Multilingualism and the Genesis of a New Written Tradition
MULTILINGUALISM AND THE GENESIS OF A NEW WRITTEN TRADITION
Prague, 8 – 9 October 2026
A new language or, more generally, a new written tradition never appears ex nihilo, but is often the product of a linguistic and, above all, cultural contact. This may lead to the genesis of a new discourse tradition as a transformation of an existing discourse tradition in contact or as a blend of the local (e.g. oral) and contact tradition. Thus, the emergence of a new written tradition presupposes the existence of multilingualism of at least a part of the speakers of a given language (i.e. of a given discourse community), which creates the conditions of linguistic and cultural contact. In the medieval and pre-modern world, such new written traditions often emerged in contact with a classical/ritual language in order to mediate, explain and disseminate the dominant culture, or to perform the functions foreseen by the new cultural pattern, but for which the use of the cultural language was inappropriate or impractical. Especially in the modern world of polyfunctional languages, such a trigger for the emergence of a new written tradition can be the rise of self-confidence of a local group trying to be a match for the dominant language, at least on some levels.
The conference is organised within the framework of the Strategy AV 21 and Lumina Quæruntur Fellowship project Multilingualism and the Emergence of a New Written Language as a Transformation of Discourse Traditions, which aims to describe and analyse the mechanisms behind the emergence of new written languages or language varieties within the multilingual contexts of different European cultural traditions during the medieval and early modern periods.
Multilingualism and the Genesis of a New Written Tradition
Prague, Villa Lanna 2026
Programme
Time | 8 October 2026 (Thursday) | 9 October 2026 (Friday) |
Zoom | https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87577368903?pwd=gHgTcTvZArWtbdGybxYPR8riVGo1b2.1 | https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81009600089?pwd=nmNfOtJz4SlcpGsEdRUxjTPareuUUJ.1 |
9:00 | Opening | Opening of the 2nd day |
Section I | Section V | |
Chair | Tomáš Mikulka | Jiří Dynda |
9:10 | Ekaterina Dikova, Jürgen Fuchsbauer (Innsbruck): REGEST: A Digital Tool for Studying Multiple Translations and the Formation of Written Traditions | Tomáš Mikulka (Prague): Constituting Liturgy in the Pannonian Area: The Example of the Great Blessing of Waters at Epiphany |
9:30 | Nora White (Maynooth): Writing on the edge in early medieval Ireland | Antoaneta Granberg (Gothenburg): Multilingualism and the emergence of a new written tradition: The Murfatlar inscriptions. |
9:50 | Vladimir Agrigoroaei (Poitiers): Not Yet English: The Kentish Sermons as an Inbred Textual Strain and the Weight of French Tradition | Simeon Dekker (Gießen): The formation of literary Ruthenian in interaction with Polish and Church Slavonic: The intersection of grammatical and lexical influences |
10:10 | Discussion | |
10:40 | Coffee break | |
Section II | Section VI | |
Chair | Markéta Kulhánková | Katarína Džunková |
11:10 | Alberto Ravani (Princeton): Translating Myself. The Chambre de Beautés in Medieval Greek | Dariusz Piwowarczyk (Kraków): Relatinization and multilingualism in the genesis of Old Polish Christian terminology |
11:30 | Peter Toth (Oxford): An Unknown Latin Translation of the Apocalypse of the Virgin Mary | Dorota Masłej (Poznań): The process of vernacularisation of written culture in the light of Latin-Polish bilingualism |
11:50 | Constanța Burlacu (Prague): The Legend of Varlaam and Josaphat: a Phenomenon of Multilingualism and Linguistic Contact | Katarzyna Jasińska-Różycka, Magdalena Klapper (Kraków): Foreign Reflexes in Medieval Polish Glosses: Two Case Studies |
12:10 | Discussion | |
12:40 | Lunch | |
Section III | Section VII | |
Chair | Pavla Drápelová | Constanţa Burlacu |
14:00 | David Torollo (Madrid): Thirteenth-Century Multilingual Iberia: Arabic, Translation, and the Emergence of Hebrew and Castilian Narratives | Katarína Džunková (Prague): The First Hungarian Translation of the Gospel and Psalter (“Hussite Bible”) in the context of medieval Czech and German Bible translations. |
14:20 | Nilab Saeedi (Vienna): Choosing the Language of Empire: | Gábor Bradács (Budapest): Abridging, Glossing, Localizing: Translation Strategies and the Making of Vernacular Historiography (c. 1400 – 1600) |
14:40 | Ugo Mondini (Cologne): Early Modern Mathēmataria and the Making of a the Greek Language and Literature in the | Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar (Vienna): How God Started Speaking (Old) Romanian: Religious Vernacularization, Diaglossic Change, and Symbolic Regraphization among the Romanians of Banat (ca. 1560-ca. 1660) |
15:00 | Discussion | |
15:30 | Coffee break | |
Section IV | Section VIII | |
Chair | Vladislav Knoll | Constanţa Burlacu |
16:00 | Miriam Cabré, Barbara Francioni, Camila Talfani (Girona): Occitan in the Catalan Courtly Written Tradition: Origins and Historiographic Problems | Vratislav Karpíšek (Prague): From Oral Variety to Written Practice: Initial Steps toward the Codification of Podlachian |
16:20 | Catherine Léglu (Luxembourg): « Vers mortal » : two poems of the Toulouse Consistory and the multilingual theme of Death in the later fifteenth century | Vladislav Knoll (Prague): Why do new written traditions emerge? |
16:40 | Discussion | Final Discussion |
17:10 | End of the first day | End of the event |