Lives of the Great Languages - by Karla Mallette (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In this rich, ambitious work, Karla Mallette studies the nature and behaviors of the medieval cosmopolitan languages of learning-classical Arabic and medieval Latin-as they meandered their way across the Mediterranean. In a brilliant, lyrical performance in comparative literature and literary history, Mallette tells a complex story conveyed through vignette and anecdote of relationships among language workers-writers, compilers, translators, commentators, and copyists-their linguistic instrument of choice, and the transmission of knowledge, all before the emergence of the national language system in the late Middle Ages and early modernity. She describes how the elite languages of learning and culture were only tenuously related to the languages of everyday life, with Latin eventually giving way to the Romance vernaculars, and literary Arabic ceding space to its many spoken dialects. These elite instruments of learning took years of study to master, marking the passage from intellectual childhood to maturity, and although classical Arabic survives, a prerequisite for reading the Qur'an, Latin is, for all intents and purposes, dead. In a coda to the book, Mallette speculates on the afterlife of the cosmopolitan languages in the twenty-first century, on the perils of monolingualism, and the ethics of language choice: for example, what will happen to "global" English once England is no longer part of the EU, and can Al-Fusha, or perhaps Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world, take a lesson from English and become a new lingua franca for a new millennium? The book will be read by anyone interested in rethinking our choice of language, literary tradition, the transmission of ideas, and cultural expression in an increasingly multilingual world"--

Book Synopsis

The story of how Latin and Arabic spread across the Mediterranean to create a cosmopolitan world of letters.

In this ambitious book, Karla Mallette studies the nature and behaviors of the medieval cosmopolitan languages of learning-classical Arabic and medieval Latin-as they crossed the Mediterranean. Through anecdotes of relationships among writers, compilers, translators, commentators, and copyists, Mallette tells a complex story about the transmission of knowledge in the period before the emergence of a national language system in the late Middle Ages and early modernity.

Mallette shows how the elite languages of learning and culture were only tenuously related to the languages of everyday life. These languages took years of study to master, marking the passage from intellectual childhood to maturity. In a coda to the book, Mallette speculates on the afterlife of cosmopolitan languages in the twenty-first century, the perils of monolingualism, and the ethics of language choice. The book offers insight for anyone interested in rethinking linguistic and literary tradition, the transmission of ideas, and cultural expression in an increasingly multilingual world.

Review Quotes

"Remarkable and capacious. . . The study makes a dazzling contribution to language theory and comparative literature. The depth and range of Mallette's expertise are borne out in her assured handling of Latin, Italian, and Arabic literary cultures and contexts."-- "Studies in the Age of Chaucer"

"Lives of the Great Languages is a key, vivid contribution to recent scholarship that aims to move beyond mere acknowledgment of the complexities of the medieval Mediterranean (not to mention the existence of departmental and disciplinary boundaries) to engage in comparative, interdisciplinary, and methodologically diverse work."-- "Speculum"

"Lives of the Great Languages weaves a fascinating comparative poetics championing Classical Arabic and Latin as cosmopolitan languages. Tracing their circulation and connectivity in the medieval Mediterranean and beyond, Mallette flips the script on the modern ideology of national languages. Written with poetic verve and deep cultural insight, this book prompts us to reconsider what we thought we knew about mother tongues and learned languages, translation movements, and literary expression."--Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Lives of the Great Languages is a keenly original and challenging intervention in the discussion of the life and death of languages. Anyone interested in the history of Arabic language and culture will find it informative and insightful. It is what we need in order to rethink the national and monolingual frame through which we discuss languages, literary traditions, and cultural expressions."--Wen-chin Ouyang, University of London

About the Author

Karla Mallette is professor of Mediterranean studies in the Department of Middle East Studies and professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. She is the author of European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean and The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History.