MigraLing · Between migration and linguistics: Greeks in Western Europe and the emergence of contrastive grammar in the Renaissance (c.1390–1600)
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-03-01 → 2023-03-31
- EU contribution
- €214,159
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Between migration and linguistics: Greeks in Western Europe and the emergence of contrastive grammar in the Renaissance (c.1390–1600)
The crumbling apart of the Byzantine Empire engendered a steady influx of Greek migrants into western Europe, starting in Italy at the end of the Trecento. Many of these migrants were welcomed with open arms, as westerners recognized that they carried an enormous cultural capital with them. Just how profound this change was appears from the fact that classical education, as we know it today, began to emerge in the wake of Greek migration movements during the Renaissance. This subject touches upon a larger question of wider concern: how is the migration of people related to the migration of knowledge? One major intellectual-historical consequence of the Renaissance Greek migration has thus far not been granted the meticulous study it deserves, a gap which the MigraLing project has tried to fill. The reappearance of Greek in the west gave rise to a contrastive approach to languages, which formalized as a separate genre in the early 16th century. The MigraLing project has offered new perspectives on the origins of this contrastive approach, locating it in the dynamic interactions between Greek migrant teachers and their Italian students. MigraLing has illustrated that the genre of contrastive grammar can in the end be understood as a product of co-creation by these two groups. The Greeks tailored their all-Greek manuals to their western students and commented upon them in Latin during their oral teaching, whereas their Italian pupils watched over their teachers’ Latin and made new Latin versions of their manuals. I have supported my argumentation with case studies involving the highly popular grammars of Manuel Chrysoloras, Constantine Lascaris, and Theodore Gaza. MigraLing, in sum, looked at the socio-cultural background of progress in the history of contrastive linguistics, arguing that migration was a key factor in fostering this progress. As such, this project encourages to look at migration not only as a big problem to be dealt with, but also as a possible opportunity for intellectual innovation.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Migration and its societal impact have never been higher on the agenda than in our globalized world, which is why it features prominently in the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 13. It is a challenge that not only poses problems, but also offers opportunities in various ways. The possibility of a positive impact of migration often tends to be neglected in present-day debates. History, however, demonstrates that optimistic expectations should not necessarily remain unattainable. The crumbling apart of the Byzantine Greek empire in the late Middle Ages, for instance, engendered a steady influx of Greek migrants into Western Europe during the Renaissance. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 further stimulated this population movement, triggering a first major brain drain from the Greek world. This confronted Western Europeans not only with another culture, but also with another language boasting a rich cultural and grammatical tradition, the full impact of which remains to be investigated. The proposed action aims to counter this state of affairs by studying an important linguistic dimension of this vast research lacuna: the way in which the Greek migrants contributed to transforming grammar from a monolingual, Latinocentric knowledge domain to a multilingual and flexible discipline. Indeed, their intensive teaching of the Greek language and its grammar was a key turning point in the history of linguistic thought, since it gave rise to a contrastive approach to language studies and education. It is this revolutionary development which the action intends to analyse by investigating Renaissance linguistic handbooks. In particular, it aims to study (A) how and why contrastive grammar emerged in the wake of Greek migration movements during the Renaissance, (B) how this related to the Greek migrants' teaching of Western European students, both male and female, and (C) what the impact of this new genre of language study was on later linguistic thought and praxis.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITETET I OSLO · OsloCoordinatorNorway
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union