Languages and Communities in the Late and Post-Roman Western Provinces

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Languages are central to the creation and expression of identities and cultures, as well as to life itself, yet the linguistic variegation of the later-Roman and post-imperial period in the Roman west is remarkably understudied. A deeper understanding of this important issue is crucial to any reconstruction of the broader story of linguistic continuity and change in Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as to the history of the communities who wrote, read, and spoke Latin and other languages. Languages and Communities in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial Western Provinces offers the first comprehensive modern study of the main developments, key features and debates of the later-Roman and post-imperial linguistic environment, focusing on the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Gaul, the Germanies, Britain and Ireland. The chapters collected in this volume help us to understand better the embeddedness, or not, of Latin, at different social levels and across provinces, to consider (socio)linguistic variegation, bi-/multi-lingualism, and attitudes towards languages, and to confront the complex role of language in the communities, identities, and cultures of the later- and post-imperial Roman western world.

This volume will be accompanied by two further volumes from the European Research Council-funded LatinNow project: Social Factors in the Latinization of the Roman West and Latinization, Local Languages, and Literacies in the Roman West.

Alex Mullen, Associate Professor in Classics, University of Nottingham, George Woudhuysen, Assistant Professor in Roman History, University of Nottingham

Alex Mullen (PhD, FSA, FRHistS) is Associate Professor in Classics at the University of Nottingham and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded LatinNow project exploring life and languages in the Roman western provinces. She previously held research fellowships at the Universities of Cambridge (Magdalene) and Oxford (All Souls College). She is the author of Southern Gaul and the Mediterranean (Cambridge, 2019), co-author (with Olivia Elder) of The Language of Letters (Cambridge, 2019), and co-editor (with Patrick James) of Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 2012).

George Woudhuysen is an Assistant Professor in Roman History at the University of Nottingham. He has published widely on Late Antiquity, including The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor (Edinburgh, 2023) (with Justin Stover).

1. Language and History in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial West, Alex Mullen And George Woudhuysen
North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula
2. Languages and Communities in Late Antique and Early Medieval North Africa, Jonathan P. Conant
3. Reflections on the Latin Language Spoken and Written in Visigothic Hispania, Isabel Velázquez
4. Conservatism in Language: Framing Latin in Early-Medieval Iberia, Graham Barrett
Gaul and the Germanies
5. Gaulish in the Late Empire (c. 200 600 CE), Alderik Blom
6. Registers of Latin in Gaul from the Fifth to the Seventh Century, Ian Wood
7. Death and Survival of Latin in the Empire West of the Rhine (Belgicae, Germaniae) and the Rise of the Frankish-Theodisc Languages, Wolfgang Haubrichs
Ireland and Britain
8. Early Literacy and Multilingualism in Ireland and Britain, David Stifter and Nora White, with a contribution By Katherine Forsyth
9. The Romance of Early Britain: Latin, British and English, c. 400 600, David Parsons
10. A Critical Afterword, Paul Russell