Explicit and Implicit Multilingualisms: The Imago mundi and MS Estense α.Q.5

Abstract

The article provides a new reading of an Italian translation of the Imago mundi, Modena, BEU, MS α.Q.5.1. 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