Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures
ISSN 2593-743X
The Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures (JOLCEL) is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes two issues per year in open access. Our format is dialogical and combines three articles with a reaction by a respondent. The journal is closely linked to the activities of the research group RELICS (Researchers of European Literary Identity, Cosmopolitanism and the Schools), which aims to develop a large international network of researchers interested in these themes. RELICS organizes two workshops a year and regular large conferences.
Focus and Scope
The Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures (JOLCEL) aims to be a platform for research on the dynamic role of Latin as a cosmopolitan language within European literary history. With a dialogical format, the journal seeks to perform the academic discussion on what shapes European literary identity.
Contributions to the Journal treat topics that cross traditional chronological and linguistic boundaries. From the first century AD to roughly the eighteenth century, Latin functioned as the standard equipment of European authors and their readers and remained an undercurrent through European history. Through its constant interactions with other languages with cosmopolitan standing (Greek, Arabic and Hebrew) and with the rapidly changing literary production in the vernaculars, Latin strongly defined Europe’s literary identity.
The dialogical approach to European literary identity is reflected in the journal’s format. Papers are clustered in groups of three based on a common question, but regarded from the viewpoints of different historical periods and/or literatures. For each group, an established researcher and specialist on the subject reflects upon the papers in an additional contribution. This respondent looks for connections and differences and places the insights in a broader perspective. Hereby, we establish a dialogue between voices that find few platforms to communicate in traditional academic structures. The respondents moderate the ongoing debate and guarantee the journal’s place at the frontiers of research.
The authority in the title of this issue does not just refer to those authorities that dominate literary history. Rather, it refers to the ones that held sway over classrooms where education in Latin was the norm. Sometimes, these are the same ones we know from literary history. Sometimes, they are not, because changing norms and ideals have obscured their role. In this issue, three articles look at literature and authority from the vantage point of what was read in school.
Latin–Greek (and Greek–Latin) code-switching – the practice of alternating between Latin and Greek within a single unit of communication – has received its fair share of attention among scholars of Classical literature. Existing work in this field has shown that alternating between the languages had a markedly ambiguous place in ancient society: Code-switching could operate as a marker for elite discourse in Rome and serve as a symbol for calling on the authority of respected writers in certain literary genres. Simultaneously, the use of Greek could indicate affection among well-educated Romans, but it could also be viewed as untrue to the patria, and even as the language of slaves in radicalized political settings.
Despite this interest among Classicists, the early modern phenomenon of Latin–Greek code-switching in Neo-Latin and New Ancient Greek literature has yet to become the object of dedicated study. The oversight is surprising: the widespread presence of Ancient Greek in Neo-Latin texts is immediately evident to readers of humanist dialogues, baroque tractatus, eighteenth-century handbooks, or early modern letter collections. Moreover, authors of new Greek texts in western Europe’s early modern period had invariably—indeed, almost unavoidably—also had extensive training in Latin.
The workshop “Latin–Greek Code-Switching in Early Modernity” (held at KU Leuven 13–14 October 2022 and funded by the Scientific Research Network (SRN) “Literatures without Borders” from the RELICS Group (Ghent), the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies (Innsbruck) and the Flemish FWO (KU Leuven) aimed to make a first step towards filling this gap.
This first special issue (out of three) explores the results of applying the concept of code-switching to early modern uses of Latin and Greek in the writing of four authors from western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries. The articles make clear that the phenomenon, as could be expected on the basis of the classical model, is prominent in Neo-Latin correspondence, but goes way beyond ancient practices, appearing in poetry and prose in a diverse range of forms, and responding a broad array of specifically early modern cultural discourses. The following second and third issues will widen this perspective substantially to include studies on the phenomenon of Latin–Greek code-switching in the multilingual early modern world from the early sixteenth century to the nineteenth century across Europe.
Editors: William Michael Barton (Guest Editor), Raf Van Rooy (Guest Editor)
Editorial
Introduction: Latin–Greek Code-switching in Early Modernity
William Michael Barton and Raf Van Rooy
2024-01-31 Issue 9 • 2024 • Latin-Greek Code-Switching in Early Modernity
Articles
Roger Ascham’s Latin–Greek Code-Switching: A Philosophical Phenomenon
Lucy Rachel Nicholas
2024-01-31 Issue 9 • 2024 • Latin-Greek Code-Switching in Early Modernity
Dialects and Languages in the Poetic Oeuvre of Laurentius Rhodoman (1545–1606)
Stefan Weise
2024-01-31 Issue 9 • 2024 • Latin-Greek Code-Switching in Early Modernity
- Issue 8 • 2023 • Latin's Material Presences
- Issue 7 • 2022 • Classics and Canonicity
- Issue 6 • 2021 • Winckelmann's Victims
- Issue 5 • 2021 • Imperialism and Cosmopolitan Literature
- Issue 4 • 2020 • Nostalgia and Playing with Latin
- Issue 3 • 2020 • Schooling and Authority
- Issue 2 • 2019 • Latin on the Margins
- Issue 1 • 2019 • Latin Education and European Literary Production
View All Issues
Posts
Stumble It!
No comments:
Post a Comment