Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language
Subtitle: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion (The New Middle Ages)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; Springer
Published: December 10, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9781403976734
Subjects: Latin; Literary Criticism & Collections / Medieval; Medieval; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Dictionaries; English language; Glossaries, vocabularies, etc; Latin language; Mysticism
Description: The Lingua Ignota, "brought forth" by the twelfth-century German nun Hildegard of Bingen, provides 1012 neologisms for praise of Church and new expression of the things of her world. Noting her visionary metaphors, her music, and various medieval linguistic philosophies, Higley examines how the "Unknown Language" makes arid signifiers green againches This text, however, is too often seen in too narrow a context: glossolalia, angelic language, secret code. Higley provides an edition and English translation of its glosses in the Riesencodex (with assistance from the Berlin MS), but also places it within a history of imaginary language making from medieval times to the most contemporary projects in efforts to uncover this woman's bold involvement in an intellectual and creative endeavor that spans centuries.