I plan to focus on the 16th century Macaronic Latin of Teofilo Folengo from a linguistical + historical lens. In order to make this project achievable, after analyzing the text as a whole, I will select a small excerpt to focus on (especially since one of the primary academics focused on Folengo wrote his entire tesi on just the first two words of one of Folengo’s works).
Here is the link to my thesis topic planning post: link
Initial Questions:
- What connections are there between the writings of Luigi Pulci (1432-1484) Le maccheronee (1517) by Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544)?
- Who was Folengo’s audience with his Macaronic Latin? Was it a critique of Latin education, geared towards those who could understand this Frankenstein-esque blend of languages?
- Why did Folengo choose to include the Lombard dialect within his mix of languages?
It’s really cool how you’re combining classics and linguistics and Italian for your topic! I know nothing about Macaronic Latin (and probably neither does most of the class), but that makes it much more interesting to hopefully be able to learn something completely new from your work. From your initial thesis idea post to your research questions, it seems like you’ve moved from looking at the text thematically in comparison with similar types of texts to a more linguistic-focused project, so I was wondering if you’re still going to include those comparisons and other texts or just completely stick to the linguistic realm? Either way, it’s a fascinating concept and I wish you luck with developing your ideas
Thank you! I’m currently leaning in a more linguistic direction for the thesis, but am finding contextual exploration to be more fun, so I might end up doing that if this trend continues 🙂