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OverviewTrading Tongues offers fresh approaches to the multilingualism of major early English authors like Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, Margery Kempe, and William Caxton, and lesser-known figures like French lyricist Charles d Orleans. Juxtaposing literary works with contemporaneous Latin and French civic records, mixed-language merchant miscellanies, and bilingual phrasebooks, Jonathan Hsy illustrates how languages commingled in late medieval and early modern cities. Chaucer, a customs official for the Port of London, infused English poetry with French and Latin merchant jargon, and London merchants incorporated Latin and vernacular verse forms into trilingual account books.Hsy examines how writers working in English, Latin, and French (and combinations thereof) theorized the rich contours of polyglot identity. In a range of genres from multilingual lyrics, poems about urban life, and autobiographical narratives writers found venues to consider their own linguistic capacities and to develop new modes of conceiving language contact and exchange. Interweaving close readings of medieval texts with insights from sociolinguistics and postcolonial theory, Trading Tongues not only illuminates how multilingual identities were expressed in the past; it generates new ways of thinking about cultural contact and language crossings in our own time. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Jonathan HsyPublisher: Ohio State University Press Imprint: Ohio State University Press Dimensions: Width: 12.70cm , Height: 0.10cm , Length: 12.70cm Weight: 0.005kg ISBN: 9780814293317ISBN 10: 081429331 Pages: 264 Publication Date: 05 July 2013 Audience: General/trade , General Format: CD-ROM Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In stock We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately. Table of ContentsReviewsTrading Tongues is accomplished, intelligent, and assiduous. Hsy provides some excellent and original close readings of multilingual texts; I particularly admire his chapter on London merchants, and his final discussion of a Charles d'Orleans ballade is superbly interesting. The research is strong, the style elegant and well-turned, and the quality of argument high. --Ardis Butterfield, Yale University Author InformationJonathan Hsy is assistant professor of English at The George Washington University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |