Focusing on some Middle English texts

I am interested in delving into particular texts or manuscripts in the medieval period. The following are some of my research projects in this area.

Caxton’s translation of Paris and Vienne

Mitsumi Uchida at Kwansei Gakuin University and I have been working on Caxton’s texts, particularly on Paris and Vienne. The aim is to see how his translation was influenced by the source text. We have so far published the following:

Uchida, Mitsumi & Yoko Iyeiri. 2025. “BE vs. HAVE in the perfect of mutative intransitive verbs: A study on the Middle English translation of Paris and Vienne“. Kwansei Gakuin University School of Sociology Journal 144: 17-29. (Downloadable PDF)
Uchida, Mitsumi and Yoko Iyeiri. 2024. “Genitive Variation in Middle English Paris and Vienne“. Kwansei Gakuin University School of Sociology Journal 142: 45-58. (Downloadable PDF)
Uchida, Mitsumi & Yoko Iyeiri. 2023. “Etymological and Non-etymological Spellings of FALCON and SOLDAN (SULTAN) in Caxton’s Paris and Vienne and Some Related French Versions”. Kwansei Gakuin University School of Sociology Journal 140: 69-83. (Downloadable PDF)
Iyeiri, Yoko & Mitsumi Uchida. 2021. “Etymological Spellings in William Caxton’s Translations”. English Studies 102(8): 991-1001. (First published Online: 02 Aug 2021, https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2021.1952536).
Yoko Iyeiri and Mitsumi Uchida. 2020. “Describing the process of lexical borrowing: intend and other related words in late Middle English”. Kwansei Gakuin University School of Sociology Journal 135: 57-69. (Downloadable PDF)
Iyeiri, Yoko & Mitsumi Uchida. 2019. “Self-forms in Caxton’s Paris and Vienne“. Kwansei Gakuin University School of Sociology Journal 131: 47-64. (Downloadable PDF)
Uchida, Mitsumi & Yoko Iyeiri. 2017．“For and Because: A Comparative Study of Causal Conjunctions in Caxton’s Paris and Vienne and Three French Versions of the Same Text”, in Language Contact and Variation in the History of English, ed. Mitsumi Uchida, Yoko Iyeiri & Lawrence Schourup, pp. 61-79. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.

The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers

Mitsumi Uchida and I have also been working on The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, though on this text we have not published a lot yet.

Iyeiri, Yoko & Mitsumi Uchida. 2017. “Joseph Power’s Note Attached to Earl Rivers’s English Translation of The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers“. Kwansei Gakuin University School of Sociology Journal 126: 13-19. (Downloadable PDF)
Iyeiri, Yoko & Mitsumi Uchida. 2016. “Two Modern Notes Attached to Earl Rivers’s English Translation of The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers“. Kwansei Gakuin University, Schoo of Sociology Journal 123: 135-44. (Downloadable PDF)

MS Pepys 2125

Mayumi Taguchi at Osaka Sangyo University and I have collaboratively edited the second item of MS Pepys 2125 (Magdalene College, Cambridge) and published Pepysian Meditations on the Passion of Christ: Edited from Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125 in 2019. This is a Middle English text, which goes back to the first half of the 14th century.

The following paper derives from our editorial work. It gives some comments on the mysterious form wento in Middle English:

Iyeiri, Yoko. 2021. “The Form wento in Middle English Texts”. Notes and Queries 68(1): 49-51 (First published online: 16 January 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjaa188).

While editing the second item in MS Pepys 2125, I came to be interested in the first item of the same manuscript as well. This text was written by the same scribe as the second item, and for this reason, it was essential to study it for the purpose of ascertaining various traits of his. I have eventually published the following papers on the second item in MS Pepys 2125:

Iyeiri, Yoko. 2013. “The Pronoun it and the Dating of Middle English Texts”, in Phases of the History of English: Selection of Papers Read at SHELL 2012, ed. Michio Hosaka, Michiko Ogura, Hironori Suzuki & Akinobu Tani, pp. 339-50. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2023. “Intra-text Variation as a Case of Intra-writer Variation: Middle English Scribal Behaviours, with a Focus on the Spelling Variation of WOMAN in MS Pepys 2125”, in Intra-Writer Variation in Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. Markus Schiegg and Judith Huber, pp. 473-490. Peter Lang.

Both these papers focus on orthographic trends in the same text.

Thomas Malory

The following items include some extensive discussion on Malory’s English.

Iyeiri, Yoko. 2016. “On Alway(s) and Algate(s) in Middle English Again”. Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University 55: 61-80. (Downloadable PDF) — including some discussion on the frequent use of always (rather than alway) both in the Winchester manuscript and Caxton’s Malory.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2020. “So-called –ingly adverbs in Late Middle and Early Modern English”, in Corpora and the Changing Society: Studies in the evolution of English, ed. Paula Rautionaho, Arja Nurmi, and Juhani Klemola, pp. 199-222. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Paston Letters

Paston Letters are also those I have been working on slowly. I have so far published the following, mostly focusing on different authors in the collection and their generational change in language:

Iyeiri, Yoko. 2006. “The Development of Non-assertive any in The Paston Letters“, in Textual and Contextual Studies in Medieval English: Towards the Reunion of Linguistics and Philology, ed. Michiko Ogura, pp. 19-33. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2007. ”Decline of Some Middle English Features of Negation in the Fifteenth Century: A Study of The Paston Letters“, in Language and Beyond: A Festschrift for Hiroshi Yonekuraon the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. Mayumi Sawada, Larry Walker, & Shizuya Tara, pp. 249-63. Tokyo: Eichosha.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2009. ”The Verb pray in Different Letters of the Paston Family with Special Reference to its Pragmatic Use”, in English Philology and Corpus Studies: A Festschrift in Honour of Mitsunori Imai to Celebrate his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Shinichiro Watanabe & Yukiteru Hosoya, pp. 169-83. Tokyo: Shohakusha.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2013. “The Positioning of Adverbial Clauses in the Paston Letters”, in Meaning in the History of English: Words and Texts in Context, ed. Andreas H. Jucker, Daniela Landert, Annina Seiler, & Nicole Studer-Joho, pp. 211-229. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2022. “From Tho to Those in Fifteenth-Century English”, in Variational Studies on Pronominal Forms in the History of English, ed. Yoko, Iyeiri, Jeremy Smith, Hiroshi Yadomi & David Selfe, pp. 21-35. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.

Iyeiri (2022) does not include Paston Letters in the tile, but discusses the shift from tho to those in different generations of the Paston Letters extensively.

Chaucer’s language

I have some publication that focus on Geoffrey Chaucer alone or together with other Middle English texts. The following are some of them:

Iyeiri, Yoko. 2013. “Cognitive Aspects of Negation in The Tale of Melibee, The Parson’s Tale, and A Treatise on the Astrolabe“, in Chaucer’s Language: Cognitive Perspectives, ed. Yoshiyuki Nakao & Yoko Iyeiri, pp. 5-25. Suita: Osaka Books.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2013. “The Verb pray in Chaucer and Caxton”, in Approaching Language Variation through Corpora: A Festschrift in Honour of Toshio Saito, ed. Shunji Yamazaki & Robert Sigley, pp. 289-306. Bern: Peter Lang.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2010. “Negation in Different Versions of Chaucer’s Boece: Syntactic Variants and Editing the Text”. English Studies 91: 826-837.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2010. “Negation in Fragments A, B and C of the Hunter Manuscript of The Romaunt of the Rose“, in Language Change and Variation from Old English to Late Modern English: A Festschrift for Minoji Akimoto, ed. Merja Kytö, John Scahill & Harumi Tanabe, pp. 79-101. Bern: Peter Lang.

The following items also include some extensive discussion on Chaucer’s English.

Iyeiri, Yoko. 2016. “On Alway(s) and Algate(s) in Middle English Again”. Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University 55: 61-80. (Downloadable PDF) — including some discussion on the parallelism between the manuscript versions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Boece, Troilus, and their corresponding versions in Caxton’s printing.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 2001. Negative Constructions in Middle English. Fukuoka: Kyushu University Press.
Iyeiri, Yoko. 1998. “Multiple Negation in Middle English Verse”, in Negation in the History of English, ed. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel Tottie, & Wim van der Wurff, pp. 121-146. Berlink: Mouton de Gruyter.

Middle English Genesis and Exodus

Middle English Genesis and Exodus is one of the Middle English texts I investigated while working on my doctoral thesis and also for Negative Constructions in Middle English. I have made a short comment on a particular line in this text in the following note.