This volume contains essays on various aspects of multilingualism in medieval France, Italy, England, and the Low Countries. The fifteen contributions discuss the use of the different vernaculars and Latin in both literary and non-literary contexts, showing how cultural and social factors determined the choice of language for a particular purpose or type of text. The role of French in non-French contexts is a major theme of these essays: in the British Isles after the Norman Conquest, in Italy as a response to the need for mainly secular types of literature which did not exist in Italian, and in the Low Countries by virtue of geographic contiguity and change of rulers. Special attention is paid in the French context to the use of French and Occitan in areas of the South. Some essays examine specific cases or text-corpora, while others examine questions of multilingualism from more theoretical, linguistic, and rhetorical points of view. Together, they form an invaluable introduction to the topic of medieval multilingualism, illustrated by meticulously executed case-studies, which future work in the area will have to take into account.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Medieval Francophonia - AD PUTTER AND KEITH BUSBY

Creole Grammar and Multilingual Poetics - MARK AMSLER

Language Labels, Language Change, and Lexis - DAVID TROTTER

Institutions and Multilingualism in the Middle Ages - DOUGLAS A. KIBBEE

Multilingualism in England and Wales, c. 1200: The Testimony of Gerald of Wales - AD PUTTER

Aultre manier de language: English Usage as a Political Act in Thirteenth-Century England - MARK N. TAYLOR

From Francophile to Francophobe: The Changing Attitude of Medieval Dutch Authors towards French Literature - REMCO SLEIDERINK

Literary Evidence for Multilingualism: The Roman de Tristan in its Italian Incarnations - GLORIA ALLAIRE

Lecteurs et interprètes des romans arthuriens en Italie: un examen à partir des études récentes - DANIELA DELCORNO BRANCA

Manuscrits en français, italien, et latin entre la Toscane 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 - MARIE-JOSÉ HEIJKANT

Aspects of Legal Multilingualism in the States of Savoy - FRANCESCO AIMERITO

The Vernacularization of Late Medieval Sermons: Some French and Italian Examples - CAROLYN MUESSIG

French and Occitan in Fourteenth-Century Auvergne - R. ANTHONY LODGE

Musical Multilingualism in Le Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fonds français 146) - ICHELLE BOLDUC