Latin–Greek (and Greek–Latin) code-switching – the practice of alternating between Latin and Greek within a single unit of communication – has received its fair share of attention among scholars of Classical literature. Existing work in this field has shown that alternating between the languages had a markedly ambiguous place in ancient society: Code-switching could operate as a marker for elite discourse in Rome and serve as a symbol for calling on the authority of respected writers in certain literary genres. Simultaneously, the use of Greek could indicate affection among well-educated Romans, but it could also be viewed as untrue to the patria, and even as the language of slaves in radicalized political settings.

Despite this interest among Classicists, the early modern phenomenon of Latin–Greek code-switching in Neo-Latin and New Ancient Greek literature has yet to become the object of dedicated study. The oversight is surprising: the widespread presence of Ancient Greek in Neo-Latin texts is immediately evident to readers of humanist dialogues, baroque tractatus, eighteenth-century handbooks, or early modern letter collections. Moreover, authors of new Greek texts in western Europe’s early modern period had invariably—indeed, almost unavoidably—also had extensive training in Latin.

The workshop “Latin–Greek Code-Switching in Early Modernity” (held at KU Leuven 13–14 October 2022 and funded by the Scientific Research Network (SRN) “Literatures without Borders” from the RELICS Group (Ghent), the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies (Innsbruck) and the Flemish FWO (KU Leuven) aimed to make a first step towards filling this gap.

This first special issue (out of three) explores the results of applying the concept of code-switching to early modern uses of Latin and Greek in the writing of four authors from western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries. The articles make clear that the phenomenon, as could be expected on the basis of the classical model, is prominent in Neo-Latin correspondence, but goes way beyond ancient practices, appearing in poetry and prose in a diverse range of forms, and responding a broad array of specifically early modern cultural discourses. The following second and third issues will widen this perspective substantially to include studies on the phenomenon of Latin–Greek code-switching in the multilingual early modern world from the early sixteenth century to the nineteenth century across Europe.

Editors: William Michael Barton (Guest Editor), Raf Van Rooy (Guest Editor)

Editorial

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Articles

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