Norman Francis Blake (19 April 1934 – 29 July 2012) was a British academic and scholar specialising in Middle English and Early Modern English language and literature on which he published abundantly during his career.

Life

Norman Blake was born in Ceará, Brazil, where his English father worked as a banker at the Bank of London and South America. His mother was half-Brazilian and half-German. In 1938, when he was four years old, he was sent to boarding school in Surrey and then to Magdalen College School in Brackley, Northamptonshire, in 1944.^[1] The outbreak of World War II meant that he was not able to see his parents for eight years. Two years after the end of the war his older brother, who attended the same boarding school, died in an accident.^[2]

In 1953 he went up to study at Magdalen College where his tutors for Medieval English were, amongst others, C. S. Lewis and J. A. W. Bennett,^[3] and for Old Icelandic Gabriel Turville-Petre. During the academic year 1956–1957 he studied Old Icelandic manuscripts at the newly established Arnamagnæan Institute, part of the University of Copenhagen. He finished his studies with a BLitt in 1959.^[2] Following his studies at Oxford, he was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Liverpool where he stayed until 1973, interrupted only by an interval as visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 1963–1964. In 1973 Blake was appointed to the Chair of English Language at the University of Sheffield, becoming head of the Department for English Language and Linguistics, a post he held until 1998. When the Department of English Language and Linguistics was amalgamated with the Department of English Literature, Blake moved to De Montfort University, Leicester, taking up a research professorship.^[1]

Norman Blake married Susan Valery Miles at Liverpool in 1965.^[4] The couple adopted a daughter, Dorinda, born in 1973. He was an ardent user of public transport and enjoyed hiking, particularly in the Peak District.^[2]

In May 2004 Norman Blake suffered a massive stroke severely restricting his movement and speaking capabilities. The ensuing years he spent either at home or at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital. Norman Blake passed away on 29 July 2012.^[1] He was survived by his wife and daughter.

Scholarship

Blake's finishing project at Magdalen College in 1959 was editing the Jómsvíkinga saga. His edition of the saga was published in 1962.^[2] Whilst being at Liverpool University he published an edition of the Old English poem The Phoenix in 1964, and in 1970 an edition of William Caxton's translation of the Middle Dutch version of The History of Reynard the Fox.

In the late 1960s and during the 1970s it emerged that Blake's academic interests were twofold, namely the history of the English Language, particularly late medieval and early modern, and The Canterbury Tales. This led to extensive work not only on William Caxton, but also on William Shakespeare. The publication of a monograph on William Caxton in 1969, Caxton and His World,^[1] established Blake as one of the foremost scholars on the subject. In the book he put an emphasis on the larger context in which Caxton was operating and challenged the traditional views on Caxton by positing that Caxton was predominantly a merchant and entrepreneur rather than a craftsman printer.^[5] Eventually, he would publish more than 40 books and essays on Caxton.^[3]

In 1980 Blake published an edition of The Canterbury Tales, based on the Hengwrt manuscript. This edition was, at the time, not well received as Blake advocated the significance and importance of the Hengwrt manuscript, being the oldest manuscript of the tales, and should take precedence over the Ellesmere manuscript on which most published editions and translations were based. The criticism led him to publish a number of books and articles over the following 15 years enhancing and augmenting his argument.^[1]

Blake contributed several articles to the German encyclopaedia Lexikon des Mittelalters and the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, and was also editor and contributor to the second volume of The Cambridge History of the English Language published in 1992.

From 1994 until 2000 Blake was head of the Canterbury Tales Project. The project was first based at the University of Sheffield and from 1998 onwards at De Montfort University. It was funded by amongst others the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy. Its aim was to make electronically available all the manuscripts and early printed versions of The Canterbury Tales, a total of approximately 80 manuscripts and books elucidating the textual tradition of the work and providing understanding of the reshaping of the English language during an important phase in its history. By the end of the project eight manuscripts were transcribed as well as the best part of seven others as well as all witnesses of The Franklin's Tale, consisting of about 330,000 words. Subsequently, The Wife of Bath's Prologue and The General Prologue were released on CD-ROM, and the Hengwrt Manuscript on CD.^[6] No further transcriptions were published until in 2011 the Digital Humanities Institute of the University of Sheffield developed online editions of diplomatic transcriptions of eight of the manuscripts prepared by the Canterbury Tales Project, called the Norman Blake Editions of The Canterbury Tales.^[7][8]

Commemoration

Following his death, the School of English at the University of Sheffield founded a biennial lecture, the Norman Blake Lecture to honour Norman Blake. The first lecture was held in 2013.^[3]

Selected publishings

Editions

• The Saga of the Jomsvikings, London, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd 1962.
• The Phoenix, Manchester, Manchester University Press 1964.
• The History of Reynard the Fox, Oxford, Oxford University Press 1970. ISBN 0-197-22267-6
• Selections from William Caxton. With an introduction, notes and glossary, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1973. ISBN 0-1987-1081-X
• Caxton's Own Prose, London, Andre Deutsch 1973. ISBN 0-233-96475-4
• Quattuor Sermones. Printed by William Caxton, Heidelberg, Winter 1975. ISBN 3-533-02429-6
• The Canterbury Tales: From the Hengwrt Manuscript, London, Edward Arnold 1980. ISBN 0-713-16271-6

Monographs

• Caxton and His World, London, Andre Deutsch 1969. ISBN 0-233-96093-7
• Middle English Religious Prose, London, Edward Arnold 1972. ISBN 0-713-15610-4
• Caxton. England's First Publisher, London, Osprey Publishing 1976. ISBN 0-850-45106-X
• The English Language in Medieval Literature, London, Dent 1977. ISBN 0-874-71989-5
• Non-standard Language in English Literature, London, Andre Deutsch 1981. ISBN 0-233-97422-9
• Shakespeare's Language. An Introduction, London, Macmillan 1983. ISBN 0-333-28639-1
• English Historical Linguistics. Studies in Development, (with Charles Jones), Sheffield, Department of English Language 1984.
• The Textual Tradition of the Canterbury Tales, London, Hodder Arnold 1985. ISBN 0-713-16448-4
• William Caxton. A Bibliographical Guide, New York, Garland Publishing 1985. ISBN 0-824-08891-3
• Index of Printed Middle English Prose, New York, Garland Publishing 1985. ISBN 0-824-08839-5
• Traditional English Grammar and Beyond, Basingstoke, Macmillan 1988. ISBN 0-333-39921-8
• An Introduction to the Language of Literature, Basingstoke, Macmillan 1990. ISBN 0-333-45410-3
• William Caxton and English Literary Culture, London, A&C Black 1991. ISBN 1-852-85051-5
• The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume II (editor and contributor), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1992. ISBN 978-1139-05553-6
• An Introduction to the English Language (with Jean Moorhead), Basingstoke, Macmillan 1993. ISBN 0-333-57302-1
• A New Concordance to The Canterbury Tales Based on Blake's Text Edited from the Hengwrt Manuscript, Okayama, University Education 1994 ISBN 4-887-30127-8
• A History of the English Language, Basingstoke, Macmillan 1996. ISBN 0-333-60983-2
• The General Prologue, Geoffrey Chaucer (edited by Elizabeth Solopova), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2000. ISBN 0-521-58808-1
• A Grammar of Shakespeare's Language, Basingstoke, Palgrave 2001. ISBN 0-333-72590-5
• Shakespeare's Non-Standard English. A Dictionary of his Informal Language, London, Continuum 2006. ISBN 0-826-49123-5

Articles

• Blake, Norman (1961–1963). "William Caxton and Suffolk". Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology. 29: 139–153.
• Blake, Norman (1962). "The Heremod Digressions in "Beowulf"". Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 61: 278–287.
• Blake, Norman (1962–1963). "William Caxton's "Reynard the Fox" and his Dutch Original". Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. 45: 298–325.
• Blake, Norman (1962). "The Scribe of the Exeter Book". Neophilologus. 46: 316–318. doi:10.1007/BF01560863. S2CID 162976021.
• Blake, Norman (1962). "Two Notes on the 'Exeter Book'". Notes and Queries. 9 (2): 45–47. doi:10.1093/nq/9-2-45.
• Blake, Norman (1962). "Some Problems of Interpretation and Translation in the OE "Phoenix"". Anglia. 80: 50–62. doi:10.1515/angl.1962.1962.80.50. S2CID 163748669.
• Blake, Norman (1964–1966). "William Caxton and Suffolk. A Supplement". Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology. 30: 112–115.
• Blake, Norman (1965). "William Caxton: His Choice of Texts". Anglia. 83: 289–307. doi:10.1515/angl.1965.1965.83.289. S2CID 163221621.
• Blake, Norman (1965). "The 'Vocabulary in French and English' Printed by William Caxton". English Language Notes. 3 (1): 7–15.
• Blake, Norman (1965). "The Battle of Maldon". Neophilologus. 49: 332–345. doi:10.1007/BF01514844. S2CID 162108634.
• Blake, Norman (1965). "English Versions of Reynard the Fox in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries". Studies in Philology. 62: 63–77.
• Blake, Norman (1966). "Caxton's Language". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 67: 122–132.
• Blake, Norman (1967). "Caxton and Chaucer". Leeds Studies in English. 1 (NS): 19–36.
• Blake, Norman (1968). "Word Borrowings in Caxton's Original Writings". English Language Notes. 6 (2): 87–90.
• Blake, Norman (1968). "Caxton's Copytext of Gower's Confessio Amantis". Anglia. 85: 282–293. doi:10.1515/angl.1967.1967.85.282. S2CID 170862013.
• Blake, Norman (1968). "The Form of The Phoenix". In Stevens, Martin; Mandel, Jerome (eds.). Old English Literature. Twenty-two Analytical Essays. Lincoln (NE): University of Nebraska Press. pp. 268–278.
• Blake, Norman (1969). "The Biblical Additions in Caxton's "Golden Legend"". Traditio. 26: 231–247. doi:10.1017/S0362152900010989. S2CID 151776023.
• Blake, Norman (1969). "Rhythmical Alliteration". Modern Philology. 67 (2): 118–124. doi:10.1086/390148. S2CID 224829889.
• Blake, Norman (1969). "Chaucer and the Alliterative Romances". The Chaucer Review. 3: 163–169.
• Blake, Norman (1969–1970). "Wynkyn de Worde and the 'Quatrefoil of Love'". Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen. 206: 189–200.
• Blake, Norman (1970). "The Fifteenth Century Reconsidered". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 71: 146–156.
• Blake, Norman (1971). "Wynkyn de Worde. The Early Years". Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. 46: 62–69.
• Blake, Norman (1971). "Lord Berners. A Survey". Medievalia et Humanistica: 119–132.
• Blake, Norman (1973). "Chaucer in his Time". In Johnson, William C.; Gruber, Loren C. (eds.). New Views on Chaucer. Essays in Generative Criticism. Denver: Society for New Language Study. pp. 1–7. ISBN 978-0950269962.
• Blake, Norman (1974). "Caxton's First Edition of 'Quattuor Sermones'". Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. 49: 77–82.
• Blake, Norman (1974). "Varieties of Middle English Religious Prose". In Rowland, Beryl B. (ed.). Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins. Kent (OH): Kent State University Press. pp. 348–356. ISBN 978-0873381413.
• Blake, Norman (1976). "The English Language in Medieval Literature". Studia Neophilologica. 48: 59–75. doi:10.1080/00393277608587639.
• Blake, Norman (1976). "The "Flyting" in The Battle of Maldon". English Language Notes. 13 (4): 242–245.
• Blake, Norman (1976–1977). "Caxton. The Man and his Work". Journal of the Printing Historical Society. 11: 64–80.
• Blake, Norman (1977). "The Dating of Old English Poetry". In Lee, Brian S. (ed.). An English Miscellany Presented to W.S. Mackie. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. pp. 14–27. ISBN 978-0195701012.
• Blake, Norman (1978). "Dating the First Books Printed in English". Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. 53: 43–50.
• Blake, Norman (1978). "The Genesis of The Battle of Maldon". Anglo-Saxon England. 7: 119–129. doi:10.1017/S0263675100002891. S2CID 162340694.
• Blake, Norman (1979). "Continuity and Change in Caxton's Prologues and Epilogues. The Bruges Period". Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. 54: 72–77.
• Blake, Norman (1979). "The Relationship Between the Hengwrt and the Ellesmere Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales". Essays and Studies. 32: 1–18.
• Blake, Norman (1980). "Continuity and Change in Caxton's Prologues and Epilogue. Westminster". Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. 55: 38–43.
• Blake, Norman (1981). "Critics, Criticism and the Order of "The Canterbury Tales"". Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen. 218: 47–58.
• Blake, Norman (1981). "The Textual Tradition of The Book of the Duches". English Studies. A Journal of English Language and Literature. 62 (3): 237–248. doi:10.1080/00138388108598112.
• Blake, Norman (1981). "On Editing the Canterbury Tales". In Heyworth, P. L. (ed.). Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett Aetatis Suae LXX. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 101–119. ISBN 978-0198126287.
• Blake, Norman (1981). "Chaucer's Text and the Web of Words". In Rose, Donald M. (ed.). New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books. pp. 223–240. ISBN 978-0937664551.
• Blake, Norman (1982). "The Text of the 'Canterbury Tales'". Poetica. 13: 27–49.
• Blake, Norman (1982). "The Wife of Bath and her Tale". Leeds Studies in English. 13 (NS): 42–55.
• Blake, Norman (1982), "Ars Moriendi", Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 1, New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. 547–548
• Blake, Norman (1983), "Caxton, William", Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 3, New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. 210–211
• Blake, Norman (1983), "Chronicles", Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 3, New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 325
• Blake, Norman (1983). "Reflections on William Caxton's "Reynard the Fox"". In van den Hoven, Adrian; Westra, Haijo; Kingstone, Basil (eds.). Le Roman de Renard. On the Beast Epic. Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies Special Issue. Windsor, Ontario. pp. 69–76.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Blake, Norman (1983). "Aspects of Syntax and Lexis in The Canterbury Tales". Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses. 7: 1–20.
• Blake, Norman (1983). "The Editorial Assumptions in the Manly-Rickert Edition of The Canterbury Tales". English Studies. A Journal of English Language and Literature. 64 (5): 385–400. doi:10.1080/00138388308598271.
• Blake, Norman (1984). "William Caxton". In Edwards, Anthony Stockwell Garfield (ed.). Middle English Prose. A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 389–412. ISBN 978-0813510019.
• Blake, Norman (1984). "Geoffrey Chaucer. The Critics and the Canon". Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen. 221: 65–79.
• Blake, Norman (1984). "Editorial Assumptions and Problems in 'The Canterbury Tales'". Poetica. 20: 1–19.
• Blake, Norman (1985). "The Debate on the Order of The Canterbury Tales". Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses. 10: 31–42.
• Blake, Norman (1985). "John Lydgate and William Caxton". Leeds Studies in English. 16 (NS): 272–289.
• Blake, Norman (1986). "Late Medieval Prose". In Bolton, Whitney French (ed.). The New History of Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Peter Bedrick Books. pp. 369–399. ISBN 978-0872261259.
• Blake, Norman (1986). "The Book of the Duchess Again". English Studies. A Journal of English Language and Literature. 67 (2): 122–125. doi:10.1080/00138388608598432.
• Blake, Norman (1986), "William Caxton. A Review", in Bekker-Nielsen, Hans; Børch, Marianne; Sorensen, Bengt Algot (eds.), From Script to Book. A Symposium. Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium Organised by the Centre for the Study of Vernacular Literature in the Middle Ages Held at Odense University on 15–16 November, 1982, Odense: Aarhus University Press, pp. 107–126, ISBN 978-8774925682
• Blake, Norman (1987). "The Spread of Printing in English During the Fifteenth Century". Gutenberg-Jahrbuch. 62: 26–36.
• Blake, Norman (1988). "The Manuscripts and Textual Tradition of the Canterbury Tales Again". Poetica. 28: 6–15.
• Blake, Norman (1988). "Literary and Other Languages in Middle English". In Boitani, Piero; Torti, Anna (eds.). Genres, Themes and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century. The J.A.W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1986. Tübingen: Narr. pp. 166–185. ISBN 978-3878087809.
• Blake, Norman (1989), "Fabliau(x). Englische Literatur", Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 4, Munich: LexMA-Verlag, pp. 212–2013
• Blake, Norman (1989). "The Chaucer Canon. Methodological Assumptions". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 90: 295–310.
• Blake, Norman (1989). "Standardising Shakespeare's Non-Standard Language". In Trahern, Joseph B. (ed.). Standardizing English. Essays in the History of Language Change in Honor of John Hurt Fisher. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. pp. 57–81. ISBN 978-0870496004.
• Blake, Norman (1990). "Early Printed Editions of 'Confessio amantis'". Mediaevalia. 16: 289–306.
• Blake, Norman (1992). "Translation and the History of English". In Rissanen, Matti; Ihalainen, Ossi; Nevalainen, Terttu; Taavitsainen, Irma (eds.). History of Englishes. New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 3–24. ISBN 978-3-11-087700-7.
• Blake, Norman (1992), "Introduction", in Blake, Norman (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–22, ISBN 978-0521264754
• Blake, Norman (1992), "The Literary Language", in Blake, Norman (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 500–541, ISBN 978-0521264754
• Blake, Norman (1992). "MS. Chetham 6709 and Some Manuscript Copies of Caxton Prints". In Kirschner, Teresa; Gutch, Donald; Gilbert, Judith (eds.). Language and Civilization. A Concerted Profusion of Essays and Studies in Honour of Otto Hietsch. Vol. 1. Frankfurt am Main – New York: P. Lang. pp. 239–254. ISBN 978-3631416273.
• Blake, Norman (1992). "Geoffrey Chaucer. Textual Transmission and Editing". In Minnis, Alastair J.; Brewer, Charlotte (eds.). Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. pp. 19–38. ISBN 9780859913218.
• Blake, Norman (1993), "From Old to Middle English", in Fanego Lema, Teresa; Fraga Fuentes, Amelia (eds.), Papers from the IVth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicacións e Intercambio Científic, pp. 19–33, ISBN 978-8471919878
• Blake, Norman (1993). "Wynkyn de Worde. A Review of his Life and Work". In Buschinger, Danielle; Spiewok, Wolfgang (eds.). Etudes de linguistique et de littérature en l'honneur d'André Crépin. Greifswald: Reineke Verlag. pp. 21–40. ISBN 978-3-89492-002-9.
• Blake, Norman (1994), "Premisses and Periods in a History of English", in Fernández, Francisco; Fuster, Miguel; Calvo, Juan José (eds.), English Historical Linguistics 1992. Papers from the 7th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Valencia, 22–26 September, 1992, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, pp. 37–46, ISBN 978-1556195679
• Blake, Norman (1997). "The Ellesmere Text in the Light of the Hengwart Manuscript". In Stevens, Martin; Woodward, Daniel (eds.). The Ellesmere Chaucer. Essays in Interpretation. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press. pp. 205–224. ISBN 978-0873281508.
• Blake, Norman (1997). "Language and Style in Additions to The Canterbury Tales". In Fisiak, Jacek; Winter, Werner (eds.). Studies in Middle English Linguistics. Berlin: De Guyter. pp. 59–78. ISBN 9783110152425.
• Blake, Norman (1997), "Some Comments on the Style of Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ", in Oguro, Shoichi; Beadle, Richard; Sargent, Michael G. (eds.), Nicholas Love at Waseda. Proceedings of the International Conference, 20–22 July 1995, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, pp. 99–114, ISBN 978-0859915007
• Blake, Norman (1997). "Geoffrey Chaucer and the Manuscripts of the 'Canterbury Tales'". Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History. 1: 96–122.
• Blake, Norman (1997). "The Project's Lineation System". In Blake, Norman; Robinson, Peter (eds.). The Canterbury Tales Project. Vol. 2. Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication Publications. pp. 5–14.
• Blake, Norman (1997). "Chancery English and the Wife of Bath's Prologue". In Nevalainen, Terttu; Kahlas-Tarkka, Leena (eds.). To Explain the Present. Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen. Helsinki: Société néophilologique. pp. 3–24. ISBN 978-9519603063.
• Blake, Norman (1997), "Übersetzungen. Mittelenglische Literatur", Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 8, Munich: LexMA-Verlag, pp. 1158–1159
• Blake, Norman (1997). "A Stemmatic Analysis of the Fifteenth-Century Witnesses to the Wife of Bath's Prologue". In Blake, Norman; Robinson, Peter (eds.). The Canterbury Tales Project. Vol. 2. Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication Publications. pp. 69–132.
• Blake, Norman (1997). "Preface to a Series of Articles Written for the "Canterbury Tales" Project". In Blake, Norman; Robinson, Peter (eds.). The Canterbury Tales Project. Vol. 1. Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication Publications. pp. 1–4.
• Blake, Norman (1997). "Editing the "Canterbury Tales". An Overview". In Blake, Norman; Robinson, Peter (eds.). The Canterbury Tales Project. Vol. 1. Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication Publications. pp. 5–18.
• Blake, Norman (1998). "The Literary Development of the Reynard Story in England". Selim. 8: 9–34.
• Blake, Norman (1998), "Prose, Middle English", in Szarmach, Paul E.; Tavormina, Mary Teresa; Rosenthal, Joel Thomas (eds.), Medieval England. An Encyclopedia, New York: Garland, pp. 617–619
• Blake, Norman (1998). "Reflections on the Editing of Middle English Texts". In McCarren, Vincent P.; Moffat, Douglas (eds.). A Guide to Editing Middle English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. 61–77. ISBN 9780472106042.
• Blake, Norman (1998). "Editing the Canterbury Tales. Preliminary Observations". Anglia. 116 (2): 198–214. doi:10.1515/angl.1998.116.2.198. S2CID 161260501.
• Blake, Norman (1999). "Nonstandard Language in Early Varieties of English". In Taavitsainen, Irma; Melchers, Gunnel; Pahta, Päivi (eds.). Writing in Nonstandard English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 123–150. ISBN 9781556199455.
• Blake, Norman (1999). "Pragmatic Markers in the Wife of Bath's Prologue". In Tops, Guy A. J.; Devriendt, Betty; Geukens, Steven (eds.). Thinking English Grammar. To Honour Xavier Dekeyser, Professor Emeritus. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. pp. 3–13. ISBN 9789042907638.
• Blake, Norman (2000). "A New Approach to the Witnesses and Text of the Canterbury Tales". In Pearsall, Derek Albert (ed.). New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies, Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference. York: Medieval Press. pp. 29–40. ISBN 9781903153017.
• Blake, Norman (2000). "The Links in the Canterbury Tales". In Powell, Susan; Smith, Jeremy J. (eds.). New Perspectives on Middle English Texts. A Festschrift for R. A. Waldron. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. pp. 107–118. ISBN 9780859915908.
• Blake, Norman (2000). "Caxton at Work. A Reconsideration". In Wheeler, Bonnie; Kindrick, Robert L.; Salda, Michael N. (eds.). The Malory Debate. Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. pp. 233–253. ISBN 9780859915830.
• Blake, Norman (2000). "The virgule in the Wife of Bath's Prologue". In Gruber, Meredith Crellin; Jember, Gregory K.; Gruber, Loren C. (eds.). Essays on Old, Middle, Modern English and Old Icelandic. In Honor of Raymond P. Tripp Jr. Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen. pp. 361–386. ISBN 9780773478589.
• Blake, Norman (2001). "Fabliaux and Other Literary Genres as Witnesses of Early Spoken English". In Diller, Hans-Jürgen; Görlach, Manfred (eds.). Towards a History of English as a History of Genres. Heidelberg: C. Winter. pp. 145–157. ISBN 9783825312404.
• Blake, Norman (2002). "Forms of address in "Hamlet"". In Lenz, Katja; Möhlig, Ruth (eds.). Of dyuersitie & chaunge of langage. Essays Presented to Manfred Görlach on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. pp. 305–318. ISBN 9783825313227.
• Blake, Norman (2004), "Ashbourne, Thomas (fl. 1371-1397), Prior of the Augustinian Convent, London, and Theologian", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Blake, Norman (2004). "Chaucer, Gamelyn, and the Cook's Tale". In Matsuda, Takami; Linenthal, Richard A.; Scahill, John (eds.). The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector. Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. pp. 87–98. ISBN 9781843840206.
• Blake, Norman (2014). "A New Approach to the Witnesses and Text of the Canterbury Tales". In Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn; Thompson, John J.; Baechle, Sarah (eds.). New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices. Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press. pp. 29–40. ISBN 978-0-268-03327-9.