The volume aims to convey an impression of the richness and fascination of Romance Philology and the infinite variety of the contours and contents of the field of Romance Studies. The author was less concerned with developing novel theoretical models, but rather wanted to trace the manifestations of the most important stages in the development of the subject area and a " wherever possible a " to complement them with his own contributions.

This volume completes the ALexicon of Romance Linguistics (LRL)A, the publication of which began in 1988. Alongside the Introduction, Vol. VIII contains a list of the contents of all 8 volumes (or 12 part-volumes) and indexes of maps and illustrations, abbreviations, and the reviews of the work that have appeared so far. Further it provides an index of names, subjects, and references, plus a detailed bibliography organized in line with the sequence in which languages and language areas are dealt with by the ALRLA.

The study is dedicated to the exploration of the language employed in Old French official documents from the Luxembourg area. First, it provides an edition of all the original documents in Old French pertaining to the governments of Countess Ermesindes (1226-1247) and Count Henry V (1247-1281) of Luxembourg. In addition, it offers a detailed analysis of the language of these documents and thus represents a contribution to historical linguistics research on scriptae. Accordingly, the methods employed are a combination of historical and linguistic (drawing on the methods used for analysis of text varieties); they are used to investigate the written idioms of 13th century Northeast France. The study contains extensive material on the scriptae of the Middle Ages.