Essays on the complexity of multilingualism in medieval England. Professor Jocelyn Wogan-Browne's scholarship on the French of England - a term she indeed coined for the mix of linguistic, cultural, and political elements unique to the pluri-lingual situation of medieval England - is of immenseimportance to the field. The essays in this volume extend, honour and complement her path-breaking work. They consider exchanges between England and other parts of Britain, analysing how communication was effected where languagesdiffered, and probe cross-Channel relations from a new perspective. They also examine the play of features within single manuscripts, and with manuscripts in conversation with each other. And they discuss the continuing reach ofthe French of England beyond the Middle Ages: in particular, how it became newly relevant to discussions of language and nationalism in later centuries. Whether looking at primary sources such as letters and official documents, orat creative literature, both religious and secular, the contributions here offer fruitful and exciting approaches to understanding what the French of England can tell us about medieval Britain and the European world beyond. Thelma Fenster is Professor Emerita of French and Medieval Studies, Fordham University; Carolyn Collette is Professor of English Language and Literature at Mount Holyoke College. Contributors: Christopher Baswell,Emma Campbell, Paul Cohen, Carolyn Collette, Thelma Fenster, Robert Hanning, Richard Ingham, Maryanne Kowaleski, Serge Lusignan, Thomas O'Donnell, W. Mark Ormrod, Monika Otter, Felicity Riddy, Delbert Russell, Fiona Somerset, +Robert M. Stein, Andrew Taylor, Nicholas Watson, R.F. Yeager

Fruits of the most recent research on the worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal furthers the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research on the early and central Middle Ages, focusing on the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds.The topics of the essays range from the complexities of landholding and service in England after the Norman Conquest and the place of Portugal in the legal renaissance of the twelfth century, to the purpose and audiences of copiesof Anglo-Saxon charters produced by the late medieval community at Bury St Edmunds. There is an investigation of the hitherto overlooked narrative role of material objects in Orderic Vitalis'History, continuing the Journal's investigation of source-specific analyses, together with an exploration of the date and reliability of an important, but neglected, witness to the Norman conquest of Sicily. Other essays look at the longue duree of the ascetic practice of self-flagellation and its emergence in eleventh-century Italy; the place and meaning of religious practices in crusading, using the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi as laboratory; and aural and visual experience in the life and musical opus of Godric of Finchale. Contributors: Howard B. Clarke, Sarah Foot, John Howe, Monika Otter, Daniel Roach, Charles D. Stanton, Susanna A. Throop, Andre Vitoria.

Late eleventh-century spiritual counsel for a woman recluse, anticipating medieval advice literature for anchoresses. Goscelin's Liber Confortatorius is extraordinary both as an example of high-medieval spiritual practice and as a record of a personal relationship. Written in about 1083 by the monk Goscelin to a protegee and personal friend, the recluse Eva, it takes up the tradition of St Jerome's letters of spiritual guidance to women, and anticipates medieval advice literature for anchoresses. As a compendious treatise, it has much to tell us about the intellectual interests and preoccupations of religious people in the late eleventh century. As a personal document, it allows a fascinating and uncommonly intimate insight into the psychology of religious life and the relationships betweenmen and women in the high middle ages. This English translation is presented here with notes and introduction. Monika Otter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College.