In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the linguistic situation in Europe was one of remarkable fluidity. Latin, the great scholarly lingua franca of the medieval period, was beginning to crack as the tectonic plates shifted beneath it, but the vernaculars had not yet crystallized into the national languages that they would later become, and multilingualism was rife. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, languages were coming into contact with an intensity that they had never had before, influencing each other and throwing up all manner of hybrids and pidgins as peoples tried to communicate using the semiotic resources they had available. Of interest to linguists, literary scholars and historians, amongst others, this interdisciplinary volume explores the linguistic dynamics operating in Europe and beyond in the crucial centuries between 1400 and 1800. Assuming a state of individual, societal and functional multilingualism, when codeswitching was the norm, and languages themselves were fluid, unbounded and porous, it explores the shifting relationships that existed between various tongues in different geographical contexts, as well as some of the myths and theories that arose to make sense of them.
Introduction: The Great Upheaval — Multilingualism and Lingua Francas in the Early Modern Period Part 1: Multilingualism and Its Discontents 1. Multilingual Events in Late Medieval Personal Documentary Texts from the Winchester Diocese Collection in 1400–1525 2. Croatian Biblical Texts in the Early Modern Period: A Historical-Sociolinguistic Approach to Language Change 3. National Myths and Language Status in Early Modern Wales and Brittany 4. Bernardo de Aldrete’s Del origen: Rejecting Multilingualism and Linguistic Essentialism in Early Modern Spain 5. Multilingualism and Translation in the Early Modern Low Countries Part 2: The Defence of Latin 6. Should Latin Be Spoken?: The Controversy Between Sanctius Brocensis, Henry Jason and the Irish Jesuits of Salamanca 7. Pro lingua Latina: Girolamo Lagomarsini's Oration in Defence of Latin in Eighteenth-Century Italy 8. Petropolis: The Place of Latin in Early Modern Russia Part 3: Pidgins, Jargons, Lingua Francas 9. On the Existence of a Mediterranean Lingua Franca and the Persistence of Language Myths 10. Immortal Passados: Early Modern England’s Italianate Fencing Jargon on Page and Stage 11. Linguistic Expression of Power and Subalternity in Peixoto’s Obra Nova de Língua Geral de Mina (1741) 12. ""Long Time No See"": The Use of Chinese Pidgin English as a Cultural Identity Symbol by the Canton Anglophone Trading Community. Epilogue: Developing Historical Linguistic Awareness in a Multilingual World
Karen Bennett is Associate Professor in Translation at NOVA University Lisbon, and a researcher with the Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS), where she coordinates the Translationality strand. Angelo Cattaneo is Research Fellow at CNR-National Research Council, Rome and Research Associate of CHAM, Nova University, Lisbon.
