Blog 2: Option A, Middle English

Instructions: Create a text using Middle English (ME) language features. Account for the features you included on this page by circling or listing them below by line number. Type a one-page contemporary English translation and evaluation as part of the blog. Upload the poem and commentary at this website on or before November 9th, with this page as a coversheet.

1 point for Thematic Features: Choose one of the following options for preparing a Middle English text. The tone of the text may be serious or humorous, religious or secular, within the bounds of common sense and common decency (see BEL 216-221):

• Translate one of your favorite recipes from Present-Day English into Middle English, substituting medieval food items where necessary (see BEL 164 and http://www.godecookery.com/ ). Cook the dish to share with class members.

• Write a one-page love letter in Middle English to your spouse or future spouse. On a separate sheet, provide a close translation of the letter in Present-Day English (see BEL 172-173).

• Translate the Thirteen Articles of Faith for Latter-day Saints from Present-Day English into Middle English (see BEL 214-216).

• In a mimesis of Middle English Chaucerian verse style, create a latter-day Saint narrator who is making a pilgrimage to the Preston Temple in England, who tells a story as part of a larger work entitled the Prestonbury Tales (see BEL 194-195).


2 points for Grammatical Features:

• Use surviving inflections for ME nouns and adjectives (see BEL 165-168).
• Use ME pronouns (see BEL 168-174).
• Use ME weak and strong verbs (see BEL 174-179).
• Use ME function words (see BEL 179-181).

1 point for Syntactic Features: Use ME phrase, clause, or sentence structures (see BEL 181-192).

4 points for Lexical Features: Capture a sampling of various vocabulary items from the Middle English lexicon from about A.D. 1100 – 1500 (see BEL 115, 198-201, 201-202, 206-207; the Oxford English Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary appendix of IE roots, or another ME word-list of your choice).

• One half of the vocabulary should derive from French etymologies.
• One quarter of the vocabulary should derive from Old English etymologies.
• One quarter of the vocabulary should derive from Scandinavian, Latin, Celtic, Dutch, Low German, or other language etymologies.
• Vocabulary should include new words in ME from various word formation processes such as compounding, affixing, clipping, back formation, and blends (see BEL 202-206).


2 points for Semantic Features (see BEL 207-211):

• Use ME words whose meaning has gone through generalization or narrowing.
• Use ME words whose meaning has gone through amelioration or pejoration.

Total: 10 items worth one point each for a total of 10 percentage points.