Telling the difference: linguistic differentiation and identity in Guillem de Berguedà, Giacomo da Lentini and Bonifacio Calvo

Abstract

Editorial practice in literary traditions still dominated by neo-Lachmannian philology remains focussed on the establishment of the text as the medieval author knew it himself. For adherents of this method, the influence of “foreign” languages is labelled as a contamination that should, if possible, be removed as unauthentic. This article proposes a less doctrinaire practice and demonstrates its fruits when brought to bear at the interstices of literary history and Romance philology, as represented by poems by Guillem de Berguedà, Giacomo da Lentini, and Bonifacio Calvo. Approaching both medieval poets and their modern editors in the light of Derrida’s Le monolinguisme de l’autre, the present contribution counters the tendency to impose linguistic and cultural identities on medieval authors, instead allowing their manuscripts to speak for themselves. It further considers the thinking of medieval poets and their transmitters on the nature of language and lyric poetry, and how these systems could and should be used and developed.