Introduction : London's languages and translingual writing -- Chaucer's polyglot dwellings : home and the customs house -- Overseas travel and languages in motion -- Translingual identities in John Gower and William Caxton -- Travel and language contact in The book of Margery Kempe -- Merchant compilations and translingual creation -- Coda : contact literatures, medieval/postcolonial
Summary
This book offers fresh approaches to the multilingualism of major early English authors like Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, Margery Kempe, and William Caxton, and lesser-known figures like French lyricist Charles d'Orléans. Juxtaposing literary works with contemporaneous Latin and French civic records, mixed-language merchant miscellanies, and bilingual phrasebooks, the author illustrates how language comingled in late medieval and early modern cities. -- Page 4 of cover
