Abstract
This chapter traces the development of affective apologies expressing contrition (e.g. I am sorry) from their origins in Christian confession to the language of fifteenth-century familiar letters. Apologies were not a part of Old English, and it is only in the late Middle Ages that we find these forms being used outside devotional rituals and between human subjects, at which point they were adopted as part of the pragmatics of courtesy.
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Notes
- 1.
The idea of ‘extended intersubjectification ’ as described by Tantucci is compelling here (2017, 93): ‘the symbolic notion of a ‘someone else’ who can be assumed to potentially confirm the truthfulness of a SP/W’s statement or the acceptability of his/her attitudes or emotional reactions’.
- 2.
It occurs later, for example, in Troilus’s confession to Love , Now mea culpa , lord, I me repente (II.525), as well as in the insincere prayers of a false lover in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, An fasteth ofte and hiereth Messe: / With mea culpa , which he seith (I.660–661).
- 3.
Thank you, Andrew Galloway, for pointing me toward this example.
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Williams, G. (2018). Sincerity in Contrition: From Confessions to Apologies. 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_4
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