Work

The King’s Mellifluous Tongue Study, Social Bonding, and the Making of Middle Armenian as a Language of the Elite in Medieval Cilicia

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: This article on social history examines the study of Middle Armenian manuscripts at the Cilician court, placing the language’s development within a Mediterranean context that includes Outremer French and Byzantine Greek. In particular, it argues that King Het‘um I (d. 1270) bolstered his status as educated king through the commission of two works from theologian Vardan Arewelc‘i (d. 1271): an encyclopedic compendium and commentary on grammar, which aided vernacular study in different ways. By balancing the microhistory of these manuscripts against the macro-history of Cilician Middle Armenian’s configuration in writing, this article shows how vernacular Armenian became an object of elite study, seemingly capable of representing all the knowledge in the world.

Source: Armeniaca

DOI: 10.30687/arm/2974-6051/2024/01/004

Author: Michael Pifer

Institution: University of Michigan

Language: English

Topic: Historical Linguistics and Language Studies

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: European Commission, Università degli Studi di Firenze, H2020 European Research Council

Awards: G434337789, Armenia Entangled: Connectivity and Cultural Encounters in Medieval Eurasia