This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 8th International Conference of Middle English, held in Spain at the University of Murcia in 2013. The contributions embrace a variety of research topics and approaches, with a particular interest in multilingualism, multidialectalism and language contact in medieval England, together with other more linguistically-oriented approaches on the phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics and pragmatics of Middle English.

Traditions are created and maintained by groups of people living in specific times and places: they do not have a life of their own. In this radical new approach to Old English poetics, the author argues that the apparent timelessness and stability of Old English poetic convention is a striking historical phenomenon that must be accounted for, not assumed, and that the perceived conservatism of Old English poetic conventions is the result of choice.

Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa.

This is an interdisciplinary and practical approach to the analysis of poetry which focuses on text worlds, namely the contexts, scenarios or types of reality that readers construct in their interaction with the language of texts.

Gambling permeated the daily lives of eighteenth-century Britons of all classes. This book explicates the relationship between the rampant gambling in eighteenth-century England, the new forms of gambling-inspired capitalism that transformed British society, and novels that interrogate the new socio-economy of long odds and lucky breaks.