Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours

336 Pages·2010·6.721 MB·English

by  Christopher Kleinhenz, Keith Busby

MEDIEVAL MULTILINGUALISM
MEDIEVAL TEXTS AND CULTURES OF NORTHERN EUROPE
Editorial Board under the auspices of the
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Hull
Wendy Scase, Chair, University of Birmingham
Adrian P. Tudor, Secretary, University of Hull
John H. Arnold, Birkbeck College, University of London
Julia Barrow, University of Nottingham
Lesley A. Coote, University of Hull
David Crouch, University of Hull
Paul Hardwick, Leeds Trinity and All Saints
Alan Hindley, University of Hull
Advisory Board
Andrew Ayton, University of Hull
David Bagchi, University of Hull
Keith Busby, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Olle Ferm, Stockholms universitet
Wim Hüsken, Stedelijke Musea Mechelen
Gerhard Jaritz, Central European University, Budapest
Peter Meredith, University of Leeds
Veronica O’Mara, University of Hull
Nigel F. Palmer, St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Brigitte Schludermann, University of Hull
Michel Zink, Collège de France, Membre de l’Institut
Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this book
VOLUME 20
MEDIEVAL MULTILINGUALISM
The Francophone World and its Neighbours
edited by
Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby
H
F
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Medieval multilingualism in England, France, and Italy : the francophone world and its
neighbours. – (Medieval texts and cultures of Northern Europe ; v. 20)
1. Multilingualism – England – History – To 1500. 2. Multilingualism – France – History –
To 1500. 3. Multilingualism – Italy – History – To 1500. 4. Multilingualism and literature –
England – History – To 1500. 5. Multilingualism and literature – France – History – To
1500. 6. Multilingualism and literature – Italy – History – To 1500. 7. Language and culture
– England – History – To 1500. 8. Language and culture – France – History – To 1500.
9. Language and culture – Italy – History – To 1500. 10. French language – Europe – History
– To 1500.
I. Series II. Kleinhenz, Christopher. III. Busby, Keith.
404.2'094'0902-dc22
ISBN-13: 9782503528373
© 2010, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2010/0095/52
ISBN: 978-2-503-52837-3
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction: Medieval Francophonia 1
AD PUTTER AND KEITH BUSBY
Creole Grammar and Multilingual Poetics 15
MARK AMSLER
Language Labels, Language Change, and Lexis 43
DAVID TROTTER
Institutions and Multilingualism in the Middle Ages 63
DOUGLAS A. KIBBEE
Multilingualism in England and Wales, c. 1200: 83
The Testimony of Gerald of Wales
AD PUTTER
Aultre manier de language: 107
English Usage as a Political Act in Thirteenth-Century England
MARK N. TAYLOR
From Francophile to Francophobe: The Changing Attitude 127
of Medieval Dutch Authors towards French Literature
REMCO SLEIDERINK
Literary Evidence for Multilingualism: 145
The Roman de Tristan in its Italian Incarnations
GLORIA ALLAIRE
Lecteurs et interprètes des romans arthuriens en Italie: 155
un examen à partir des études récentes
DANIELA DELCORNO BRANCA
Manuscrits en français, italien, et latin entre la Toscane 187
et la Ligurie à la fin du XIIIe siècle: implications codicologiques,
linguistiques, et évolution des genres narratifs
FABRIZIO CIGNI
Les Aspects de multilinguisme dans Aquilon de Bavière 219
MARIE-JOSÉ HEIJKANT
Aspects of Legal Multilingualism in the States of Savoy 237
FRANCESCO AIMERITO
The Vernacularization of Late Medieval Sermons: 267
Some French and Italian Examples
CAROLYN MUESSIG
French and Occitan in Fourteenth-Century Auvergne 285
R. ANTHONY LODGE
Musical Multilingualism in Le Roman de Fauvel 303
(Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fonds français 146)
MICHELLE BOLDUC
ILLUSTRATIONS
Cigni, ‘Manuscrits en français, italien, et latin’
Figure 1, p. 200. ‘Fin du Bestiaire d’Amours – début du Jugement d’Amours,
Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 123, fol. 7v.
Figure 2, p. 202. Début des Distiques de Caton, Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-
Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 123, fol. 8r.
Figure 3, p. 214. Supplice de St Maurice, Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria,
MS Alfa T.4.14, fol. 74r.
Figure 4, p. 215. San Domenico consigne la Règle de l’Ordre à un frère prêcheur,
Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, MS Alfa T.4.14, fol. 174r.
Figure 5, p. 216. Explicit de Taddeus, Pisa, Biblioteca Santa Caterina, MS 43,
fol. 26v.
Figure 6, p. 217. Sermons de Maurice de Sully (Table italien-français-latin), Pisa,
Biblioteca Santa Caterina, MS 43, fol. 50v.
Aimerito, ‘Aspects of Legal Multilingualism’
Figure 7, p. 246. Gaspard Bally, Recueil des édits et règlement de Savoye […]
(Chambéry: Estienne Riondet, 1679).
Figure 8, p. 248. The eighteenth-century Regie Costituzioni.
Figure 9, p. 250. Alexandre Jolly, Compilation des anciens édits des princes de la
royale maison de Savoie […] (Chambéry: Estienne Riondet, 1679).
Figure 10, p. 258. Edicto de S. M. por el establecimiento de la insinuacíon en el Reyno
de Cerdeña de los 15 de Mayo Año de 1738 – Editto di S. M. (Turin: Gio.
Battista Valetta, 1738).
Figure 11, p. 259. Edicto de S. M. por el establecimiento de la insinuacíon en el Reyno
de Cerdeña de los 15 de Mayo Año de 1738 – Editto di S. M. (Turin: Gio.
Battista Valetta, 1738).
Figure 12, p. 261. Hymnu sardu nationali (the ‘National Anthem’ for the Kingdom
of Sardinia).
Figure 13, p. 262. Music of the Hymnu sardu nationale (the ‘National Anthem’ for
the Kingdom of Sardinia).
Figure 14, p. 265. Decreta seu Statuta vetera serenissimorum ac praepotentum Sabau-
diae Ducum […] (Augustae taurinorum: apud haeredem Nicolai Bevilaquae,
1586).
Bolduc, ‘Musical Multilingualism in Le Roman de Fauvel’
Figure 15, p. 315. Le Roman de Fauvel, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fonds
français 146, fol. 29v.
INTRODUCTION: MEDIEVAL FRANCOPHONIA
Ad Putter and Keith Busby
This book of essays forms part of a larger research programme Multilin-
gualism in the Middle Ages, a collaborative endeavour by medievalists from
a range of disciplines. The intellectual objective of the programme has been
to advance the understanding of multilingualism in medieval western societies, the
majority of which were polyglot. Our research has focused on multilingual texts
and manuscripts and the problems to which they give rise, and from multilingual
and other written sources we have attempted to recover the spoken (socio)linguis-
tic situation on the ground.
The task is fraught with difficulties, in part because of the nature of the sur-
viving evidence (inevitably written rather than spoken) and in part because the mix
of languages in most regions of Western Europe in the Middle Ages was a complex
one. In most areas, one or two local vernaculars were spoken, and in addition there
were at least two prestige languages with pan-European currency. One of these, of
course, was Latin, the language par excellence of ecclesiastical and scientific au-
thority — read, written, and also spoken by educated churchmen and scholars.
Latin, it must be emphasized, was still a living language, and some clerics lived and
breathed it to the extent that they actually thought of it as their mother tongue.1
The gulf that separates Latin from the vernacular was therefore not as wide in the
Middle Ages as it is today, when Latin has become a dead language. Paradoxically,
it was the passionate devotion to the purity of ancient Latin in the Early Modern
period that widened the gulf, for in rediscovering ‘proper’ classical Latin (as dis-
tinct from scholastic Latin and the dog Latin of communicative convenience) the
1 See Serge Lusignan, Parler vulgairement: les intellectuels et la langue française aux XIIIe et XIVe
siècles (Paris: Vrin, 1986), p. 67, and see below, p. 98.
2 Ad Putter and Keith Busby
Renaissance also discovered something that medieval scholars did not know: that
Latin was a language of the past.2
Aside from Latin, the other medieval language of prestige, and the language cen-
tral to this collection, was French. Perhaps French had an even better claim to
being the international language of choice than did Latin. The Florentine notary
Brunetto Latini wrote his Livres dou Tresor (1265) in French, because (in his
words) French ‘est plus delitable et plus commune a tous langages’ (is sweeter and
has more in common with all other languages).3 Although it is true that Brunetto
Latini wrote these words while exiled in France, they were nevertheless primarily
intended for his compatriots. To his Italian eyes and ears at least, French seemed
an ideal linguistic middle ground, a language closer to other languages, though his
point may have been that speakers of whatever European language were more likely
to (also) know French than any other language. This alternative sense is conveyed
unambiguously in a number of manuscripts which contain the interesting reading
‘plus commune a tous gens’ (more common to all people). In England a similar
point was made a few decades later by the author of the Miroir des justices (c. 1300),
who opted for French as the language ‘le plus entendable de la comun people’
(most easily understood by the common people).4
Later in the fourteenth century this situation had not gone away. When
another Englishman, John Gower, who wrote lengthy works in Latin, French, and
English,5 wanted to reach a global audience he chose to write in French, which he
evidently considered to be the language with the widest currency in the world as
he knew it. As Gower put it in the Preface to his Traitié pour essampler les amantz
marietz, the author who
ad dit ci devant en Englois par voie d’essample la sotie de cellui qui par amours aime par
especial, dirra ore apres en François a tout le monde en general un traitié.6
2 Paul Wackers, ‘De invloed van de Latijnse cultuur op de ontwikkeling van de Middelneder-
landse letterkunde’, in Grote Lijnen: Syntheses over Middelnederlande Literatuur, ed. by Frits van
Oostrom (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1995), pp. 47–63, 179–83.
3 Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor, ed. by Francis J. Carmody (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1947), 1.1.7.
4 Cited by Kathleen Lambley, The Teaching and the Cultivation of the French Language in
England during Tudor and Stuart Times (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1920), p. 7.
5 On Gower and his multilingualism, see Tim William Machan, ‘Medieval Multilingualism and
Gower’s Literary Practice’, Studies in Philology, 103 (2006), 1–25.
6 Complete Works of John Gower, ed. by G. C. Macaulay, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1899), I, 379. Note also the Envoy to Balade 18 of the Traitié (p. 391), where, before apologizing