Italian Studies seminar

Languages of Renaissance Italy: Italian-English dialect contact in the Renaissance

Dr Josh Brown (Senior Lecturer, University of Western Australia)
Wednesday 29 March 2023, 5pm (Sydney time)

Abstract

This presentation is in two parts.  

The first provides an overview of my recent co-edited book (with Dr Alessandra Petrocchi, University of Oxford) entitled Languages and Cross-Cultural Connections in Renaissance Italy (Brepols, 2023). I discuss the reasons behind the creation of the volume, with the aim of showing how it can be seen as a corrective for current discussions on the history of multilingualism in Italy. The chapters all deal with some specific aspect of the author’s particular research expertise, and cover a wide variety of languages used throughout the Italian peninsula during the Renaissance including Latin, Sicilian, French, Aragonese, Castilian, English, Hebrew, Greek as well as topics on multilingual printing and Ethiopian languages in Renaissance Italy. Each chapter will be presented in summary form, discussing the major pitfalls and contributions of the volume as a whole as well as the lacunae which remain in the research literature on multilingualism in Renaissance Italy.  

Given this context, the second part of the presentation identifies and analyses a series of English loanwords in merchant letters held in the Datini Archive, one of the most voluminous resources for studying merchant documents available in Renaissance Italy. The Datini company was run by Francesco di Marco Datini, the “merchant of Prato”, between 1388 and 1408. Over the course of its existence, Francesco Datini traded with several companies in London. So far, few studies have considered the Datini Archive as a precious resource for studies of language contact. I identify 25 loanwords from English into Italian, and describe their transfer at the phonological, morphological, and semantic levels. I provide evidence for greater linguistic contact between English and Italian than has so far been recorded in the literature. Further, the paper takes into account the lexical influences on Italian of the vernacular languages of later medieval England (Middle English and Anglo-Norman) and describes lexical transference during a fascinating and crucial period for linguistic and cultural contact between Italy and England.  

About the presenter

Josh Brown is senior lecturer in Italian Studies and Chair of Modern European Languages at The University of Western Australia. After his PhD from UWA, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stockholm University in Sweden. He then took up a lectureship in Italian Studies at Australian National University before returning to Perth. Josh is a historical sociolinguist and has research interests in Italian language and linguistics, digital humanities, as well as the teaching of Italian as an additional language. He has published widely, including on structural issues in degreee programmes and language enrolments, the use of subtitling in Italian language teaching, and dialect contact in Renaissance Italy. Recently he has been investigating how online video resources for languages education can help students achieve realistic results at university. He is the author of several volumes, including: Languages and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in Renaissance Italy (Brepols, 2023); Early Evidence for Tuscanisation in the Letters of Milanese Merchants in the Datini Archive, Prato, 1396-1402 (Istituto Lombardo, 2017) and Canon Raffaele Martelli in Western Australia 1853-1864: life and letters (Morning Star, 2014). He tweets @giosuemarrone and blogs at www.giosuemarrone.com  

Join online via Zoom

For more information, contact: Associate Professor Antonia Rubino (antonia.rubino@sydney.edu.au)

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