Exploring Multilingualism And Multiscriptism In Written Artefacts

This book explores multilingualism and multiscriptism in a great variety of writing cultures, offering an in-depth analysis of how diverse languages and scripts seamlessly intertwine within written artefacts. Insights into scribal practices are particularly illuminating in that respect, especially when exploring artefacts originating from multicultural communities and regions where distinct writing traditions intersect. The influence of multilingualism and multiscriptism on these writing cultures becomes evident, with essays spanning various domains, from the mundane aspects of everyday life to the realms of scholarship and political propaganda. Scholars often relegate these phenomena, despite being frequently encountered, to the status of exceptions compared to the more prevalent monolingualism and monoscriptism. However, in daring to challenge this viewpoint, this book emphasises the profound significance and relevance of multilingualism and multiscriptism in shaping the development of languages, cultures, and societies across Asia, Africa, and Europe. It caters to a diverse readership keen on delving into the intricacies of these phenomena within this rich tapestry of writing cultures.

This book explores multilingualism and multiscriptism in a great variety of writing cultures, offering an in-depth analysis of how diverse languages and scripts seamlessly intertwine within written artefacts. Insights into scribal practices are particularly illuminating in that respect, especially when exploring artefacts originating from multicultural communities and regions where distinct writing traditions intersect. The influence of multilingualism and multiscriptism on these writing cultures becomes evident, with essays spanning various domains, from the mundane aspects of everyday life to the realms of scholarship and political propaganda. Scholars often relegate these phenomena, despite being frequently encountered, to the status of exceptions compared to the more prevalent monolingualism and monoscriptism. However, in daring to challenge this viewpoint, this book emphasises the profound significance and relevance of multilingualism and multiscriptism in shaping the development of languages, cultures, and societies across Asia, Africa, and Europe. It caters to a diverse readership keen on delving into the intricacies of these phenomena within this rich tapestry of writing cultures.

Script and writing were among the most important inventions in human history, and until the invention of printing, the handwritten book was the primary medium of literary and cultural transmission. Although the study of manuscripts is already quite advanced for many regions of the world, no unified discipline of ‘manuscript studies’ has yet evolved which is capable of treating handwritten books from East Asia, India and the Islamic world equally alongside the European manuscript tradition. This book, which aims to begin the interdisciplinary dialogue needed to arrive at a truly systematic and comparative approach to manuscript cultures worldwide, brings together papers by leading researchers concerned with material, philological and cultural aspects of different manuscript traditions.

The present volume is the main achievement of the Research Networking Programme 'Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies', funded by the European Science Foundation in the years 2009-2014. It is the first attempt to introduce a wide audience to the entirety of the manuscript cultures of the Mediterranean East. The chapters reflect the state of the art in such fields as codicology, palaeography, textual criticism and text editing, cataloguing, and manuscript conservation as applied to a wide array of language traditions including Arabic, Armenian, Avestan, Caucasian Albanian, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Slavonic, Syriac, and Turkish. Seventy-seven scholars from twenty-one countries joined their efforts to produce the handbook. The resulting reference work can be recommended both to scholars and students of classical and oriental studies and to all those involved in manuscript research, digital humanities, and preservation of cultural heritage. The volume includes maps, illustrations, indexes, and an extensive bibliography.

Manuscript cultures based on Arabic script feature various tendencies in standardisation of orthography, script types and layout. Unlike previous studies, this book steps outside disciplinary and regional boundaries and provides a typological cross-cultural comparison of standardisation processes in twelve Arabic-influenced writing traditions where different cultures, languages and scripts interact. A wide range of case studies give insights into the factors behind uniformity and variation in Judeo-Arabic in Hebrew script, South Palestinian Christian Arabic, New Persian, Aljamiado of the Spanish Moriscos, Ottoman Turkish, a single multilingual Ottoman manuscript, Sino-Arabic in northwest China, Malay Jawi in the Moluccas, Kanuri and Hausa in Nigeria, Kabyle in Algeria, and Ethiopian Fidäl script as used to transliterate Arabic. One of the findings of this volume is that different domains of manuscript cultures have distinct paths of standardisation, so that orthography tends to develop its own standardisation principles irrespective of norms applied to layout and script types. This book will appeal to readers interested in manuscript studies, sociolinguistics, literacy studies, and history of writing.

Giovanni Villani’s New Chronicle traces the history of Europe, Italy, and Florence over a vast sweep of time – from the Tower of Babel to the great earthquake of 1348. In the eleventh and twelfth books, Villani depicts a particularly eventful period in the history of Florence, whose grandeur is illustrated in several famous chapters describing the city’s income, expenses, and magnificence. The dramatic account follows Florence’s internal affairs as well as its conflicts with powerful lords like Castruccio Castracani and Mastino della Scala. The chronicler’s perspective, however, ranges beyond his city, as he documents such events as the imperial coronation of Louis of Bavaria, the penitential pilgrimage of Venturino da Bergamo, and the first campaigns of the Hundred Year’s War.

Although fragments from music manuscripts have occupied a place of considerable importance since the very early days of modern musicology, a collective, up-to-date, and comprehensive discussion of the various techniques and approaches for their study was lacking. On-line resources have also become increasingly crucial for the identification, study, and textual/musical reconstruction of fragmentary sources. Disiecta Membra Musicae. Studies in Musical Fragmentology aims at reviewing the state of the art in the study of medieval music fragments in Europe, the variety of methodologies for studying the repertory and its transmission, musical palaeography, codicology, liturgy, historical and cultural contexts, etc. This collection of essays provides an opportunity to reflect also on broader issues, such as the role of fragments in last century’s musicology, how fragmentary material shaped our conception of the written transmission of early European music, and how new fragments are being discovered in the digital age. Known fragments and new technology, new discoveries and traditional methodology alternate in this collection of essays, whose topics range from plainchant to ars nova and fifteenth- to sixteenth-century polyphony.

A crucial question throughout the Middle Ages, the relationship between body and spirit cannot be understood without an interdisciplinary approach – combining literature, philosophy and medicine. Gathering contributions by leading international scholars from these disciplines, the collected volume explores themes such as lovesickness, the five senses, the role of memory and passions, in order to shed new light on the complex nature of the medieval Self.