Etymology and Grammatical Discourse in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Book excerpt: This study focuses on the uses of the grammatical concept of etymologia in primarily Latin writings from the early Middle Ages. Etymologia is a fundamental procedure and discursive strategy in the philosophy and analysis of language in early medieval Latin grammar, as well as in Biblical exegesis, encyclopedic writing, theology, and philosophy. Read through the frame of poststructuralist analysis of discourse and the philosophy of science, the procedure of the ars grammatica are interpreted as overlapping genres (commentary, glossary, encyclopedia, exegesis) which use different verbal or extraverbal criteria to explain the origins and significations of words and which establish different epistemological frames within which an etymological account of language is situated. The study also includes many translations of heretofore untranslated passages from Latin grammatical and exegetical writings.