This volume presents the results of a research team of the University of Bergamo whose aim was the analysis of verbal modality in the Helsinki corpus. This corpus includes a large selection of texts compiled in Middle English and Early Modern English and offers a good diatypic coverage as it contains a wide range of texttypes genres and registers. Within a common methodological framework individual chapters measure and analyze the occurrence and semantic values of central modal verbs relating them to such parameters as text type speechrelatedness and pragmatic function. This research project is part of a wider national project aiming to register and comment on the formal variety of modal manifestations and their relative frequency in a range of texts covering approximately four centuries from about 1300 to 1700.