Cantelowe Accounts - Multilingual Merchant Records From Tuscany, 1450-1451

The Cantelowe Accounts record a large sale of English wool in Pisa and Florence in 1450-51 and offer the earliest evidence of an English merchant using Italian as a second language. The text features a unique mixed-language code (combining Middle English, Latin, Anglo-French and Tuscan) and an unprecedented near total use of Arabic numerals.

List of contents

• 1: Italian trade with England in the late Middle Ages: an overview


• 2: William Cantelowe and Jacob Salviati


• 3: The manuscript and its contents


• 4: Language use


• 5: Numeral use


• 6: Merchant marks


• 7: Concluding remarks

About the author

Megan Tiddeman studied French and Italian at the University of St Andrews and completed her PhD in Historical Linguistics at Aberystwyth University, under the supervision of the late Professor David Trotter. Her thesis examined language contact in late medieval trade documents between Italian dialects and both Anglo-Norman and Middle English. She has worked as a PDRA with the Anglo-Norman Dictionary at Aberystwyth University, and as a Research Fellow on two projects led by Professor Louise Sylvester at the University of Westminster: Technical Language and Semantic Shift in Middle English and The Semantics of Word Borrowing in Late Medieval English. She has published on medieval Anglo-Italian contact, as well as on Middle English's lexical and semantic development.

Summary

The Cantelowe Accounts record a large sale of English wool in Pisa and Florence in 1450-51 and offer the earliest evidence of an English merchant using Italian as a second language. The text features a unique mixed-language code (combining Middle English, Latin, Anglo-French and Tuscan) and an unprecedented near total use of Arabic numerals.

Product details

• Authors: Megan (University of Westminster) Tiddeman
• Assisted by: Megan Tiddeman (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2022
• EAN: 9780197266854
• ISBN: 978-0-19-726685-4
• No. of pages: 204
• Series: Records of Social and Economic History
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, HISTORY / Modern / 16th Century, HISTORY / Modern / 17th Century, Economic history, CE period up to c 1500, c 1500 onwards to present day, Medieval History, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, History and Archaeology, HISTORY / Europe / Medieval