Lives of the great languages : Arabic and Latin in the medieval Mediterranean / Karla Mallette.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mallette, Karla, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arabic language--History.

Arabic language.

Latin language--History.

Latin language.

Mediterranean Region--Languages.

Mediterranean Region.

Language and languages.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

vii, 240 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Summary:

"In this rich, ambitious work, Karla Mallette studies the nature and behaviors of the medieval cosmopolitan languages of learning-classical Arabic and medieval Latin-as they meandered their way across the Mediterranean. In a brilliant, lyrical performance in comparative literature and literary history, Mallette tells a complex story conveyed through vignette and anecdote of relationships among language workers-writers, compilers, translators, commentators, and copyists-their linguistic instrument of choice, and the transmission of knowledge, all before the emergence of the national language system in the late Middle Ages and early modernity. She describes how the elite languages of learning and culture were only tenuously related to the languages of everyday life, with Latin eventually giving way to the Romance vernaculars, and literary Arabic ceding space to its many spoken dialects. These elite instruments of learning took years of study to master, marking the passage from intellectual childhood to maturity, and although classical Arabic survives, a prerequisite for reading the Qur'an, Latin is, for all intents and purposes, dead. In a coda to the book, Mallette speculates on the afterlife of the cosmopolitan languages in the twenty-first century, on the perils of monolingualism, and the ethics of language choice: for example, what will happen to "global" English once England is no longer part of the EU, and can Al-Fusha, or perhaps Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world, take a lesson from English and become a new lingua franca for a new millennium? The book will be read by anyone interested in rethinking our choice of language, literary tradition, the transmission of ideas, and cultural expression in an increasingly multilingual world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: pt. I Group Portrait with Language

ch. 1 A Poetics of the Cosmopolitan Language

ch. 2 My Tongue

ch. 3 A Cat May Look at a King

pt. II Space, Place, and the Cosmopolitan Language

ch. 4 Territory / Frontiers / Routes

ch. 5 Tracks

ch. 6 Tribal Rugs

pt. III Translation and Time

ch. 7 The Soul of a New Language

ch. 8 On First Looking into Matta's Aristotle

ch. 9 "I Became a Fable"

ch. 10 A Spy in the House of Language

pt. IV Beyond the Cosmopolitan Language

ch. 11 Silence

ch. 12 The Shadow of Latinity

ch. 13 Life Writing.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226795904

022679590X

9780226796062

022679606X

OCLC:

1238130923