Preachers, Teachers, and Translators: The Social Meaning of Language Study in Trecento Tuscany

"Preachers, Teachers, and Translators: The Social Meaning of Language Study in Trecento Tuscany. " Recent scholarly studies have explicated a dynamic of popularization inherent in such medieval linguistic and literary genres as preaching and translation from Latin into the vernacular. This essay uses texts of the Italian Duecento and Trecento, by Brunetto Latini, Domenico Cavalca, and Aesop in Latin and Tuscan, to show how one essential model for preaching and translation was the work of that venerable figure of village and town, the Latin grammar master. Grammarians taught more than language skills; their discipline was also moralizing. Elementary grammar, moreover, worked conservatively, both in literary terms (in that it enforced genre distinctions and themes based on Latin models) and socially (in that it assumed hierarchical distinctions between the language realms and among writers, speakers, readers, and hearers). The grammar course aimed at initiating boys into an elite Latin world. Grammar teaching thus reinforced models of Latin wisdom literature that informed popularizing preaching and translation.