Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period,

Hardback, VIII+304 p., 160 x 240 mm. ISBN 9782503533759. This volume presents essays on early modern Latinity, which examine both humanist Latin and Latinists' responses to Otherness of various kinds. The essays in this volume, many of which are in dialogue with Francoise Waquet's Latin or the Empire of a Sign, showcase some of the most exciting and sophisticated new work in the field of neo-Latin studies. They illustrate the significance of 'Latinity' for understanding the early modern world from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and will be of interest not only to neo-Latinists but to students of the modern European vernaculars, social historians of language, lexicographers, intellectual and scientific historians, and to cultural and cross-cultural historians. Under the second term of the title, 'Alterity', our volume explores humanist Latin's 'opposition' to mediaeval Latin and the modern vernaculars; the 'otherness' of women's Latinity; the construction of the non-European in Latin humanism; and the Latin writings of non-Europeans, from indigenous Americans to Africans. The exploration of these themes helps us more fully to understand what Latin 'really meant' during the early modern period. New.