File: cmkentser.m1
These five sermons are translated from a French version of the Latin sermons by Maurice de Sully (bishop of Paris, 1160-1196). The translation is not from the French sermons included in the same manuscript, but rather from an (unknown) manuscript very similar to MS. Douce 270, Bodleian Library (D). The translation is quite literal, influencing, according to Hall, (p.669), the translators "idiom, order and choice of words, even to the borrowing of an occasional inflection." See a brief comparison of the French and English versions of one of the Kentish homilies.
Text: Hall, Joseph (ed.), Selections from Early Middle English 1130-1250, (Oxford, 1920), pps. 214-222.
File: cmearlps.m2
Text: Buelbring, K.D. (ed.), The Earliest Complete English Prose Psalter, EETS OS 97, (London, 1891).
File: cmayenbi.m2
The manuscript is a holograph written by Dan Michel in 1340 when he was about 70, so the language may be representative of the late 13th century. He was a monk at St. Anselm's, Canterbury. The Ayenbite is a fairly literal translation of the French work Somme le Roi (also known as Le Somme des Vices et des Virtues, Li Libres Roiaux de Vices et de Vertues, Le Livre des Commandmens, Le Miroir du Monde). There is no complete translation in modern English, but the 15c Book of Vices and Virtues is very similar and more readable.
Following the Ayenbite are some short works also written by Dan Michel (included in the file):
Other later translations of the Somme le Roi are The Book of Vices and Virtues, ca. 1400 (a sample of which is included in the corpus as cmvices4.m4), and Caxton's Royal Book, 1486.
Text: Morris, Richard, Dan Michel Ayenbite of Inwyt, EETS OS 23 (London, 1866), rev. Pamela Gradon (1965), and EETS OS 278 (London, 1979), pp.5-118, 249-271.
File:
This is the first official document in English since William the Conqueror. It was also issued in Latin and French, and the English is a translation of the French version. The French is reproduced in Mossé, p. 187.
Text: Dickens, B and R.M. Wilson (eds.), Early Middle English Texts, (London, 1951, 1956), pp. 8-9.