SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction: Sincerity, Language Change and Medieval Literature

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Sincerity in Medieval English Language and Literature

Part of the book series: New Approaches to English Historical Linguistics ((NAEHL))

  • 241 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter introduces sincerity at a conjunction of language history and the history of emotions. Sincerity is defined as an ideal that morally links inward affectivity with outward expression in a way that bears profoundly on English pragmatic and literary-stylistic history.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    It seems likely that Chaucer had encountered a similar statement about language variation and change from Dante , one of his literary and linguistic heroes, perhaps that found in De vulgari eloquentia (see Book I.9), but it should also be recognized that Chaucer is doing more than just repeating what he has read.

  2. 2.

    Thank you to Ms. Georgina Wood for translating this text from the original Italian for me .

  3. 3.

    Linguistic DNA of Modern Western Thought: Modelling Concepts and Semantic Change in English, 1500–1800 is a three-year collaborative research project funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC AH/M00614X/1). The Principal Investigator is Susan Fitzmaurice (Sheffield), with Co-Investigators Michael Pidd (The DHI | Sheffield), Justyna Robinson (Sussex) and Marc Alexander (Glasgow) assisted by three research associates: Fraser Dallachy (Glasgow), Iona Hine and Seth Mehl (Sheffield); technical development is carried out by Matthew Groves and Katherine Rogers (Sheffield) and Brian Aitken (Glasgow). Further details available from: http://linguisticdna.org/.

  4. 4.

    The Augustinian notion apparently continues to influence Christian spirituality, e.g. You Are What You Love : The Spiritual Power of Habit, a recent book by James K. Smith (2016).

  5. 5.

    I could have used Politeness Theory here, but I have for the most part avoided this framework for the purposes of this book, primarily because its usefulness is questionable for medieval Englishes (see Jucker 2010 for Middle English ; Kohnen 2008 for Old English ).

References

Primary Sources (by original author or title)

  • Bede. Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum. Ed. Charles Plummer. 1896. Clarendon: University of Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bede. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of The English People, Ed. Thomas Miller. 1890. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. 1997 (reprint). Ed. Sanford Brown Meech. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis; Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century. 1865. Ed. Churchill Babington. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

Secondary Sources

  • Arnovick, Leslie K. 1999. Diachronic Pragmatics: Seven Case Studies in English Illocutionary Development. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bamberg, Michael. 1997. “Language, Concepts and Emotions: The Role of Language in the Construction of Emotions.” Language Sciences 19(4): 309–340.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benveniste, Émile. 1966. Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bray, Joe. 2014. “Speech and Thought Presentation in Stylistics.” In The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics, edited by Michael Burke, 222–236. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryan, Jennifer. 2008. Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnley, David. 1998. Courtliness and Literature in Medieval England. London/New York: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Claridge, Claudia, and Leslie Arnovick. 2010. “Pragmaticalisation and Discursisation.” In Historical Pragmatics, edited by Andreas Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen, 165–192. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Culpeper, Jonathan, and Jane Demmen. 2011. “Nineteenth-Century English Politeness: Negative Politeness, Conventional Indirect Requests and the Rise of the Individual Self.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12(1–2): 49–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzmaurice, Susan. 2016. “Sincerity and the Moral Reanalysis of Politeness in Late Modern English: Semantic Change and Contingent Polysemy.” In Studies in the History of the English Language VII, edited by Don Chapman, Colette Moore, and Miranda Wilcox, 173–202. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzmaurice, Susan, Justyna A. Robinson, Marc Alexander, Iona C. Hine, Seth Mehl, and Fraser Dallachy. 2017. “Linguistic DNA: Investigating Conceptual Change in Early Modern English Discourse.” Studia Neophilologica (online access).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fludernik, Monika. 2011. “Through a Glass Darkly; or, the Emergence of Mind in Medieval Narrative.” In The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English, edited by David Herman, 69–100. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grady, Joe. 1998. “The ‘Conduit Metaphor’ Revisited: A Reassessment of Metaphors for Communication.” In Discourse and Cognition: Bridging the Gap, edited by Jean-Pierre Koenig, 205–218. Stanford: CSLI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guay, Manuel. 2009. “Du consentement à l’affectio maritalis: quatre mariages princiers (France-Angleterre, 1395–1468).” Revue Historique 311(2): 291–319.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaeger, C. Stephen. 1985. The Origins of Courtliness. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jager, Eric. 1988. “Tempter as Rhetoric Teacher: The Fall of Language in The Old English Genesis B.” Neophilologus 72: 434–448.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jager, Eric. 1990. “Speech and the Chest in Old English Poetry: Orality or Pectorality?” Speculum 65(4): 845–859.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jager, Eric. 1993. The Tempter’s Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joseph, John E. 2005. “The Tongues of Men and of Angels: Knowledge, Inner Speech and Diglossia in Medieval Linguistic Thought.” In Flores Grammaticæ: Essays in Memory of Vivien Law, edited by Nicola McLelland and Andrew R. Linn, 119–139. Münster: Nodus Publikationen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jucker, Andreas H. 2010. “‘In Curteisie Was Set Ful Muchel Hir Lest’: Politeness in Middle English.” In Historical (Im)politeness, edited by Dániel Kádár and Jonathan Culpeper, 175–200. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jucker, Andreas H. 2014. “Courtesy and Politeness in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 49(3): 5–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kádár, Dániel Z. 2013. Relational Rituals and Communication: Ritual Interaction in Groups. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohnen, Thomas. 2008. “Linguistic politeness in Anglo-Saxon England? A Study of Old English Address Terms.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 9(1): 140–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kövecses, Zoltán. 1990. Emotion Concepts. New York: Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lazikani, Ayoush S. 2015. Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lockett, Leslie. 2011. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • López-Couso, María José. 2010. “Subjectification and Intersubjectification.” In Historical Pragmatics, edited by Andreas Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen, 127–164. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Magill, R. Jay, Jr. 2012. Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull). New York/London: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, John Jeffries. 2004. Myths of Renaissance Individualism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • McEntire, Sandra. 1990. The Doctrine of Compunction in Mediaeval England: Holy Tears. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNamer, Sarah. 2010. Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Myhill, John. 1997. “What Is Universal and What Is Language-Specific in Emotion Words? Evidence from Biblical Hebrew.” Pragmatics and Cognition 5(1): 79–129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portalupi, Enzo. 2006. Sincerus, sinceritas e lemmi affini da Tertulliano a Tommaso d’Aquino. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, Michael. 1979. “The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language About Language.” In Metaphor and Thought, edited by Andrew Ortony, 284–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, William M. 2012. The Making of Romantic of Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia and Japan, 900–1200 CE. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenwein, Barbara H. 2006. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scaglione, Aldo. 1991. Knights at Court. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, John R. 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, James K. 2016. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Ada, MI: Baker Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spearing, A.C. 2005. Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steenbrugge, Charlotte, and Graham Williams. (eds.) Forthcoming. Cultures of Compunction in the Medieval World: Emotion, Contrition and Penitence in the Middle Ages. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Traugott, Elizabeth. 1989. “On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change.” Language 65(1): 31–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Traugott, Elizabeth. 2010. “Revisiting Subjectification and Intersubjectification.” In Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization, edited by Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte, and Hubert Cuyckens, 29–70. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Traugott, Elizabeth, and Richard Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trilling, Lionel. 1972. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University.

    Google Scholar 

  • von Contzen, Eva. 2014. “Why We Need a Medieval Narratology: A Manifesto.” DIEGESIS 3. https://www.diegesis.uni-wuppertal.de/index.php/diegesis/issue/view/7.

  • von Contzen, Eva. 2015. “Why Medieval Literature Does Not Need the Concept of Social Minds: Exemplarity and Collective Experience.” Narrative 23(2): 140–153.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, A. D. M. 1978. “The Ideal of Sincerity.” Mind 87(348): 481–497.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whelan, Fiona. 2017. The Making of Manners and Morals in Twelfth-Century England: The Book of the Civilised Man. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. English: Meaning and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Graham. 2012. “‘that thought never ytt entered my harte’: Rhetoricalities of Sincerity in Early Modern English.” English Studies 93(7): 809–832.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Graham. 2017. “wine min Unferð: Courtly Speech and a Reconsideration of (Supposed) Sarcasm in Beowulf.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18(2): 175–194.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Graham Williams

Authors
  1. Graham Williams
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Graham Williams .

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Williams, G. (2018). Introduction: Sincerity, Language Change and Medieval Literature. In: Sincerity in Medieval English Language and Literature. New Approaches to English Historical Linguistics . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54069-0_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54069-0_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54068-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-54069-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation