The dialectal provenance of London, Wellcome Library, MS 5262
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Date
2014
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
This paper takes into consideration the language found in London, Wellcome Library, MS 5262, a
one-volume codex from the early fifteenth century which holds a medical recipe collection. The
manuscript, written in Middle English (and with a few fragments in Latin), represents a fine
exemplar of a remedybook, a type of writing that has been traditionally considered to be popular.
The main aim is to study the dialect of the text contained in folios 3v-61v in order to localise it
geographically.
The methodology followed for the purpose is grounded on the model supplied by the Linguistic
Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME) (McIntosh et al. 1986), which consists of several
stages including the completion of a survey questionnaire, the creation of the linguistic profile of
the text and the application of the ‘fit’-technique (McIntosh et al. 1986, vol. 1: 10-12; Benskin
1991). Extralinguistic features of the manuscript may also be taken into consideration. This comprehensive
analysis will help us to circumscribe the dialectal provenance and/or local origin of the
text accurately.
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Sponsor
The present research has been funded by the Autonomous Government of Andalusia (grant
number P07-HUM-02609) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant number
FFI2011-26492).
Keywords
dialect, provenance, Middle English, MS Wellcome 5262, LALME
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 49.3 (2014), pp. 79-90