In accounts of the emergence of medieval studies in the post-medieval
period, the growth of the discipline of Middle English has so far not
been fully charted. This study provides the principal source materials
for the study of the formation of Middle English, most of which are rare
and difficult to obtain. It enables the detailed study of the key
documents in the growth of Middle English - gathered together for the
first time. It will also enable the setting of courses in this field.
Each extract is preceded by a full histroical and critical introduction
and bibliography; any passages in late Latin and German are translated.
Part 1 examines the origins and growth of 'Middle English' as a
linguistic concept and includes extracts from George Hickes (1703-5),
Thomas Warton (1774-81), R.G. Latham (1841), James A.H. Murray
(1875-89), T.L. Kington Oliphant (1873), George P. Marsh (1862) and
George Craik (1872). Part 2 examines the gradual emergence of a concept
of 'Middle English literature' as a disciplinary field and the key
ideological movements in its early scholarship. Extracts are drawn from
Thomas Hearne (1724), Richard Hurd (1762), Thomas Percy (1765), Thomas
Warton again, Thomas Tyrwhitt (1775-8), George Ellis (1801), Joseph
Ritson (1802), Walter Scott (1804), George Ellis (1805), Henry Weber
(1810), Thomas Whitaker (1813), E.V. Utterson (1817), James Heywood
Markland (1818) - for the Roxburghe Club publications, David Laing
(1822), William Turnbull (1838) - for the Maitland and Abbotsford Club
publications, Frederic Madden (1839), James Orchard Halliwell - for the
Camden Society publications, Thomas Wright (1847-51) and Frederic
Furnivall, the last extract in which he circularises colleagues
announcing the foudning of the Early English Text Society (1864).
