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HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Teaching Staff

VALERIA DI CLEMENTE - Module ANTICO - L-LIN/12 - 3 CFU
MASSIMO STURIALE - Module MEDIOTARDO - L-LIN/12 - 6 CFU

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Learning Objectives

• ANTICO
  

  The students will be able to individuate and recognise the main development stages of the English language and its written expression in the old and middle period (c. seventh to thirteenth century)
  

• MEDIOTARDO
  

  The History of the English Language course aims to equip students with the skills, insights and appropriate theoretical approaches necessary to analyse and describe changes in the structure of English from the earliest written records to the present day. Students will also be encouraged to explore historical linguistics within a framework of cultural analysis which will allow them to relate changes in the structure of English to the sociocultural contexts in which those changes occur.

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Detailed Course Content

• ANTICO
  

  Angles, Saxons and Jutes in Britain. Traditional culture and Roman-Christian culture. The Scandinavian influence. Old English. The Conquest and its consequences. From Old English to Middle English. Middle English.

• MEDIOTARDO
  

  Early and Late Modern English

  "From the Early to the Late Modern Period: Shaping the language”

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Textbook Information

• ANTICO
  

  1) N. Francovich Onesti, L'inglese dalle origini a oggi. Le vicende di una lingua, Roma 1988 (e seguenti)

  2) Supplementary materials

• MEDIOTARDO
  

  Module 1

  1. D. Freeborn, From Old English to Standard English. A Course Book in Language Variation across Time, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2006.

  Selected texts

  2) G. Chaucer, “The General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales (1385);

  3) W. Caxton, Prologue to Eneydos (1490);

  4) T. Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique (1553);

  5) J. Cheke, Letter to Hoby (1557);

  6) G. Pettie, The Civile Conversation of M. Stephen Guazzo (1586)

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