Literary Translingualism in the Greek and Roman Worlds

Abstract

Our exploration of Greco-Roman literary translingualism covers an extensive geographical area and timeframe. After an introduction to the main issues, we cover three periods (Archaic and Classical Greece, the rise of Rome and the first centuries of the Roman Empire) and showcase selected translingual authors. The literary output of the Greco-Roman world is diverse, but despite the differences in cultural context, translingualism seems to be a feature, in various permutations, throughout much of its history.Translingualism in the early period is due to Greek "generic dialectalization," later it is a consequence of the expansion of the Roman world and its incorporation of communities of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The Context for Greco-Roman Literary TranslingualismLiterary translingualism refers to the practice of multilinguals writing in languages other than their mother tongue, and instead, for a variety of reasons, composing literature in their second or third languages. i Though earlier works treated the subject, the field was given coherence and impetus following the publication of Kellman's The Translingual Imagination (2000). The complexities of bilingualism and biculturalism in Greco-Roman literature have long been explored, but the translingual dimension, a specific and important aspect of the complexity, has not been discussed using this terminology and therefore not