Early modern Europe’s other real characters

Bibliographic Data

ID21795712
AuthorsSean O’Neil (0000-0002-0394-1370, University of Nevada, Reno, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume67
Issue2
Pages125-152
Publication date2024-05-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage & History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1759-7536 • E-ISSN: 1759-7544
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17597536.2024.2310905
OpenAlexW4398772543
LanguageEN
References cited19

Histories of the early modern artificial language movement have focused not unreasonably on a series of ambitious, seventeenth-century language planners who set out to design ‘real characters’ or ‘universal languages’. However, there were also practitioners working in fields like music, mathematics, and chemistry who likewise aspired to develop new, more systematic nomenclatures or notations, often also in the hope that such tools would designate things instead of words. Because histories of the artificial language movement do not usually address such projects or do so only insofar as these projects pertain to arguments about the language planners, their nomenclatures and notations constitute early modern Europe’s ‘other’ real characters. This article surveys three cases in which individuals who are not typically considered representatives of the artificial language movement sought to design newer, more systematic means of communication. It compares and contrasts their approaches with those of well-known language planners, both in terms of how they designed their symbols and what they understood their symbols’ primary function to be. In so doing, this article also proposes to reframe the history of the early modern artificial language movement by situating the more famous language planners within a wider and more varied intellectual milieu

Linguistics · Political science · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Renaissance Literature and Culture

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