Lives of the Great Languages: Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean. Karla Mallette. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. viii + 240 pp. $105

In essence, modernity posits an overlap between territory and mother tongue, the latter being used as the normative language of literature, and it both overlooks the possibility of a break between written and oral registers and conceives of the mother tongue as a natural, directly accessible device...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRenaissance Quarterly Vol. 76; no. 3; pp. 1191 - 1193
Main Author Aparicio, Mònica Colominas
Format Journal Article Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.10.2023
Subjects
Arabic language
Biology
Distinctive features
Latin language
Linguistics
Native language
Petrarca, Francesco (1304-1374)
Poetics
United States > US
Chicago Illinois
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Summary:In essence, modernity posits an overlap between territory and mother tongue, the latter being used as the normative language of literature, and it both overlooks the possibility of a break between written and oral registers and conceives of the mother tongue as a natural, directly accessible device for all speakers. [...]a distinctive feature of the cosmopolitan language is complexity, and it is in light of the desire and effort to learn it that Arabic can be labeled as dead, just like Latin. [...]although the human biology metaphor is repeated far beyond the book's title, Mallette warns of its inadequacy in describing cosmopolitan languages (which do not live or die but are refreshingly posthuman). The human dimension goes behind the scenes and so, too, do the protagonists in the vignettes, who merely serve to highlight some aspects of language.
ISSN:0034-4338
1935-0236
DOI:10.1017/rqx.2023.488