Stratford Atte Bowe Revisited

W. Rothwell
The Chaucer Review 36.2 (2001) p. 184-207


Rothwell studies the Prioress's tale, and Chaucer's description of her style of French. He locates her priory in a "fashionable" (now nondescript) part of London, Stratford atte Bowe, and discusses the role of French in England at the time.

Anglo-French of the year 1300 used French lexicon in a largely English grammatical base.The "batter" in fish and chips is from the French bature; the word "size" also comes from France. In some cases, Anglo-French speakers used a word used entirely literally in French and applied it metaphorically. These uses of French words would not have been understood in Paris.

He quotes Kristol, who says that it makes no sense to speak of "French" or "English," with complex multilingualism found in documents from medieval Britain.