Medieval Lit Vocab List

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Celitic

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1200-800 bc; Proto-Celtic or "Common Celtic”, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in central Gaul.

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Indo-European

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genetic relationships, meaning that all members are presumed to be descendants of a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. Membership in the various branches, groups and subgroups or Indo-European is also genetic, but here the defining factors are shared innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups.

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P-Celtic

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Gaulish (Gaullish spoken up until 4 AD in Switz/Belgium?german/Gaul) with Brythonic (Welsh/Latin)

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Q-Celtic

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Goidelic (Irish, Gaelic, and Manx) with Celtiberian (extinct after 2nd bce in Iberian Peninsula)

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Old Irish

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6th- 10th ce; the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are possessed. the ancestor of Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man).

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Middle Irish

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10th- 12th ce; the ancestor of Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man). However, it is quite distinct from these. Broadly speaking, the grammar and sound systems of the modern languages are simpler than those of Old Irish.

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Modern Irish

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after 12th ce; Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland; Gaedhilge; originally this was the genitive of Gaedhealg, the form used in classical Modern Irish; both Early Modern Irish and Classical Gaelic

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Scottish Gaelic

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12th ce; Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, and is distinct from the Brythionic branch of the Celtic languages, which includes Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Scottish, Manx and Irish Gaelic (collectively called the "Goidelic languages") are all descended from Middle Irish, and share an ancestry going back to Old Irish and Primitive Irisih

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Old Welsh

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9th until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from the British language around 550, has been called "Primitive Welsh".[1]

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Middle Welsh

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12th to 14th centuries; indo-european/ celtic/ brythonic

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MIddle Breton

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12th-17th ce; an extinct language of Brittany, France. Middle Breton

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Modern Breton

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After 1600; Indo-European to Celtic to Brthonic to Modern Breton spoken in Brittany, France

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Romance

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continuation of Vulgar Latin; Indo-European comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome

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Classical Latin

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2nd BCE- 4th ce; “latinitas”: good latin not used for the masses; characterized in late roman empire

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Vulgar Latin

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unwritten varieties of Latin spoken mainly by the uneducated and therefore illiterate populations governed by the Roman republic and the empire; Romana lingua

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Medieval Latin

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4th-6th ce; medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration.

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Old French

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10th to 14th ce. Romance dialect continuum known as the langue d'oïl (oïl language); indo-european to romance to old french; Gaulish, Frankish, and Latin all influenced it

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Old English

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5-12th ce; spoken in England and south-eastern Scotland . What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon; West Germanic language is closely related to Old Frisian & Old Norse a member of the related North Germanic group of languages.

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Middle English

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late 11th century and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English; has no standard language, only dialects which derive from the dialects of the same regions in the Anglo-Saxon period.

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Modern English

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1550; standardized vocabulary; indo-European/Germanic/ Anglo-frisian/ anglic

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motif

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recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the piece’s major themes. The narrative motif is the vehicle by means of which the narrative theme is conveyed.[1] The motif can be an idea, an object, a place or a statement.

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Stith Thompson

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American scholar of folklore and the "Thompson" of the Aarne-Thompson classification system.

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calumniated wife

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ex-wife eats babies

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Feudal

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certain traditional obligations between members of the warrior aristocracy

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fin amors/ courtly love

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an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment that now seems contradictory, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent".The lover (idolizer) accepts the independence of his mistress and tries to make himself worthy of her by acting bravely and honorably (nobly) and by doing whatever deeds she might desire. Sexual satisfaction, Paris said, may not have been a goal or even end result, but the love was not entirely Platonic either, as it was based on sexual attraction

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topos

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Latin locus: standardization of an argument; For example, oral histories passed down from pre-historic societies contain literary aspects, characters, or settings which appear again and again in stories from ancient civilizations, religious texts, and even more modern stories.

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liminality

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līmen, meaning "a threshold". The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives.[ People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal.

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Augustine

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(354-430) grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom and framed the concepts of original sin and just war; libido affected Adam and Eve’s intelligence, will and sexual desires which put them into original sin; agreed with the six day creation structure in Genesis

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Andreas Cappellanus

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De amore ("About Love")/ The Art of Courtly Love. It ennobles both the lover and the beloved, provided that certain codes of behaviour are respected. It describes the affection between spouses as an unrelated emotion, stating that "true love can have no place between husband and wife", although they may feel even "immoderate affection" for one another. Rather, the most ennoblinng love is generally secret (i.e., not public), extremely difficult to obtain and unconsummated, serving as a means for inspiring men to great deeds.

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Victor Turner

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cultural anthropologist who studied Arnold van Gennep's theory of liminality; in liminality, the transitional state between two phases, individuals were "betwixt and between": they did not belong to the society that they previously were a part of and they were not yet reincorporated into that society. Liminality is a limbo, an ambiguous period characterized by humility, seclusion, tests, sexual ambiguity, and communitas. Communitas is defined as an unstructured community where all members are equal.

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Claude Levi-Strauss

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Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity."; father of modern anthropology

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Vulgate Bible

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early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible, largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. By the 13th century this revision had come to be called the versio vulgata, that is, the "commonly used translation",[1] and ultimately it became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible in the Catholic Church.

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oral composition/ transmission

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the mechanism whereby some oral poets are able to improvise poetry; and why orally improvised poetry has the characteristics it does.

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formula

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an expression which is regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea and that by linking these in conventionalized ways, they can rapidly compose verse.

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minstrel

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15th-20th ce medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories about distant places or about real or imaginary historical events. Though minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty and high society.

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incremental repetition

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method for learning and retaining information from reading that might otherwise be forgotten. It is particularly targeted to people who are trying to learn a large amount of information at once, particularly if that information is varied.

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folklore

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it contains religious or mythic elements, concerning itself with the sometimes mundane traditions of everyday life.It ties the practical and the esoteric into one narrative package, often being conflated with mythology because it has been assumed that any figurative story that does not pertain to the dominant beliefs of the time is not of the same status as those dominant beliefs. both "myth" and "folklore" have become catch-all terms for all figurative narratives which do not correspond with the dominant belief structure.

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Lallans/ Lowlands Scots

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1700 +;a variant of the Scots word lawlands meaning the lowlands of Scotland, was also traditionally used to refer to the Scots language as a whole.More recent interpretations assume it refers to the dialects of south and central Scotland and Doric, a term once used to refer to Scots dialects in general, is now generally seen to refer to the Scots dialects of north east Scotland.

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Francis James Child

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the first person to hold the title of Professor of English at Harvard University he also assembled, from a comparative study of manuscripts and printed sources, what came to be known as the 305 canonical Child Ballads and their numerous variants, published in five volumes.

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Improv/ Memorial transmission

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Scholars who have applied the "oral-formulaic" theory to Anglo-Saxon poetry have imported with the theory a notion that "oral tradition" implies improvisation. but orally improvised poetry into the category of "lettered tradition." This distinction fails to consider a third category, memorial transmission, which is subject to traditional alterations but differs from improvisation in its effort to preserve a text in verbal detail, not merely in thematic outline. Because neither advocates nor critics of the oral-formulaic theory for Anglo-Saxon poetry have considered the possibility of memorial transmission, an important source of evidence has been ignored: the Anglo-Saxon poems extant in more than one manuscript. One group, obviously transmitted scribally, serves as a "control group." The evidence for memorial transmission thus supports the existence of an Anglo-Saxon oral tradition, but denies that the tradition was improvisational.

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theme

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unifying aspect of the work that tells an idea about life

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etymology

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the study of the history of words & how their meaning has changed over time

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Mabinogion

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Anonymous; 1100 CE, except for Culhch which is 1050; manuscripts are 1300-1400; written in Middle Welsh

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Les Lais

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Marie de France; 1160-99; Old French

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Percival, Lancelot, Yvain, and Erec/Enide

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Chretien de Troyes; 1170-90; Old French

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Queste de san Graal

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Anonymous; 1225; Old French

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Tristan

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Gottfried von Strassburg; 1210; Mid/High German

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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Anonymous; 1375; Middle English

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le Morte de Arthur

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Sir Thomas Malory; 1470; Middle English

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Germanic

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Proto-Germanic spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC;Indo-European