New Article on Estense MS α.Q.5

Project leader Natalia I. Petrovskaia has contributed an article on “Explicit and Implicit Multilingualisms: The Imago mundi and MS Estense α.Q.5” to the volume The Multilingual Dynamics of Medieval Literature in Western Europe, c. 1200-c. 1600 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), edited by Bart Besamusca, Lisa Demets, and Jelmar Hugen. The volume is available Open Access: https://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.133695. The volume is the output of another NWO-funded Utrecht project: ‘The Multilingual Dynamics of the Literary Culture of Medieval Flanders, c. 1200–c. 1500’ (2018-2023).

Petrovskaia’s article provides a reading of an Italian translation of the Imago mundi,  Modena, BEU, MS α.Q.5.1.

From the abstract: ‘This little studied fourteenth-century manuscript contains a bilingual text, presented as alternating paragraphs in Latin and Italian, of the first two books of the Imago mundi alongside a number of other scientific texts. I argue that in order to navigate the complex networks of meaning encoded in this manuscript, we must consider both ‘explicit multilingualism’ — the visible articulation of multiple languages on the page — and ‘implicit multilingualism’ — that which is invisible in the manuscript but was necessary for its creation.’ For more, see the article, freely available here.