trent even among ‘noble men and gentlemen’. But most importantly for our purposes, it signals the existence in towns of a class structure correlating with speech—including matters of accent (we might note the reference in the opening lines to the ‘ill shapen sounds’ of the ‘craftes man or carter’). It is therefore permissible to apply, if not all the methods, at least the insights of modern sociolinguistics to the major conurbations of Tudor England—most obviously, to London.
The question arises, though, as to the possibility of detecting class-based accentual distinctions at any earlier date. Puttenham’s account is the most explicit of a number of sixteenth-century comments. John Palsgrave, an early sixteenth-century student of French, refers in 1532 to a pronunciation ‘where the best englysshe is spoken’; the scholar-diplomat Sir Thomas Elyot, in The Boke called the Governour (1531) refers to how a nobleman’s son must ‘speke none englisshe but that which is cleane, polite, perfectly and articulately pronounced’; and Henry Dowes, tutor to Thomas Cromwell’s son, states his charge is learning ‘the natural and true kynde of pronunciation’.8
But there are very few if any such comments from before the beginning of the sixteenth century. Dialect-awareness is used comically in GeoVrey Chaucer’s The Reeve’s Tale, but the comedy in that poem does not depend on social class; if anything, the Northern students belong to a higher social class than the Cambridgeshire miller they fool. In the Wrst half of the Wfteenth century, the Northern shepherds of the WakeWeld Second Shepherds’ Play mock the ‘Sothren tothe’ of the sheep-stealer Mak in his pose as ‘a yoman . . . of the kyng’, but Mak’s ‘tothe’ seems to be characterized by southern English grammar rather than pronunciation, with ich be for I am and ye doth for ye do.
We are therefore forced back on hypotheses based on probabilities and the analysis of historical correspondences; and there are at least indications that a
8 These (and other comments) are discussed in Eric Dobson’s 1955 article, ‘Early Modern Standard English’, Transactions of the Philological Society, 25–54. Reprinted in R. Lass (ed.), Approaches to English Historical Linguistics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 419–39.
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class-based system was beginning to appear in London English. Indeed, the existence of such a system oVers the best hypothesis for the origins of the major phonological distinction between Middle and early modern English: the Great Vowel Shift, which saw a whole series of raisings and diphthongizations of the long vowels of late Middle English in an apparently ordered way. The Shift will be further examined in Chapter 6, so there is no need to examine the detail of its geometry here. But its origins—described as ‘mysterious’ by Stephen Pinker in 1994—lie, it might be argued, in the interaction of usages in late medieval London. (‘Origins’ are here seen as the triggering of the process, as distinct from ‘inception’ as described in the following chapter.)
We know that London underwent a surge in its population during the fourteenth century, and this seems to correspond to the development of ‘Types’ of London English in the latter half of the century which were formulated by Samuels in 1963. Most immigrants into London came from the Midlands; on arrival, they encountered an elite whose usage had a more southerly basis.
From the analysis of rhymes it is possible to reconstruct the various sound systems existing in late medieval London. It is clear that writers such as Chau- cer—an important government oYcial and a member of the royal court—had a distinct sound system from those of Midland writers, most notably in the reXexes of lengthened Middle English short e, o. For Chaucer, as his rhyming practice conWrms, the lengthened forms of these vowels—as in the verb beren (‘to bear’) and forlore (‘abandoned’) respectively—were distinct from the reXexes (i.e. the corresponding forms) of the Old English long vowels e¯a, æ, as in leren (‘to teach’) which derives from Old English læran), and a¯ (which was rounded to /O:/ in accents south of the Humber, as in Chaucer’s loore (‘teaching’) which derives from Old English la¯r). Chaucer can therefore rhyme loore with moore (from Old English ma¯ra, but not with, for example, before (from Old English beforan). However, Midland texts regularly rhyme lengthened e with the reXexes of the Old English long vowels e¯a, æ¯, and lengthened o with the reXex of Old English a¯, giving rhymes such as reade (‘red’): iureden (‘injure’), and of ore (‘mercy’, from Old English a¯r): uorlore (‘abandoned’).
When two phonological systems come into contact, it is usual to expect adjustment to take place. We know from the evidence of present-day soundchanges in progress that very slight diVerences in articulation can have a major systemic eVect as these diVerences are monitored and hyperadaptation—what we can see as ‘overshooting the mark’—follows. If Chaucerian-type usage were accommodating itself to Midland usage, then we would predict a hyperadapted lowering. If, on the other hand, Midland usage were accommodating itself to
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Chaucerian-type usage, then we would predict a hyperadapted raising; and it is of considerable interest that a raising would correlate with the Wrst stage of the Shift.
That the accommodation had a social basis is indicated by what we know of the social structure of late medieval London. London, like other cities, was dominated socially by an oligarchy: a group of richer citizens, of which Chaucer was one. The tale of Dick Whittington, which dates from this period, is essentially a capitalist success story in which the poor hero joins an elite; it is not a revolutionary attack on the existing order. Although the pantomime story is considerably embellished, it does encapsulate an essential truth: successful incomers to London accommodated themselves to the elites who were in power.
Whatever the origins of the Shift, it seems fairly clear that accents had social implications by the late Wfteenth century. Caxton, perhaps, already indicates this, in his prologue to The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1475). This prologue seems to be the Wrst he wrote; it was the Wrst book to be printed in English, in Bruges, before Caxton moved to Westminster in 1476.
. . . I remembryd my self of my symplenes and vnperWghtnes that I had in bothe langages/ that is to wete in frenshe & in englissh for in france was I neuer/ and was born & lerned myn englissh in kente in the weeld [i.e. Kent in the Weald] where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond . . . .
(vnperWghtnes: faultiness, imperfection; wete: be ascribed to)
The passage indicates that the Kentish of the Weald was, for Caxton, a ‘rude’, or ‘low-status’ usage, and it seems likely that this notion of ‘rudeness’ could be applied to pronunciation as to other levels of language. However, the passage does not necessarily indicate that there was a speciWc ‘correct’ usage for him to adopt; he knew what was ‘rude’, but not yet for certain what was polite. The problem was that, just as with the evolution of standard spelling, a particular model of pronunciation had yet to be clearly distinguished at the end of the Wfteenth century.
the arrival of printing
This chapter began with a discussion of the relationship between internal and external approaches to the history of the language; and in this Wnal section we might return to the key ‘external’ event during the Wfteenth century: Caxton’s introduction of printing to England in 1476.
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Fig. 5.1. Caxton’s English: a passage from Caxton’s The Myrrour of the World (Westminster: c 1490; A4v, Sp Coll Hunterian Bv.2.30)
It is of interest that Caxton worries repeatedly in his own prose, from his very Wrst prologue, about the role of the vernacular; it would seem that technological and linguistic innovation go together, and this is signiWcant for the argument of this chapter. It has often been pointed out that Caxton’s success as a printer depended on his linking of supply to demand: if there had been no demand for the books he printed, then Caxton, a shrewd businessman, would not have produced them.
From the discussion above, it is possible to reconstruct where this demand came from: rising folk, aspiring to elite status, who were most at home in the vernacular. The Pastons were such people. Their enemies could think of no more cutting insult than to describe them as ‘churles’, for their origins seem to have been humble. In a lost document dating from the Wfteenth century, the family was founded by ‘one Clement Paston dwellyng in Paston, and he was a good pleyn husbond, and lyvyd upon hys lond yt he has in Paston, and kept yron a
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Plow alle tymes in ye yer’. But as the Pastons rose—they were regularly MPs and courtiers from the 1460s onwards—they developed the courtly tastes for which Caxton was to cater. Caxton Xatters his audience—his books are for ‘noble lordes and ladyes’—but he also claims that the act of translation is so that his work ‘myght be had and vsed emonge the people for thamendement of their maners’; and in his edition of The Royal Book (1488) he tells us that he ‘reduced into englisshe’ the book ‘at the request & specyal desyre of a synguler frende of myn a mercer of london’. Such socially-aspirant mercers—merchant traders, like Caxton himself—were evidently an important part of his clientele. Indeed, they had shown they were eager to engage with courtly culture, even before Caxton provided them with the wherewithal; their ‘mercers’ marks’ are frequently found in major literary manuscripts from the late fourteenth century onwards, for example in MS Oxford, Corpus Christi College B.67, an important early Wfteenth-century manuscript of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. These folk were conscious that manners—perhaps their manners—needed amendment.
Perhaps the best instance of this aspiration towards the courtly is oVered by the career and tastes of Sir John Paston II, an important member of the Paston family whose language has already been discussed on p. 135. John not only took part in 1467 in a famous royal tournament at Eltham—always an occasion for the egregious display of courtly virtues—but he also developed an interest in aristocratic literature. He employed the scribe William Ebesham to compile his ‘Great Book’ of chivalric texts, and he wrote out for his own use a famous ‘List of Books’, which included a number of works Caxton was to print, such as Cicero’s Of Old Age and Of Friendship, and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Foules, and also what appears to be Caxton’s Game and Play of the Chess, printed in Bruges in 1475: ‘a boke jn preente oV ye Pleye of ye < . . . >’. John must have acquired this book soon after it appeared, because he died in 1479; he was clearly part of Caxton’s social network (even though Caxton does not refer to him), for Caxton does refer, in his printing of Cicero’s Of Old Age (1481), to the Pastons’ great patron, Sir John Fastolf. SigniWcantly, John Paston II also owned ‘myn olde boke oV blasonyngys’ and ‘my boke of knyghthod’.
In miniature, the Pastons encapsulate the processes involved in the elaboration of English during the Wfteenth century. For them, and for people like them, English had achieved—or, perhaps more accurately, was achieving—a dignity which made it available for almost every kind of use, both literary and nonliterary; and this functional change had clear implications for the formal development of English in terms of written standardization and lexical augmentation. Moreover, it is worth pointing out that there is a profound connection between this development and the historical and social developments of the
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sixteenth century in which vernacular literacy played so important a role: the English Reformation, and the rise of Elizabethan and Jacobean vernacular culture.
References and Suggestions for Further Reading
Useful overviews of the transition between Middle and early modern English appear in all the standard histories of the language (e.g. Barber (1993), Baugh and Cable (2002), Strang (1970)), although the tendency to split Middle and early modern English between chapters can cause problems of continuity. The relevant volumes of the
Cambridge History of the English Language—speciWcally Blake (1992) and Lass (1999a,
1999b)—are crucial resources for all levels of language, though stronger on ‘internal’ than on ‘external’ history. An older book which still contains much of value is Wyld (1936); Wyld was almost alone in his generation in seeing the history of English as not simply a process of standardization. Explicit connections, at an introductory level, between Middle and early modern English are made in Smith (1999, second edition forthcoming). On questions of form and function in relation to the history of English, see Samuels (1972), Smith (1996a), both of which contain sections on the main levels of language (lexicon, grammar, transmission). For the typology of standardization (elaboration, selection, codiWcation, acceptance), see Haugen (1966), Hudson (1980:
32–4).
A useful resource of texts, with good annotation, is Burnley (1992a). Vernacular documents from the Middle/early modern English transition are printed in Chambers and Daunt (1931), Go¨rlach (1991), and Cusack (1998). These editions (especially the latter two) are particularly useful for students of the history of English since there has been minimal editorial intervention. Modern practice—even, unhappily, in scholarly edi- tions—is to make numerous silent decisions in the editing of Middle and early modern English texts; such decisions can disguise important linguistic features such as punctuation, marks of abbreviation, and even spelling. For contemporary comments on the English language, see Bolton (1966). Important texts by Caxton appear in Blake (1973). Crotch (1928: 109–10) is, with minor modiWcation and annotations, the source of the quotations from Caxton’s Eneydos which appear on pp. 121 and 122–3 of this chapter. The citation from Mulcaster (1582) on p. 121 is taken from Bolton (1966: 10).
Introductions which include relevant material for the transition between Middle and early modern English include Horobin and Smith (2002) and Nevalainen (forthcoming), both part of the Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language series; full references and suggestions for further reading are given in both. The best introduction to Middle English from a literary perspective is Burrow and Turville-Petre (1996); for early modern English, see Barber (1997) and Go¨rlach (1991).
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Lexicon
For word geography, see McIntosh (1973); for some possible approaches, see the articles by Hoad, Lewis, and Fellows Jensen in Laing and Williamson (1994). For the examples of diatopic variation discussed at this point in the chapter, see further Smith (1996a: 180–5). The citation from Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale is taken from Benson (1988: 80). For discussion of stylistic choice, see the important chapters on ‘literary language’ by Burnley and Adamson which appear respectively in Blake (1992) and Lass (1999b). A special study of Chaucerian usage, with wider implications, appears in Burnley (1983).
For aureate diction, see Norton-Smith (1966: 192–5); the quotation from Lydgate is taken from Norton-Smith (1966: 26), and a discussion of nebule appears on p. 194. The Boke of St. Albans was edited by Hands (1975). Eccles (1969) is the source of the extract from Mankind. For the quotations from Skelton, see Kinsman (1969: 4 and 62). Further examples of French loanwords from this period can be found in Strang (1970: 184). The quotation from line 247 of Sir Orfeo can be found in Burrow and Turville-Petre (1996: 121). On questions of meaning and changes in meaning, see still Waldron (1979); also important are Burnley (1983) and Samuels (1972). The main resources for the study of the lexicon (as well as much else) during the period are of course the historical dictionaries: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Middle English Dictionary (MED). Both these resources are now accessible online by subscription, and can be accessed in most university libraries; electronic publication has massively enhanced their functionality. The MED (alongside other resources) may be found at <http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec/>. The OED appears at <http:// dictionary.oed.com/>.
Grammar
On the evolution of grammar during the Middle English/early modern English transition, see Denison (1993) and references there cited. Important discussion is also provided in Samuels (1972). For transmission during this period of transition, see Horobin and Smith (2002, especially chapter 4 and references there cited), for a basic account. Important detailed discussions appear in Barber (1997) and Go¨rlach (1991). The quotation on p. ** from Barbour’s Brus is from Book 1, 487–8, and is cited from Duncan (1997). Wright (1905: 296, §435) provides evidence of the continuance of the Northern Personal Pronoun Rule into the late nineteenth century. Gray (1985: 327) is the source of the quotation on p. 130 from Douglas (line 145). The Guildhall Letter also cited here derives (with minor modiWcations) from Chambers and Daunt (1931: 72–3). For Caxton’s edition of Malory, see Blake (1973); the cited extract can be found on pp. 7–8. The quotation on p. 132 from Lord Berners’ translation of Froissart is taken from Gray (1985: 394), as is
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the extract from the Magdalen College schoolbook (see pp. 276–7). John Paston’s letter to his brother is taken (with minor modiWcations) from Davis (1971: 582, text 355).
Transmission: writing and speech
On written standardization, the best recent published discussion is Benskin (1992), which preWgures a large-scale reassessment of the problem; an extended discussion appears in Benskin (2004). Benskin’s discussion of the spread of colourless usage through the various geographical areas can be found in Benskin (1992: 82–5). However, the most accessible account remains that given in the introduction to LALME. John Fisher’s extensive writings on this issue, for example (1977), should be seen in the light of Benskin’s comments; the anthology of ‘Chancery Standard’ texts by Fisher et al. (1984) should therefore be consulted with care. On the diVerent usages of the Paston brothers, see Davis (1983). The cited extracts from the letters of John Paston II and his brother Walter are, with minor modiWcations, taken from Davis (1971: 516, 644). See also Gomez Solino (1984), the preliminary Wndings for which were reported in Samuels (1981: 43, 52). For an examination of Cheke’s principles of reformed spelling, see Dobson (1968: 43–6). On the spelling systems used in copies of Gower and Nicholas Love, see further Smith (1988b) and Hellinga (1997).
On the standardization of speech, the best account (with full references) remains Dobson (1955), supplemented by materials in Dobson (1968). Wyld (1936) is also important. On applying the insights of sociolinguistics to past states of the language, see Smith (1996a), and also Mugglestone (2003a, especially chapter 1). The First Grammatical Treatise is discussed by Haugen (1972). The extract from Alice RadcliVe’s letter is cited (with minor modiWcations) from Cusack (1988: 232). That from Puttenham is taken (with some minor changes) from Go¨rlach (1991: 237–8).
On the northernisms in The Reeve’s Tale, see Tolkien (1934) and Smith (1995); for the Second Shepherds’ Play, see Cawley (1958: 48, 131). On the origins of the Great Vowel Shift, see Smith (1996a, especially chapter 5). For a discussion of rhyming practice in Middle English, see Smith (1996a: 98) and references there cited. The extract on p. 141 from Caxton’s prologue to The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye is taken (with minor modiWcations) from Crotch (1928: 4).
The arrival of printing
See Febvre and Martin (1976) for a good account of the impact of printing between 1450–1800. For an overview of a range of early printed books, with illustrations, see
<http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/printing/index.html>. The origins of the Paston family are discussed by Davis (1971: p.xli); their designation as ‘churles’ can be found in Davis (1971, text 129). The quotations from Caxton’s The Royal Book, which appears on p. 143 are taken from Crotch (1928).
6
RESTRUCTURING
RENAISSANCE ENGLISH
April McMahon
EARLY modern English (a convenient if slightly amorphous term which covers at least 1500–1700, the two centuries focused on in this chapter) is a period of paradox. It is during early modern English that many features of present-day English were developed and consolidated: caricaturing slightly, this period is a bridge between the dialectal diversity which, as Chapter 4 has indicated, is widely apparent in Middle English, and the striving for order and regularity which, as Chapter 9 will explore, is often seen to be characteristic of the eighteenth-century grammarians and codiWers. However, this same period in-
volves very considerable structural and systemic change.
In this chapter, I shall concentrate on just these structural changes and speciWcally on phonology—the sound system of English, where we see some of the most signiWcant developments of the period. Of course, as earlier chapters in this volume have illustrated, there are many diVerent ways of doing linguistic history, and of Wnding out just what the important changes were. As in Chapter 5, we can look at the practice of individuals which, for this period, will mean examining written documents to see what ‘speakers’ were doing from generation to generation. We can, as the next chapter will show, bring together documents written by a larger number of individuals for the same period into corpora or, in other words, into substantial collections of electronically available and searchable materials. These can then be examined, for example, to assess whether there were linguistic diVerences within a period depending on whether the ‘speaker’ was male or female, was writing for a personal or a public audience, or was communicating about a particular topic. However, in this chapter I shall, for the most