Grammar, rhetoric and theories of translation in the Late Middle Ages

Afternoon-seminar with Prof. Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania.

This chapter looks at innovations in the study of Latin grammar and rhetoric between the late eleventh century and the early thirteenth century in order to lay the ground for vernacular interest in figurative language up through the fourteenth century.  Modern linguistics found its early antecedent in the linguistic thought of medieval grammarians who thought about language and linguistic signs in broad philosophical terms. 

At the same time, the teaching of Latin grammar in the lower schools took on a new practical dimension by recognizing that Latin needed to be taught as a foreign language. Rhetoric too found new theoretical and practical directions:   rhetoric could be studied as adjacent to linguistic logic, but it was also a way of teaching literary competence and an appreciation of figuration.  The chapter then turns to a case study, the figure metalepsis or transumptio, which could be treated in terms of a philosophical semantics (what does a trope do to meaning?) or as the highest form of figurative embellishment. 

By way of conclusion, the essay turns to evidence of the penetration into vernacular poetics of Latin grammatical and rhetorical theory.  The earliest and most significant evidence for vernacular reception of Latin language theory about figures comes from Western Scandinavia in the work of the Third Grammarian (c. 1250), who translated Donatus’ Barbarismus and parts of Priscian’s Institutiones into Old Norse.  The Third Grammarian integrates the ancient doctrine of the figures and tropes into an existing vernacular program through direct comparisons and linkages of Latin grammatical precepts with exemplary skaldic poetic practices.

The programme is sent out via email and posted at this site, please sign up to receive it: av@teol.ku.dk.

We speak English, when the title is in English, if it is in Danish, the paper is in Danish and the language of the seminar is mixed.