Description
Book SynopsisThese essays offer new vistas on the idea of the vernacular in contexts as diverse as Ramon Llull's prefiguration of universal grammar, the orthography of Early Middle English, the struggle for linguistic purity in Early Modern Dutch, and the construction of standard Serbian and Romanian in the waning decades of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Trade Review“The Vulgar Tongue uses the theme of vernacularity in imaginative ways to generate dialogues between medievalists and those working in other disciplines. The essays are brought together by two outstanding medievalists who rank among the scholarly leaders in their field.”
—Wendy Scase,University of Birmingham
“The collection’s breadth of information and the expertise of its contributors ensure the ongoing usefulness of The Vulgar Tongue.”
—Rick McDonald Rocky Mountain Review
“This is a rich, ambitious, and provocative book. It should interest any reader concerned with the ways in which intellectuals, past and present, help shape both definitions and social evaluations of the vernacular.”
—Helmut Muller-Sievers Modern Philology
Table of Contents Contents
Preface: On "Vernacular"
Acknowledgments
Introduction: King Solomon’s Tablets
Nicholas Watson
Part I: 1100–1300: The Evangelical Vernacular
1. Using the Ormulum to Redefine Vernacularity
Meg Worley
2. Talking the Talk: Access to the Vernacular in Medieval Preaching
Claire M. Waters
3. The Language of Conversion: Ramon Llull’s Art as a Vernacular
Harvey Hames
4. Mechthild von Magdeburg: Gender and the "Unlearned Tongue"
Sara S. Poor
Part II: 1300–1500: Vernacular Textualities
5. Creating a Masculine Vernacular: The Strategy of Misogyny in Late Medieval French Texts
Gretchen V. Angelo
6. Teaching Philosophy at School and Court: Vulgarization and Translation
Charles F. Briggs
7. Vernacular Textualities in Fourteenth-Century Florence
William Robins
8. "Moult Bien Parloit et Lisoit le Franchois," or Did Richard II Read with a Picard Accent?
Andrew Taylor
9. Professionalizing Translation at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century: Ullerston’s Determinacio, Arundel’s Constitutiones
Fiona Somerset
Part III: 1500–2000: Making the Mother Tongues
10. Purity and the Language of the Court in the Late-Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Netherlands
Jeroen Jansen
11. The Politics of ABCs: "Language Wars” and Literary Vernacularization Among the Serbs and Romanians of Austria-Hungary, 1780–1870
Jack Fairey
12. "Indian Shakespeare" and the Politics of Language in Colonial India
Nandi Bhatia
13. Poets Laureate and the Language of Slaves: Petrarch, Chaucer, and Langston Hughes
Larry Scanlon
Further Reading
About the Contributors
Index
