SOURCE: “English Versions of Reynard the Fox in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in Studies in Philology, Vol. 62, 1965, pp. 63-77.

In the following essay, Blake surveys several editions of Reynard the Fox, noting a trend toward standardizing the English language.

All writers on the history of the English language agree that the introduction of the printing press was an important landmark in the development of the language. McKnight, for example, writes: “The printing press introduced by Caxton was one of the most important factors in fixing the English language in permanent form.”¹ But although Caxton's language has been investigated,² few scholars have made any study of the language of the other printers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries to determine how this trend to conformity developed or how quickly the establishment of English in permanent form was achieved. Yet several books were constantly reprinted in the...