La Bible anglo-normande: gloses et traductions

La réflexion linguistique à l’œuvre

Abstract

Corpus Masoreticum Working Papers 17

The Manuscript L of the Anglo-Norman Bible (mid-14th century) contains glosses, mostly synonymous, copied throughout the text or more rarely in its margins, in Latin and Middle English. These glosses first show a form of hierarchy of languages: sacred Latin of the Vulgate, vernacular and native English of the copyists, cultivated and aristocratic French of the final text. They are above all the sign of the work of medieval clerics, of these copyists who reflected on the biblical text, its material and its meaning, from a perspective that was at once linguistic, pedagogical, exegetical and theological.