Renaissance Centre Events Calendar
Lingua Francas in the Middle Ages - Non-Native Vernacular Use in Medieval European Culture
From Dante through to modern scholarship, thinking about medieval language use has been structured in terms of an opposition between the poles of Latin grammatical authority on the one hand and organic, unruly mother tongue on the other. Just as significant, however, is the use of vernacular languages as vehicles of cultural activity across borders, transcending identification with any one ethnic, linguistic or political community. French texts in particular were copied, read and translated all over Europe, and other languages similarly had a sphere of influence beyond their native-speaker bases. This colloquium will examine the function and cultural status of a range of medieval Romance vernaculars as used in non-native speaker contexts. The analysis of specific cases involving French, Occitan and Galician-Portuguese will enable broader reflections on the various uses of vernaculars in medieval Europe. Speakers:
Prof Simon Gaunt (KCL), Dr Dirk Schoenaers (UCL), Dr Nicola Morato (Cambridge)
[representing the AHRC-funded project Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside of France]
Prof Ardis Butterfield (UCL)
Prof Catherine Léglu (Reading)
Dr Stephen Parkinson (Oxford)
Wine reception to follow
More information: thomas.hinton@jesus.ox.ac.uk