0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Books > Language & Literature

Buy Now

The Vulgar Tongue - Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (Hardcover) Loot Price: R2,054
Discovery Miles 20 540
The Vulgar Tongue - Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (Hardcover): Fiona Somerset, Nicholas Watson

The Vulgar Tongue - Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (Hardcover)

Fiona Somerset, Nicholas Watson

 (sign in to rate)
Loot Price R2,054 Discovery Miles 20 540 | Repayment Terms: R192 pm x 12*

Bookmark and Share

Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days

Deeply embedded in the history of Latin Europe, the vernacular ("the language of slaves") still draws us towards urgent issues of affiliation, identity, and cultural struggle. Vernacular politics in medieval Latin Europe were richly complex and the structures of thought and feeling they left behind permanently affected Western culture. The Vulgar Tongue explores the history of European vernacularity through more than a dozen studies of language situations from twelfth-century England and France to twentieth-century India and North America, and from the building of nations, empires, or ethnic communities to the politics of gender, class, or religion.

The essays in The Vulgar Tongue offer new vistas on the idea of the vernacular in contexts as diverse as Ramon Llull's thirteenth-century prefiguration of universal grammar, the orthography of Early Middle English, the humanist 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. Here Latin, the "common tongue" of European intellectuals, is sometimes just another vernacular, Sanskrit and Hindi stake their claims as the languages of Shakespeare, African-American poetry is discovered in conversation with Middle English, and fourteenth-century Florence becomes the city, not of Dante and Boccaccio, but of the artisan poet Pucci. Delicate political messages are carried by nuances of French dialect, while the status of French and German as feminine "mother tongues" is fiercely refuted and as fiercely embraced. Clerics treat dialect, idiom, and gesture--not language itself--as the hallmarks of "vulgar" preaching, or else argue the case for Bible translation mainly in pursuit of their own academic freedom.

Endlessly fluid in meaning and reference, the term "vernacular" emerges from this book as a builder of bridges between the myriad phenomena it can describe, as a focus of reflection both on the history of Western culture and on the responsibilities of those who would analyze it.

General

Imprint: Pennsylvania State University Press
Country of origin: United States
Release date: October 2003
First published: 2003
Editors: Fiona Somerset • Nicholas Watson
Dimensions: 229 x 152 x 27mm (L x W x T)
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 296
ISBN-13: 978-0-271-02310-6
Categories: Books > Language & Literature > General
Promotions
LSN: 0-271-02310-4
Barcode: 9780271023106

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!

You might also like..

Being There - Backstories From The…
Tony Leon Paperback R350 R312 Discovery Miles 3 120
Disciple - Walking With God
Rorisang Thandekiso, Nkhensani Manabe Paperback  (1)
R280 R263 Discovery Miles 2 630
100 Mandela Moments
Kate Sidley Paperback R260 R232 Discovery Miles 2 320
Now You Know How Mapetla Died - The…
Zikhona Valela Paperback R350 R328 Discovery Miles 3 280
Bloed, Dunner as Water - Suid-Afrika se…
Charne Kemp Paperback R350 R328 Discovery Miles 3 280
The Love Song Of Andre P. Brink - A…
Leon De Kock Paperback  (1)
R435 Discovery Miles 4 350
The Legend Of Zola Mahobe - And The…
Don Lepati, Nikolaos Kirkinis Paperback  (1)
R380 R356 Discovery Miles 3 560
This Is How It Is - True Stories From…
The Life Righting Collective Paperback R265 R245 Discovery Miles 2 450
Albertina Sisulu
Sindiwe Magona, Elinor Sisulu Paperback R159 Discovery Miles 1 590
Killing Karoline - A Memoir
Sara-Jayne King Paperback  (1)
R314 Discovery Miles 3 140
Winged Messenger - Running Your First…
Bruce Fordyce Paperback  (1)
R331 Discovery Miles 3 310
Damaged Goods - The Rise and Fall of Sir…
Oliver Shah Paperback  (1)
R308 R280 Discovery Miles 2 800

See more

Partners