Multilingualism and Writing Practices in Defining Communities: Italy in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

How did everyday writing forge communities in Italy from Late Antiquity to the late Middle Ages? This interdisciplinary volume maps multilingual practices across public and private texts produced in diverse social settings. Professional documents, private letters, and other text types reveal a rich linguistic and historical landscape. By reading non-literary documents as socially situated acts, the volume brings together historical sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, paleography, and diplomatics, and invites a rethinking of communities of practice, discourse, and text. Case studies show how “writing from below” shaped communities across multiple social contexts.

Piera Molinelli & Chiara Ghezzi, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy.