Description
What can the Latin of the Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum, a text written by Gerard Gellért, the early-eleventh century bishop of Csanád / Cenad / Morisena, tell us about its author’s linguistic profile? What was the impact of his cultural and educational background on his peculiar usage of Latin? To what extent can such an individual linguistic usage even be reconstructed from the sole surviving copy of his work, produced as it was far from the original context of its composition? In my presentation, I will attempt to provide some answers to these questions by taking a closer look—with the specific tools of linguistics—at the language of what remains a marginal text, written by a speaker transplanted far from his native linguistic environment into a cultural and religious border area characterized by different communication dynamics than those of his original homeland. By looking at some of the linguistic features of the text as it survives today, both those identified by previous scholars and a few that have escaped their attention, and by investigating some revealing details of textual transmission, I will attempt to reconstruct the linguistic profile of a Latin writer (and, presumably, speaker) whose individual usage was shaped in addition to his recognizable Romance linguistic background, by his previous readings and the scarcity of Latin (re)sources at his disposal in early-eleventh-century medieval Hungary, and by his idiosyncratic linguistic and stylistic choices.| Period | 3 Nov 2023 |
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| Event title | Intellectual traditions in the Deliberatio of Saint Gerard of Cenad |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Timișoara, RomaniaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |