ABSTRACT
The first hundred years of the study of insular French were marked by the following milestones: on the linguistic side, the work of Johan Vising, beginning with his doctoral dissertation (1882) and leading to his hand book (Vising 1923); regarding texts and manuscripts, the pioneering pub lications of the indefatigable Paul Meyer (1840-1917), a courageous par ticipant in the Dreyfus affair and an ardent A nglophile;1 and for the literary evidence, Dominica Legge (Legge 1963). The second century of insular French studies has already produced three major extensions of these achievements. First, 1992 marked the completion of the AngloNorman D ictionary (AND) under the devoted direction o f W illiam Rothwell, who straightway began work on a massively increased second edition which is now well advanced. Pursuing the example of Meyer, Tony Hunt has sought to publish many previously unknown or unedited Anglo-Norman texts of all kinds, literary and scientific.2 Finally, in the year 1999 the Anglo-Norman Text Society published Ruth D ean’s exhaustive catalogue of Anglo-Norman works and the manuscripts in which they are found (Dean & Boulton 1999), the product of a single scholar’s researches over a period of seventy years. Vising’s handbook recorded c. 432 works and 419 MSS; the AND listed approx. 350 items; Dean’s volume covers over twice as much material as Vising, in both the number of texts (nearly 1000) and MSS (c. 1150). It is right to draw atten tion to two other publications. D.A. K ibbee’s attempt at a synthesis (Kibbee 1991) relies too much on outdated theories and interpretations.3
