Objective
The Liber Glossarum is a very large dictionary (about 30000 entries), compiled in Northern France at the end of the VIIIth c., and combining encyclopaedic, theological, medical and grammatical sources. While being the first European alphabetical dictionary, it is still much neglected by modern scholars, principally because there exist only partial editions from the beginning of the XXth c.
This project aims to provide a full edition of the text, based upon a large number of manuscripts, as well as to try and answer questions relative to its origin (which female monastery ?), its sources (which library was used ?), its link with the Carolingian educational reform movement inspired the Carolingian court.
The edition will be completed within a few years, by a team composed of palaeographers, mediaevalists, and specialists of the various sources from which the authors of the Liber borrowed. The core of the project will be the Website http://liber-glossarum.linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr/ used as a platform allowing European partners to work easily in common.
Such a complete edition of the Liber glossarum intends to be a solid foundation for future scholarship, allowing also closer examination of the Carolingian manuscript tradition of the great encyclopaedist Isidore of Seville, as well as a better evaluation of the importance of the Liber for the whole lexicographical tradition of the Middle Ages. Its study is of interest from three perspectives : it will provide better knowledge of a tool that was diffused throughout Europe; it will enhance our understanding of the role of well-read women in building the foundations of medieval culture ; and from a linguistic point of view, it will give an overview of the principles at work in the making of European dictionaries.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
ERC-2010-StG_20091209
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Funding Scheme
ERC-SG - ERC Starting GrantHost institution
75794 Paris
France