Roman Perspectives on Linguistic Diversity: Guardians of a Changing Language

ISBN-13: 9780197611975 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 304 str.

Adam Gitner

Opis

Thirty years ago Robert Kaster's Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity investigated ancient Greco-Roman grammarians as social agents within their social and cultural context. This collection of twelve essays develops that line of inquiry by focusing on one dimension of their activity: how Roman grammarians - as well as scholars and intellectuals more broadly - described, made sense of, and resisted linguistic diversity within the Roman republic and empire. This includes social and diachronic variety within Latin as well as multilingual contact with Greek and other Mediterranean languages. The essays cover five centuries of Latin reflection on language, from Varro to the fifth or sixth century CE. The book concludes with an autobiographical Epilogue by Robert Kaster about the origins of Guardians of Language and updates to the prosopography of known ancient grammarians found in Guardians.

Recenzje

Gitner has assembled an all-star team to finally respond to Guardians of Language in the best possible way. Recent technical advances in a variety of fields have been marshaled, the time frame of the investigation has been expanded, and the relevance of a variety of other scholarly discourses to the policing of language has been properly recognized. All in all, a remarkable collective achievement.

O autorze

Adam Gitner is a lexicographer at the Thesaurus linguae Latinae (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and docent in historical linguistics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.