Reddit reviews A Book of Middle English
We found 5 Reddit comments about A Book of Middle English. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Reddit reviews A Book of Middle EnglishWe found 5 Reddit comments about A Book of Middle English. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
This site provides a decent overview of the grammar, pronunciation, and some vocabulary.
My history professor recommended what I believe was this title, but I never followed through with her advice, so I can't speak to its usefulness or quality.
Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer page has a lot of good, but dated resources for Middle English. There are also YouTube videos of varying quality. I have picked up this book but haven't gotten past the first few chapters yet: A Book of Middle English, Third Edition
A Book of Middle English by J.A. Burrow and Thorlac Turville-Petre is a great resource if you're looking for a book.
There are not many grammars of OE out there that cover syntax. If you want a quick overview for beginners, you could read the first half of Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson's Guide to OE. Mitchell, who recently died, was the expert on syntax (If you want all the details, check out his two-volume Old English Syntax from the library.). You will find most other grammars of OE cover phonology and morphology and that's about it. There is, however, a small section in Lass's OE: A Historical Linguistic Companion.
As for Middle English, I don't know the bibliography as well, but the introductory Book of ME by Burrow and Turville-Petre have a short section on syntax.
I'm pretty sure my copy of Gawain had Pearl and Patience in it too. I'll dig around when I get home. No wait, it's on Amazon, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gawain-Cleanness-Patience-Everymans-Library/dp/0460875108, but very out-of-print looking.
This was my Middle English text book at university - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Middle-English-J-Burrow/dp/1405117095 - along with support from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Early-Middle-English-Verse-Prose/dp/0198711018 (which also looks horribly out of print). I think you get The Owl and the Nightingale in the latter.
Not sure with any of those links whether they'll speak to your desire to follow the word into modern spelling - generally they're more interested in the meaning. But one of the details I loved while studying was watching the same word find a new definition; here's people arguing over whether beer (sorry, beor) is cider or not. http://www.tha-engliscan-gesithas.org.uk/gegaderung/index.php?topic=391.0