Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 20)

Kleinhenz, Christopher

ISBN 10: 2503528376 / ISBN 13: 9782503528373

Published by Brepols Publishers, 2010

About this Item

Condition: Good. Hard cover, no jacket. 323pp. Ex university library with associated markings. No highlighting or annotations. Covered in protective laminate. Photo on request.

Seller Inventory # 943791

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 20)
• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 2503528376
• ISBN 13: 9782503528373
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

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.