The early modern world was profoundly bilingual: alongside the emerging vernaculars, Latin continued to be pervasively used well into the 18th century. Authors were often active in and conversant with both vernacular and Latin discourses. The language they chose for their writings depended on various factors, be they social, cultural, or merely aesthetic, and had an impact on how and by whom these texts were received. Due to the increasing interest in Neo-Latin studies, early modern bilingualism has recently been attracting attention. This volumes provides a series of case studies focusing on key aspects of early modern bilingualism, such as language choice, translations/rewritings, and the interferences between vernacular and Neo-Latin discourses. Contributors are Giacomo Comiati, Ronny Kaiser, Teodoro Katinis, Francesco Lucioli, Giuseppe Marcellino, Marianne Pade, Maxim Rigaux, Florian Schaffenrath, Claudia Schindler, Federica Signoriello, Thomas Velle, Alexander Winkler.
Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular offers a collection of studies that deal with the cultural exchange between Neo-Latin and the vernacular, and with the very cultural mobility that allowed for the successful development of Renaissance bilingual culture. Studying a variety of multilingual issues of language and poetics, of translation and transfer, its authors interpret Renaissance cross-cultural contact as a radically dynamic, ever-shifting process of making cultural meaning. With renewed attention for suitable theoretical and methodological frames of reference, Dynamics of Neo-Latin and the Vernacular firmly resists literary history’s temptation to pin down the Early Modern relationship between languages, literatures and cultures, in favour of stressing the sheer variety and variability of that relationship itself. Contributors are Jan Bloemendal, Ingrid De Smet, Annet den Haan, Tom Deneire, Beate Hintzen, David Kromhout, Bettina Noak, Ingrid Rowland, Johanna Svensson, Harm-Jan van Dam, Guillaume van Gemert, Eva van Hooijdonk, and Ümmü Yüksel.
Latin was for many centuries the common literary language of Europe, and Latin literature of immense range, stylistic power and social and political significance was produced throughout Europe and beyond from the time of Petrarch (c.1400) well into the eighteenth century. This is the first available work devoted specifically to the enormous wealth and variety of neo-Latin literature, and offers both essential background to the understanding of this material and sixteen chapters by leading scholars which are devoted to individual forms. Each contributor relates a wide range of fascinating but now little-known texts to the handful of more familiar Latin works of the period, such as Thomas More's Utopia, Milton's Latin poetry and the works of Petrarch and Erasmus. All Latin is translated throughout the volume.
From ca. 1300 a new genre developed in European literature, Neo-Latin drama. Building on medieval drama, vernacular theatre and classical drama, it spread around Europe. It was often used as a means to educate young boys in Latin, in acting and in moral issues. Comedies, tragedies and mixed forms were written. The Societas Jesu employed Latin drama in their education and public relations on a large scale. They had borrowed the concept of this drama from the humanist and Protestant gymnasia, and perfected it to a multi media show. However, the genre does not receive the attention that it deserves. In this volume, a historical overview of this genre is given, as well as analyses of separate plays. Contributors include: Jan Bloemendal, Jean-Frédéric Chevalier, Cora Dietl, Mathieu Ferrand, Howard Norland, Joaquín Pascual Barea, Fidel Rädle, and Raija Sarasti Willenius.
Though it might seem as modern as Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and Vladimir Nabokov, translingual writing - texts by authors using more than one language or a language other than their primary one - has an ancient pedigree. The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism aims to provide a comprehensive overview of translingual literature in a wide variety of languages throughout the world, from ancient to modern times. The volume includes sections on: translingual genres - with chapters on memoir, poetry, fiction, drama, and cinema ancient, medieval, and modern translingualism global perspectives - chapters overseeing European, African, and Asian languages Combining chapters from lead specialists in the field, this volume will be of interest to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in investigating the vibrant area of translingual literature. Attracting scholars from a variety of disciplines, this interdisciplinary and pioneering Handbook will advance current scholarship of the permutations of languages among authors throughout time.
From the dawn of the early modern period around 1400 until the eighteenth century, Latin was still the European language and its influence extended as far as Asia and the Americas. At the same time, the production of Latin writing exploded thanks to book printing and new literary and cultural dynamics. Latin also entered into a complex interplay with the rising vernacular languages. This Handbook gives an accessible survey of the main genres, contexts, and regions of Neo-Latin, as we have come to call Latin writing composed in the wake of Petrarch (1304-74). Its emphasis is on the period of Neo-Latin's greatest cultural relevance, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Its chapters, written by specialists in the field, present individual methodologies and focuses while retaining an introductory character. The Handbook will be valuable to all readers wanting to orientate themselves in the immense ocean of Neo-Latin literature and culture. It will be particularly helpful for those working on early modern languages and literatures as well as to classicists working on the culture of ancient Rome, its early modern reception and the shifting characteristics of post-classical Latin language and literature. Political, social, cultural and intellectual historians will find much relevant material in the Handbook, and it will provide a rich range of material to scholars researching the history of their respective geographical areas of interest.
The relationship between Latin and the Scots vernacular in the chronicle literature of 16th-century Scotland provides the topic for this study. John Leeds here shows how the disposition of grammatical subjects, in the radically dissimilar syntactic systems of humanist neo-Latin and Scots, conditions the way in which "the subject" (i.e., the human individual) and its actions are conceived in the writing of history. In doing so, he extends the boundaries of existing critical literature on early modern "subjectivity" to include the subject of grammar, analyzing its incorporation into narrative sentences and illuminating the ideological contents of different systems for its deployment. Though focused on the chronicles of Renaissance Scotland, the argument can in principle be applied to the entire range of Latin-vernacular relations during the early modern period. While examining the intellectual culture of early modernity, Leeds also takes aim, at every stage of his argument, at the semiotic and social-constructionist orthodoxies that dominate the humanities today. Against the notion that human subjects are "discursive constructs," he argues for the subordination of discourse to realities, both material and immaterial, that are external to language. As part of this argument, he proposes a view of neo-Latin humanism as a resistance to the onset of modernity, arguing that Latin prose provides options (at once syntactic, ideological, and ontological) that vernacular culture has, to its considerable detriment, foreclosed. In sum, Leeds advocates a renewed and theoretically-informed commitment to the humanism that the humanities themselves have been at such pains, during the last scholarly generation, to depreciate.
Since 1971, the International Congress for Neo-Latin Studies has been organised every three years in various cities of Europe and North America. In August 2015, Vienna in Austria was the venue of the sixteenth Neo-Latin conference, held by the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies. The proceedings of the Vienna conference have been collected in this volume under the motto “Contextus Neolatini – Neo-Latin in Local, Trans-Regional and Worldwide Contexts – Neulatein im lokalen, transregionalen und weltweiten Kontext”. Sixty-five individual and five plenary papers spanning the period from the Renaissance to the present offer a variety of themes covering a range of genres such as history, literature, philology, art history, and religion. The contributions will be of relevance not only for scholarly readers, but also for an interested non-professional audience.
Organized with the assistance of an international advisory committee of medievalists from several disciplines, Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide is a new standard guide to the Latin language and literature of the period from c. A.D. 200 to 1500. It promises to be indispensable as a handbook in university courses in Medieval Latin and as a point of departure for the study of Latin texts and documents in any of the fields of medieval studies. Comprehensive in scope, the guide provides introductions to, and bibliographic orientations in, all the main areas of Medieval Latin language, literature, and scholarship. Part One consists of an introduction and sizable listing of general print and electronic reference and research tools. Part Two focuses on issues of language, with introductions to such topics as Biblical and Christian Latin, and Medieval Latin pronunciation, orthography, morphology and syntax, word formation and lexicography, metrics, prose styles, and so on. There are chapters on the Latin used in administration, law, music, commerce, the liturgy, theology and philosophy, science and technology, and daily life. Part Three offers a systematic overview of Medieval Latin literature, with introductions to a wide range of genres and to translations from and into Latin. Each chapter concludes with a bibliography of fundamental works--texts, lexica, studies, and research aids. This guide satisfies a long-standing need for a reference tool in English that focuses on medieval latinity in all its specialized aspects. It will be welcomed by students, teachers, professional latinists, medievalists, humanists, and general readers interested in the role of Latin as the learned lingua franca of western Europe. It may also prove valuable to reference librarians assembling collections concerned with Latin authors and texts of the postclassical period. ABOUT THE EDITORS F. A. C. Mantello is professor of Medieval Latin at The Catholic University of America. A. G. Rigg is professor of English and medieval studies and chairman of the Medieval Latin Committee at the University of Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies. PRASIE FOR THE BOOK "This extraordinary volume, joint effort of dozens of scholars in eight countries, will be in constant use for research, for advising students and designing courses, and for answering the queries of nonmedievalist colleagues. . . . Medieval Latin provides a foundation for advances in research and teaching on a wide front. . . . Though Mantello and Rigg's Medieval Latin is a superb reference volume, I recommend that it also be read from beginning to end--in small increments, of course. The rewards will be sheaves of notes and an immensely enriched appreciation of Medieval Latin and its literature."--Janet M. Martin, Princeton University, Speculum "A remarkable achievement, and no one interested in medieval Latin can afford to be without it."--Journal of Ecclesiastical History "Everywhere there is clarity, conclusion, judicious illustration, and careful selection of what is central. This guide is a major achievement and will serve Medieval Latin studies extremely well for the foreseeable future."--The Classical Review
