Pursuing a New Order II: Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation (Medieval Translator) (The Medieval Translator: Traduire au moyen age, 17)

In the first two decades of the fifteenth century, the Hussite reform movement formed in Bohemia; it used one of the vernacular languages of the realm, Czech, as a vehicle for the dissemination of its reform ideas, and for the creation of a strong and stable basis for the reform. The vernacular became a very important strategy of identification able to bind the usually disconnected religious, ethnic, political and regional identities together and generate a very potent aggregate of identifications. The material covers the second half of the fourteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth beginning with the so-called Hussite 'forerunners' and ending with the early German reformation. Individual essays discuss the various functions of the vernaculars in different text types, social situations and religious as well as political contexts. The volume provides materials for a future history of the Hussite vernacular theology and contributes to the transformation of the scholarly narratives about the Hussite movement by including works of vernacular religious education among the most important source material. It offers a basis for the comparative research on the role of the vernaculars in the late medieval religious reform efforts. The volume explores the many ways of translating theology into Eastern Central European vernaculars in the Late Middle Ages.0Concentrating on the period of advance of the vernaculars in the context of religious text production in Central and Eastern Central Europe from the fourteenth until the sixteenth century, the individual studies in this volume present material so far neglected by the nationally defined historiographies and literary studies. The process of vernacularization created a new sociolinguistic field for the negotiation of social order through the choice of texts and topics. The volume seeks to answer the question whether, why and how distinctive new communicative, literary, and political cultures developed after the vernacular languages had acquired ever higher levels of literacy and education. The volume fills a gap of contemporary scholarship on the role of the vernaculars and vernacular literatures in European medieval societies and with the focus on the Eastern European regions it breaks new ground in regard to questions that have so far only been explored based on material from Europe?s ?West?.0Pavlína Rychterová is specialist in late medieval religion, vice-head of department at the institute for Medieval research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her publications include two monographs on the reception of the works of Birgitta of Sweden. She was awarded by the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis of the DFG, in 2010 she received an ERC-Grant. Her research projects concentrate on comparative research in medieval history, translation studies and the Late medieval vernacular theologies The volume explores the many ways of translating theology into Eastern Central European vernaculars in the Late Middle Ages. Concentrating on the period of the emergence of the vernaculars in the context of religious text production in Central and Eastern Central Europe from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the individual studies in this volume present material so far neglected by nationally defined historiographies and literary studies. The process of vernacularization created a new sociolinguistic field for the negotiation of social order through the choice of texts and topics. This volume seeks to answer the questions of whether, why and how distinctive new communicative, literary, and political cultures developed after the vernacular languages had acquired ever higher levels of literacy and education. The volume fills a gap in contemporary scholarship on the role of the vernaculars and vernacular literatures in European medieval societies and with the focus on Eastern European regions it breaks new ground in regard to questions that have so far only been explored on the basis of material from Europe's 'West' "This volume considers material from the second half of the fourteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth, beginning with the so-called Hussite 'forerunners' and ending with the early German reformation."--P. [4]