Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age

The aim of this English-language series on medieval studies is to establish a methodical, discerning connection between text analysis and cultural history. The series addresses the fundamental cultural themes of the medieval world from the perspective of literary studies and the humanities. These fundamental themes are the culture-formative conceptualizations, world views, social structures and everyday conditions of medieval life, namely, childhood and old age, sexuality, religion, medicine, rituals, work, poverty and wealth, superstition, earth and cosmos, city and country, war, emotions, communication, travel etc. Fundamentals of Medieval Culture pursues important current discussions in the field and provides a forum for interdisciplinary medieval research.

The series is open to anthologies as well as monographs. The aim of the series is to present compendium-like works on the central topics of medieval cultural history that provide a sound overview of a limited subject area from the perspective of various disciplines. On the whole, the series thus presents an encyclopedia of medieval literary and cultural history and its main topics.

Bi- and multilingualism are of great interest for contemporary linguists since this phenomenon deeply reflects on language acquisition, language use, and sociolinguistic conditions in many different circumstances all over the world. Multilingualism was, however, certainly rather common already, if not especially, in the premodern world. For some time now, research has started to explore this issue through a number of specialized studies. The present volume continues with the investigation of multilingualism through a collection of case studies focusing on important examples in medieval and early modern societies, that is, in linguistic and cultural contact zones, such as England, Spain, the Holy Land, but also the New World. As all contributors confirm, the numerous cases of multilingualism discussed here indicate strongly that the premodern period knew considerably less barriers between people of different social classes, cultural background, and religious orientation. But we also have to acknowledge that already then human communication could fail because of linguistic hurdles which prevented mutual understanding in religious and cultural terms.

Autorentext

Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.

Zusammenfassung

"Die Beiträge dieses Bandes machen sehr deutlich, dass wir aus der intensiveren Beschäftigung mit Vielsprachigkeit viele Erkenntnisse ziehen können. Diese könnten eine historische Forschung bereichern, die nur allzu oft über gesellschaftliche Prozesse nachdenkt, ohne zu berücksichtigen, in welchen Sprachen sie stattfinden und was das über sie aussagt."
Daniel König in: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 1 (2018), 109-111