Alla conquista del codice scritto / Conquering the Written Code

Edited by Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein, the Foundations in Language and Law series aims beyond the traditional surveys of scholarship in law and language. Monographs in the series will provide foundational materials – theoretical, methodological, critical, practical – to advance study of important topics in the field. And even as each volume engages conceptually with current scholarship in the area, it presents original research which breaks new ground and indicates future directions for scholarship in law and language. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Natalie Fecher. The volume offers the first integrated overview of the Visigothic and Langobard Laws from a perspective of historical sociolinguistics that combines considerations on linguistic structure and cultural phenomena that are reflected in the language. This interdisciplinary approach has long been needed in the study of the juridical texts of the German populations established in Spain and Italy. The volume deals with: 1. The texts of the laws as a source for the study of Visigoths’ and Langobards’ history; 2. The problems of lexical analysis raised by the technical terms of Roman and Germanic laws; 3. The morpho-syntactic structures of the Visigoths’ and Langobards’ laws as evidence of the transformations of Late Latin. The Visigothic and Langobard Laws are a collection of texts of great importance to understand the linguistic and cultural shaping of medieval and modern Europe. The investigation of their language gives pithy clues to the study of the development of Late Latin and the Romance vernaculars in a time for which non-literary documentation is scanty. It is also highly relevant to the study of Germanic Law and the transformation of Roman Law and the study of social and political transformations of Spain and Italy in the Early Middle Ages.