Between migration and linguistics: Greeks in Western Europe and the emergence of contrastive grammar in the Renaissance (c.1390–1600)

Project Information

MigraLing

Grant agreement ID: 890397

DOI

10.3030/890397

Project terminated on 29 October 2022

EC signature date 14 April 2020

Start date 1 March 2021

End date 31 March 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 214 158,72

EU contribution

€ 214 158,72

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MigraLing (Between migration and linguistics: Greeks in Western Europe and the emergence of contrastive grammar in the Renaissance (c.1390–1600))

Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2023-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The crumbling apart of the Byzantine Empire engendered a steady influx of Greek migrants into western Europe, starting in Italy at the end of the Trecento. Many of these migrants were welcomed with open arms, as westerners recognized that they carried an enormous cultural capital with them. Just how profound this change was appears from the fact that classical education, as we know it today, began to emerge in the wake of Greek migration movements during the Renaissance. This subject touches upon a larger question of wider concern: how is the migration of people related to the migration of knowledge? One major intellectual-historical consequence of the Renaissance Greek migration has thus far not been granted the meticulous study it deserves, a gap which the MigraLing project has tried to fill. The reappearance of Greek in the west gave rise to a contrastive approach to languages, which formalized as a separate genre in the early 16th century. The MigraLing project has offered new perspectives on the origins of this contrastive approach, locating it in the dynamic interactions between Greek migrant teachers and their Italian students. MigraLing has illustrated that the genre of contrastive grammar can in the end be understood as a product of co-creation by these two groups. The Greeks tailored their all-Greek manuals to their western students and commented upon them in Latin during their oral teaching, whereas their Italian pupils watched over their teachers’ Latin and made new Latin versions of their manuals. I have supported my argumentation with case studies involving the highly popular grammars of Manuel Chrysoloras, Constantine Lascaris, and Theodore Gaza. MigraLing, in sum, looked at the socio-cultural background of progress in the history of contrastive linguistics, arguing that migration was a key factor in fostering this progress. As such, this project encourages to look at migration not only as a big problem to be dealt with, but also as a possible opportunity for intellectual innovation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Preliminary note: MigraLing was terminated 6 months early, as Raf Van Rooy (RVR) won a competitive research professorship at KU Leuven. Some WPs could therefore not be realized. The overview below follows the Gantt chart of the application.

WP1: Training, management
- Supervisor Han Lamers and RVR held 16 progress monitoring meetings (reports available).
- RVR gave an introductory seminar on his project in August 2021.
- Due to the coronavirus situation and working from distance, no official Norwegian language courses could be taken up, but RVR learned the basics of the language anyhow.
- Mentor Unn Falkeid gave feedback sessions and literature assignments to accomplish RVR's gender studies training.
- RVR gave 3 seminars on his areas of expertise: the history of linguistics (August 2021), cultural history of knowledge (April 2022), and evidentiality in Ancient Greek (September 2022), to different audiences at the University of Oslo (UiO).
- The seminar series on language and migration was replaced by a 1-day workshop in April 2022, to which local and international experts were invited, including Anastasia Maravela (IFIKK, UiO), Giuliano Sidro (University of Oxford), Alisa van de Haar (Leiden University), Alessandro Palumbo (ILN, UiO), and Aneta Pavlenko (MultiLing, UiO).
- The planned masterclass on Greek migrants in Italy did not take place due to early termination.
- RVR prepared an ERC StG application, submitted on 25 October 2022.
- The career development plan has been timely finalized.

WP2-4(a-b): Research & dissemination
Due to the coronavirus situation, traveling was difficult and many archives were closed. Hence, the project had to be reoriented toward digitized sources. This implies that a case study-based approach was followed rather than a comprehensive database set-up. While the project results were based on a smaller source basis, the close-reading applied to them proved to be an effective and valid alternative to achieve the project goals. It even led to an unexpected development of a new theoretical frame to capture this contribution, using the concept of "co-creation".

The case-study approach led to 3 focuses:
(1) a micro-level analysis of the interactions between the Greek migrant Constantine Lascaris and the Italian princess Ippolita Maria Sforza;
(2) a macro-level socio-cultural analysis of the interactions between Greek migrants and Italian humanists in terms of co-creation;
(3) a historiographic analysis of the grammatical concept of aorist, of Greek origin but eagerly applied to vernacular languages, in contrast to Latin.
All results were presented at several international conferences.

Due to early termination, no workshop in Athens was organized, and no debate event on migration and its impact (Oslo).
RVR regularly blogged on the encounter with Greek in the Renaissance in 2021 (rafvanrooy.com/adendros). In 2022, he decided to focus on publications and his ERC Starting Grant application, nonetheless publishing popularizing papers, including a chapter in the widely distributed "Nog meer wereldgeschiedenis".

WP4c: Secondment at Flemish high schools
- Initial meeting with three high school representatives in July 2021.
- RVR developed a didactic package and teachers' guide on the theme of Greek migration in Renaissance Italy, which he successfully tested at the 3 selected high schools across Flanders, in Genk (Limburg), Mol (Antwerp), and Tienen (Flemish Brabant) in May-June 2022.
- He refined the package and guide in the following months and published it on several teachers' platforms in September 2022.
Because the project got terminated early, he did not (yet) create a Greek version of the package, although he will explore options to do so in the future, as he has received very positive feedback from Flemish teachers.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

MigraLing has led to new insights on the teaching and learning of Greek in the Renaissance. In particular, Greek migrants confronted their Italian pupils with a language that was so different but still showed very similar structures, a confrontation which created a contrastive linguistic mindset especially with the pupils, who tried to wrap their head around this new language in its different alphabet. As such, this project has stressed the socio-cultural backgrounds of progress in the history of linguistics more than had been the case in previous scholarship, which tended to be either very philologically-oriented or focused on conceptual evolutions. The project developed the concept of co-creation into a cultural-historical tool that will help future research to better understand the interactions between migrant teachers bringing new knowledge and their pupils struggling to get a grip on this new knowledge.

The project revealed the role that gender played in the linguistic and cultural confrontation between Greeks and Italians through the case of Ippolita Maria Sforza, thus giving a further boost to the gender turn in the history of linguistics.

The wider societal impact and implications of the project lie in the didactic package, which is being eagerly downloaded and used by high school teachers across Flanders. It is thus successfully bringing the issue of migration into the classroom from a historical (and socially more positive) perspective, in courses on both history and Greek. RVR has moreover been invited to write a brief article on his package for Prora, a Flemish teacher journal.

“The apotheosis of Manuel Chrysoloras” – Laurens van der Wiel (painter & photographer)