Lexicography, Printing Technology, and the Spread of Renaissance Culture

1
Lexicography, Printing Technology, and the Spread
of Renaissance Culture

• Patrick Hanks
• Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics,
  Charles University in Prague
• Leeuwarden Euralex 2010

2
Talk Outline

• A major figure in European lexicography was
  Robert Estienne (1503-1559) of Paris and Geneva,
  scholar, printer, publisher, theologian, and
  lexicographer.
• Estiennes achievement was dependent not only on
  the invention of printing (Gutenberg) but also on
  innovations in typographic design (esp. by
  Nicolas Jenson of Venice).
• Renaissance dictionaries are different in kind
  from what went before
• they took advantage of the new possibilities for
  presentation of information and replication and
  dissemination of texts
• 1) massive scholarly undertakings such as
  Estiennes Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1531)
• 2) polyglot works innumerable editions more or
  less loosely based on the work of Ambrogio
  Calepino
• 3) Cawdrey is not very important in all this

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The earliest printed dictionaries

• Typography in early printed dictionaries was
  based on the type styles of medieval manuscripts.
• Hard to read, especially when reduced to a small
  size.
• Compare the black-letter fonts used by Gutenberg
  (1455) with the Antiqua typeface of Nicolas
  Jenson (Venice, 1468)
• The great Renaissance typographers (Graffo,
  Bembo, Garamond, Baskerville, etc.) took their
  lead from Jenson (not from Gutenberg)

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The typography of Gutenbergs Bible (c. 1455)
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Nicholas Jensons Roman Antiqua typeface (c. 1468)
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Promptorium Parvulorum

• The young persons store room of knowledge
• specifically, a handbook for young learners of
  Latin
• A bilingual English-Latin dictionary for
  encoding use
• Compiled in manuscript c. 1440 i.e. before
  printing was available by Galfridus Anglicus, a
  Dominican friar in Norfolk.
• Many manuscript copies were made
• First printed in 1499 by Richard Pynson
• using black-letter type, like Gutenberg and
  Caxton
• similar in appearance to the monkish manuscript
  versions of this text

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Promptorium Parvulorum in print (Pynson 1499)
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The Renaissance Revolution (lexicographical)

• Robert Estienne (1531) Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
• a comprehensive inventory of the lexicon
• each sense of entry includes many citations from
  major Latin authors
• monolingual (i.e.) Latin definitions (or
  paraphrases)
• plus occasional glosses in French
• much idiomatic phraseology
• careful attention to typographic legibility
• for use by scholars and readers

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R. Estienne (1531)
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Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (1572)

• Compiled by Roberts son, Henri Estienne
• Even bigger than Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
• and equally scholarly
• The Greek typography is much less successful than
  the Roman alphabets of Jenson and Garamond
• faint, spidery, and hard to read
• some apparently unmotivated variations (e.g. two
  versions of the letter beta, alternating
  apparently randomly)

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H Estienne, Greek (1572)
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A French-Latin dictionary for language learners

• R. Estiennes Dictionnaire francoislatin (1539)
• a practical work aimed at French students
  learning Latin.
• Gives Latin equivalents for many idiomatic French
  phrases, e.g. (s.v. mot)
• lordre et collocation des mots verborum
  constructio

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Dictionnaire francoislatin (1539)
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A Latin-French dictionary for students

• R. Estiennes Dictionarium Latino-Gallicum (1552)
• counterpart to the Dictionnaire francoislatin of
  1539
• contains carefully chosen citations (from the
  best authors), illustrating idiomatic
  phraseology
• a practical guide

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Dictionarium Latino-Gallicum (1552)
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The Estienne firm at work

• According to his son Henri II, in the 1530s and
  40s There sat down to table daily a staff of ten
  assorted nationalities, together with family and
  guests, all speaking Latin, including the
  servants
• Guests would have included many of the leading
  Parisian intellectuals of the day
• Armstrong (1954) estimates that in its heyday the
  firm employed a staff of 50 (2 type-founders, 18
  compositors, 5 proof-readers, 21 printers, 3
  apprentices, and one shop boy), in addition to
  the master himself

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The move to Geneva

• In the 1550s, Robert Estienne, a free-thinking
  Humanist intellectual, found it prudent to remove
  from Paris to Geneva leaving the Paris business
  to his son Henri (compiler of Thesaurus Linguae
  Graecae).
• Father Robert set up a new printing and
  publishing business in Geneva.

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Palsgrave (1530) the first true bilingual
dictionary

• Lesclaircissement de la langue francoyse.
• A fairly full inventory of the French vocabulary
• Arranged in tables of parts of speech
• Extensive examples of (idiomatic?) phraseology
• Many of the (invented) example sentences are
  quite comical
• Also includes a French grammar and a disquisition
  on the nature of the French language
• Typography black-letter for English, roman
  Antiqua for French

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Palsgrave (1530)
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What tools were available to Renaissance
translators?

• Few bilingual dictionaries appeared in C16
  Europe no-one followed Palsgraves lead
• Instead, translation was mediated through Latin,
  which served as a sort of interlingua.
• The main lexical tool for travellers, readers,
  and translators was a Latin-based polyglot
  dictionary called a Calepino
• 1st edition of Ambrogio Calepinos Dictionarium
  1502
• Innumerable different editions of Calepino
  appeared in the C16, some containing glosses in
  up to 11 languages (including Portuguese and
  Japanese), published in 8 or 9 different European
  cities
• Calepino himself died in 1510, but his name was
  being used well into C17 as a generic term for a
  multilingual glossary.
• Typographically legible no black-letter, not
  even for German, in the editions I looked at

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Calepino Basle edition, 1550
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C16 Latin dictionaries in England

• Sir Thomas Elyot, Dictionary (1538)
• Latin-English, aimed at young students, mainly
  for decoding the meaning of Latin texts (not
  encoding speech or writing in Latin)
• greatly indebted to Calepino
• the wording of definitions is generally very
  clear
• typographically, it is a disappointing throwback
  to Pynsons black-letter (slightly improved)
• it makes no use of typography to distinguish
  different categories of information, e.g.
  headwords from definitions

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Elyots Dictionary (1538)
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Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Anglicanae (1587)

• Compiled by Thomas Thomas, printer to the
  University of Cambridge
• Like Elyots work, a Latin-English dictionary
  aimed at students
• typographically very legible roman for Latin,
  italic for English
• The most popular Latin dictionary in England for
  the ensuing 50 years
• clear but unobtrusive phonolgical and grammatical
  apparatus
• Explanations by glosses and synonyms

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Thomas Thomas (1589)
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The start of a bilingual tradition

• At the end of C16, two bilingual dictionaries
• Florio 1598 Italian-English
• Minsheu 1599 Spanish-English, English-Spanish,
• all in one alphabetical list
• English headwords in black-letter
• Spanish headwords in roman
• Self-indexing, with cross-references and apparaus
  in italic

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Florio (1598)
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Minsheu 1599
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Conclusions

• C15 innovations in the technologies of printing
  and typographic design had a profound effect on
  the art and craft of lexicography
• Exciting innovations in every aspect of
  lexicography took place in C15 continental
  Europe, associated with Renaissance scholarship
  and Humanist thinking
• The leading figures (the fathers of European
  lexicography) are Ambrogio Calepino of Bergamo
  Robert Estienne of Paris
• Calepinos 1502 work was used as a base for a
  great number of polyglot dictionaries, with Latin
  as a conceptual interlingua.
• Estienne was the greater scholar and the better
  printer. His 1531 is essentially a monolingual
  dictionary of Latin
• We are in an analogous situation today
  innovations in computer technology open the way
  for new developments in lexicography
• The future of lexicography holds wonderful
  possibilities for interactive explanation of
  terminology and phraseology