Spoken and Written Language
Relations between Latin and the Vernacular Languages in the Earlier Middle Ages
Edited by Mary Garrison Edited by Arpad P Orban Edited by Marco Mostert With Wolfert S van Egmond
The linguistic situation of the Medieval West has sometimes been characterized as one of diglossia: one learned language was used for religion, law and documents – Latin, the father tongue – while the various vernaculars would have been the mother tongue.
The linguistic situation of medieval Europe has sometimes been characterized as one of diglossia: one learned language, Latin, was used for religion, law, and documents, while the various vernaculars were used in other linguistic registers. Informing the relationship between Latin and the vernaculars was the choice of Latin as the language of the Western Roman Empire and the Roman Church. This choice entailed the possibility of a shared literary culture and heritage across Europe, but also had consequences for access to that heritage. Scholarship on the Romance languages has contested the relevance of the term diglossia, and the divergence between written or spoken Latin and Romance is a subject of energetic debate. In other linguistic areas, too, questions have been voiced. How can one characterize the interaction between Latin and the various vernaculars, and between the various vernaculars themselves? To what extent could speakers from separate linguistic worlds communicate? These questions are fundamental for anyone concerned with communication, the transmission of learning, literary history, and cultural interaction in the Middle Ages. This volume contains contributions by historians, cultural historians, and students of texts, language, and linguistics, addressing the subject from their various perspectives but at the same time trying to overcome familiar disciplinary divisions.
- Edited by Mary Garrison
- Edited by Arpad P Orban
- Edited by Marco Mostert
- With Wolfert S van Egmond
Other Titles in this Series
Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Vilnius
Forms of Writing and Rhetorical Spaces in the City
Volume 55
Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages
Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green
Volume 12
Documenting the Everyday in Medieval Europe
The Social Dimensions of a Writing Revolution, 1250-1350
Volume 42
Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication (Western Europe, tenth-thirteenth centuries)
Volume 21
Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Papers from Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible, 400-1000 (Utrecht, 11-13 December 2003)
Volume 14
Reading Images and Texts
Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication. Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium on Medieval Literacy, Utrecht, 7-9 December 2000
Volume 8
Stilus – modus – usus
Regeln der Konflikt- und Verhandlungsfuhrung am Papsthof des Mittelalters / Rules of Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Papal Court in the Middle Ages
Volume 44
Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries)
Volume 47
Accounts and Accountability in Late Medieval Europe
Records, Procedures, and Socio-Political Impact
Volume 50
Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages
Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion
Volume 25
Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas
The West Frankish Kingdom (840-987)
Volume 19
Digital Philology and Quantitative Criticism of Medieval Literature
Unconventional Approaches to Medieval Latin Literature II
Volume 49
Transforming the Medieval World
Uses of Pragmatic Literacy in the Middle Ages (A CD-ROM and Book)
Volume 6
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