Walter composed the treatise during the 1230s to help a neighbor, an English-speaking widow, teach her two children the Norman-French language. The rhymes, household references, and other features to keep the children amused proved successful enough that people used it to teach Norman-French for about two centuries. It was resurrected some years ago as a scholarly source for the two languages and for the social history of the period. The Norman-French text is that prepared by William Rothwell and published by the Anglo-Norman Online Hub. Linguist, classical scholar, food historian, and retired librarian Dalby has translated several works for Prospect. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
A didactic poem in Anglo-Norman which surveys a host of practical matters, ranging from childbirth to life in the fields.
The Treatise of Walter of Bibbesworth is a didactic poem in Anglo-Norman which surveys a host of practical matters, ranging from childbirth and our passage through life, to estate management and life in fields, workshops, to activities in the home, the kitchen and the dining-hall, to the flora and fauna (and even the weather) of thirteenth-century England. Its didactic purpose was to teach the French language, in other words, it was not so much the topics discussed but the Anglo-Norman or French words used to describe them. It was a vocabulary, albeit a creative one. To this end, many of the words were glossed, in the original manuscript and subsequent versions, with their Middle English equivalents. The author and the intended audience for this poem are discussed in the introduction, as are also its date, the language, modern interpretations and its bibliography. The English text runs parallel to the original Anglo-Norman which we have been permitted to reprint by its modern editor, Professor William Rothwell and his publisher The Anglo-Norman Hub. This will make the book useful for linguistic studies as well as richer for the general reader.
