Join the Esperanto and Endangered Language Languages for our amazing guest Speaker, Dr Edward Mills!
"
The business of French in medieval England
In England during 14th and 15th centuries, French wasn’t simply a subject to suffer through at school – it was the key to social advancement, and to a high-paying career. It’s long been recognised that much ‘English’ literature from the centuries immediately after the Norman Conquest was written in French, but only more recently has our attention turned to the ‘persistence’ of French in later centuries. How did French remain so prominent for so long, and what exactly was taught in the centuries before Studio, Encore Tricolore, and Édito? In this talk, we’ll be piecing together the surviving evidence to follow in the footsteps of John, a (lightly-fictionalised) 12-year-old who’s been hitting the books in 1400s Oxford. What has he been learning? Who’s been teaching him? Where does he want to go, and why will it help him to know about hairnets?"
Please contact me (Danilo) if you have any questions!