The Public Medievalist

Sometimes the vocabulary of a particular area is largely French: for instance, many of our words for spices are French because that was the language of international trade and of marine law. ‘of the’) in such records are so often French, scholars have concluded that the language of report among minor farm officials was French, but a French that seamlessly used English vocabulary and was often entered into the record in sentences constructed as Latin. Overall the situation with French in medieval England was quite like the relative numbers of first and second language speakers of English in our day; many more people spoke French in thirteenth through fifteenth-century England than had it as a birth language. Though he was praised by the sixteenth-century Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser as “the well of English undefiled,” Chaucer, like most medieval writers, probably learned Latin as his first written language, followed by French and then by English.

The Public Medievalcast is going to be all the content you know and love from us here at The Public Medievalist in a new format: stories that connect the medieval and the modern, and that delve into the ways in which the medieval world– for better and for worse– still has a place in modern culture, politics, and more. A Conversation of Ice and Fire (with Kinitra Brooks, Shiloh Carroll, and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas) They are: Kinitra Brooks (Michigan State), Shiloh Carroll (The Public Medievalist), and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (University of Pennsylvania). The essays, written by both scholars and popular bloggers, reflects a broad yet uniquely specific black feminist investigation into constructions of race, gender, spirituality, and southern identity.

The goal of the podcast is the same as with our publication: to bring exciting new medieval histories to the public in a way that is accessible, exciting, and meaningful. On the podcast, you’ll find fascinating interviews with scholars, authors, and creators of new medieval worlds. You’ll find explorations of stories from the Middle Ages that maybe you haven’t heard yet. And you’ll find the deep-dive discussions of difficult topics at the intersection of the Middle Ages and today that have been the centerpiece of so much of our work at The Public Medievalist.