Medieval Multilingualism

The Francophone World and its Neighbours

Edited by Christopher Kleinhenz Edited by Keith Busby

Book cover: Medieval Multilingualism

Extent: 331, 331 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Medieval Studies

Series: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe

Series volume number: 20

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(January 2011)

ISBN: 9782503528373

Price: $108.00

In stock

An investigation of the general subject of multilingualism in medieval England, France, and Italy with attention to the interaction among vernacular languages and between these and Latin.


This volume contains essays on various aspects of multilingualism in medieval France, Italy, England, and the Low Countries. The fifteen contributions discuss the use of the different vernaculars and Latin in both literary and non-literary contexts, showing how cultural and social factors determined the choice of language for a particular purpose or type of text. The role of French in non-French contexts is a major theme of these essays: in the British Isles after the Norman Conquest, in Italy as a response to the need for mainly secular types of literature which did not exist in Italian, and in the Low Countries by virtue of geographic contiguity and change of rulers. Special attention is paid in the French context to the use of French and Occitan in areas of the South. Some essays examine specific cases or text-corpora, while others examine questions of multilingualism from more theoretical, linguistic, and rhetorical points of view. Together, they form an invaluable introduction to the topic of medieval multilingualism, illustrated by meticulously executed case-studies, which future work in the area will have to take into account.

  • Edited by Christopher Kleinhenz
  • Edited by Keith Busby