Language and Cultural Change: Aspects of the Study and Use of Language in the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance (review)

This stimulating collection of studies, based on the papers presented in a workshop on language and cultural change (Groningen, February, 2004), focuses on the transition from the late medieval to the early modern period. Although it concentrates on language, the content of this work is particularly relevant, not only to specialists in linguistics, but to scholars of many areas of Renaissance studies. The term language referred to in the title includes a large range of meanings, oscillating between the use and the study of language. The former refers especially to the act of choosing a language (vernacular versus Latin, medieval Latin versus humanistic Latin, and so on) while the latter indicates the choice of a grammatical system and of a curriculum for language education.

Among the many qualities of this volume is its skill in approaching the theme of "language and cultural change" through a variety of disciplines: namely, historical, philosophical, and linguistic-psychological. Another merit of this work is its tacit confrontation, through the analysis of language, with some of the most basic unresolved questions of Renaissance scholarship, such as the diffusion of humanistic knowledge, and the relationship between humanism and scholasticism.

Diffusion of knowledge is discussed by Sigrid Miller in relation to theological works translated into German, and by James Hankins, who opens our eyes to humanistic works written by Leonardo Bruni in volgare. Both describe a conscious decision to write or to translate texts that were normally written in Latin into vernacular, in order to appeal to a larger audience. These studies show how a careful examination of the language used by fifteenth-century humanists and theologians can change the common vision of theology or humanism as having been directed to an extremely exclusive intellectual group.

The question of the transition from scholasticism to humanism has been discussed by many Renaissance scholars, leading us back to the controversy between Kristeller and Garin. This volume, through its investigation of language, touches the complexity of this transition: is it to be seen as an evolutionary process or a revolutionary one? This issue serves as a focal point for many of the papers in this volume.

C. H. Kneepkens and Robert Black examine these questions through the changes in grammar. Kneepkens, who focuses on northwestern Europe during the last decades of the fifteenth century, in particular through the works of the grammarian William Zenders, emphasizes the enthusiastic reception of a new grammar, based on the humanistic concepts of elegance and imitation, yet does not ignore the strong grip of scholastic speculative grammar.

Black, on the other hand, through a thorough examination of school curricula used by medieval grammarians and those used by humanistic educators, tends to stress the continuity between scholasticism and humanism, showing how at the first stages of schooling a Renaissance student was trained very similarly to a student during the Middle Ages, and only in his later studies does one see the gradual divergence of study habits.

It should be noted that although some of the papers in this volume may seem to be alluding to the familiar humanistic notion of classical Latin as the ideal language of the Renaissance, the refusal to take a one-sided stand on the issue of continuity and change in the relationship between scholasticism and humanism is a dominant perspective of this work.

A few of the other papers place their discussion outside of the framework discussed above: Andrea Robiglio's paper extends the line connecting medieval and Renaissance language and culture further into the seventeenth century. Focusing on civil conversation, he analyzes the medieval heritage of this concept. Castiglione's famous Renaissance work Il Libro del Cortegiano is seen by Robiglio as an important link that is connected, on the one...