Subscriptions and Inscriptions from the Italian Trecento: A Database for a Sociology of Writing

• In Event: Writing Modern Languages in Renaissance Europe: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Abstract

From the early Middle Ages onwards Neo-Latin European languages which had existed only in a countless variety of oral usages started to be written. Graphic solutions aimed at representing sounds and phonemes which were exclusive of vernacular languages were explored, since the Latin model was no longer of much use. In Italy the process was complicated by the lack of a political centre which could support a ‘national’ language, as happened in France and Spain. Subscriptions in manuscripts and public inscriptions from our database constitute a meaningful statistical sample to monitor the process: they are often dated or datable, revealing the social status of the writer and are both formulaic and creatively free in their composition. Do the strategies adopted by individual writers in given times and places form any sort of pattern, and can their study help draw a general picture of the sociolinguistics of writing in Trecento Italy?

Author

• Maddalena Signorini, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata