Multilingual Texts and Practices in Early Modern Europe

This collection offers a cross-disciplinary exploration of the ways in which multilingual practices were embedded in early modern European literary culture, opening up a dynamic dialogue between contemporary multilingual practices and scholarly work on early modern history and literature.

The nine chapters draw on translation studies, literary history, transnational literatures, and contemporary sociolinguistic research to explore how multilingual practices manifested themselves across different social, cultural and institutional spaces. The exploration of a diverse range of contexts allows for the opportunity to engage with questions around how individual practices shape national and transnational language practices and literatures, the impact of multilingual practices on identity formation, and their implications for creative innovations in bilingual and multilingual texts. Taken as a whole, the collection paves the way for future conversations on what early modern literary studies and present-day multilingualism research might learn from one another and the extent to which historical texts might supply precedents for contemporary multilingual practices.

This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, early modern studies in history and literature, and comparative literature.

Peter Auger is Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of Birmingham. His research examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English and Scottish literature in relation to other languages and literatures, especially French. He is the author of Du Bartas’ Legacy in England and Scotland (2019). Shorter publications have addressed topics including literary reception, translation and imitation practices, language learning, and cultural diplomacy.

Sheldon Brammall is Associate Professor in Early Modern Literature at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of The English Aeneid: Translations of Virgil, 1555–1646 (2015) and is currently completing a monograph on the reception of the Appendix Vergiliana in Renaissance Europe.