Languages in Contact: Multilingual Medieval Britain
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Standing Committee on Medieval Studies, Harvard Univ.
Organizer Name
Joseph Shack; Hannah Weaver
Organizer Affiliation
Harvard Univ.; Harvard Univ.
Presider Name
Joseph Shack
Paper Title 1
Overlay Landscapes in Beowulf: Pagan and Christian, English and Irish
Presenter 1 Name
Joey McMullen
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Centenary Univ.
Paper Title 2
Obscure Names: Reimagining Origins in the Lais of Marie de France
Presenter 2 Name
Emily Dalton
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Princeton Univ.
Paper Title 3
What "Trilingual England" Misses
Presenter 3 Name
Thomas O'Donnell
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Fordham Univ.
Start Date
10-5-2019 3:30 PM
Session Location
Schneider 2345
Description
Since the 1990s, scholarly inquiry into multilingual medieval Britain has bloomed. Volumes such as Elizabeth Tyler’s edited volume Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c. 800-c. 1250 (2011), Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter’s edited volume Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (c. 1066-1520): Sources and Analysis (2013), and the recent festschrift for Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, The French of Medieval England (2017), to cite but a few, have ignited a lively conversation about the limits of thinking of medieval Britain in monolingual terms. In the classroom, undergraduate readers like the Broadview Anthology have reflected this attention to polyglot literature by including Celtic-language texts such as the Mabinogion and Fled Bricrend alongside Marie de France’s Lais and selections from Chaucer. It is nevertheless rare that scholars working on the Celtic languages of England and those working on the French of England come together to learn from each others’ discoveries about the plurality of insular vernaculars across the medieval period. Indeed, despite fascinating conversations taking place about Celtic topics and the French of England, no session at the extremely rich and varied 53rd Congress offered the occasion for this sort of cross-pollination between the two groups of scholars. The panel proposed for the 54th Congress would begin to remedy this gap by selecting four speakers working on Welsh, Irish, English and French texts created in Britain. Joseph Shack
Languages in Contact: Multilingual Medieval Britain
Schneider 2345
Since the 1990s, scholarly inquiry into multilingual medieval Britain has bloomed. Volumes such as Elizabeth Tyler’s edited volume Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c. 800-c. 1250 (2011), Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter’s edited volume Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (c. 1066-1520): Sources and Analysis (2013), and the recent festschrift for Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, The French of Medieval England (2017), to cite but a few, have ignited a lively conversation about the limits of thinking of medieval Britain in monolingual terms. In the classroom, undergraduate readers like the Broadview Anthology have reflected this attention to polyglot literature by including Celtic-language texts such as the Mabinogion and Fled Bricrend alongside Marie de France’s Lais and selections from Chaucer. It is nevertheless rare that scholars working on the Celtic languages of England and those working on the French of England come together to learn from each others’ discoveries about the plurality of insular vernaculars across the medieval period. Indeed, despite fascinating conversations taking place about Celtic topics and the French of England, no session at the extremely rich and varied 53rd Congress offered the occasion for this sort of cross-pollination between the two groups of scholars. The panel proposed for the 54th Congress would begin to remedy this gap by selecting four speakers working on Welsh, Irish, English and French texts created in Britain. Joseph Shack