Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Languages and Culture in History: A New Series
- Part I Approaches to Multilingualism in the Past
- 1 Codes, Routines and Communication: Forms and Meaning of Linguistic Plurality in Western European Societies in Former Times
- 2 Capitalizing Multilingual Competence: Language Learning and Teaching in the Early Modern Period
- Part II Multilingualism in Early Modern Times: Three Examples
- 3 Plurilingualism in Augsburg and Nuremberg in Early Modern Times
- 4 Multilingualism in the Dutch Golden Age: An Exploration
- 5 Literacy, Usage and National Prestige: The Changing Fortunes of Gaelic in Ireland
- Index
2 - Capitalizing Multilingual Competence: Language Learning and Teaching in the Early Modern Period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Languages and Culture in History: A New Series
- Part I Approaches to Multilingualism in the Past
- 1 Codes, Routines and Communication: Forms and Meaning of Linguistic Plurality in Western European Societies in Former Times
- 2 Capitalizing Multilingual Competence: Language Learning and Teaching in the Early Modern Period
- Part II Multilingualism in Early Modern Times: Three Examples
- 3 Plurilingualism in Augsburg and Nuremberg in Early Modern Times
- 4 Multilingualism in the Dutch Golden Age: An Exploration
- 5 Literacy, Usage and National Prestige: The Changing Fortunes of Gaelic in Ireland
- Index
Summary
Abstract
As an illustration of historical didaxology – the study of language teaching and learning in the past – this chapter focuses on multilingual teaching in the Low Countries in the sixteenth century. Multilingualism and the teaching of foreign languages were widespread in the Low Countries in the early modern period, as shown by the vast number of private and public teaching establishments, and of language preceptors. This contribution focuses on the didactic tools produced for the teaching and acquisition of foreign languages, i.e. (contrastive) language manuals and (bilingual/multilingual) dictionaries, and on the activity of prolific ‘language masters’, such as Noël de Berlaimont, Peeter Heyns and Gabriel Meurier. In conclusion, a contextualizing interpretation is offered of early modern language communities in terms of their technical-commercial infrastructure.
Keywords: Early modern period, foreign language teaching, grammaticography, didactic tools for teaching language, lexicography, Low Countries, multilingualism
Multilingualism as a cultural practice
In 1551 the Louvain printer Bartholomaeus Gravius (de Graeve/van Graeve, c. 1510–1578) issued a quadrilingual edition of the polyglot dictionary and language manual of Noël de Berlaimont (see below), one of the most successful language manuals in the early modern period. In the Louvain edition of 1551, which was the first of four (later editions appeared in 1556, 1558 and 1560), the languages included are Dutch (or ‘Flemish’, as it was then usually called), French, Latin and Spanish. The preface, signed by Gravius, is written in French, and contains a dithyramb on the two towns in Brabant that were culturally, intellectually and commercially prominent in those days: Louvain and Antwerp. Apart from stressing the quality of the manual of Berlaimont, now appearing in a quadrilingual version, Gravius addresses his potential readership – more specifically the youth of the (then Spanish Habsburg) Low Countries – pointing out the utility of mastering several modern languages:
Comme le painctre de son art aorne & accoustre sa paincture de diuerses couleurs, pour la rendre tant plus excellente, ainsy la nature humaine s’efforce tousiours de soy & son pays ou elle est natiue, honorer & esleuer par toutes vertus, & aultres ornemens honorables & profitables à la chose publique. Dont à cause de diuerses nations, qui sont tant à la court de la Maiesté Impériale, & de son filz Philippe d’Austrice, prince d’Espaigne, et de pays de pardeça: que à la tresfameuse Vniversité de Louuain, là ou sont toutes nations de gens, & en Anuers marchans de tous pays.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Multilingualism, Nationhood, and Cultural IdentityNorthern Europe, 16th–19th Centuries, pp. 49 - 76Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016