Talking to Strangers in Medieval Hungary - IN PERS

Join us in person for a lecture by Nora Berend (University of Cambridge) on 'Talking to Strangers in Medieval Hungary'.
About this Event

How did people who spoke different languages talk to each other? My paper will examine the evidence of medieval texts, including stories of direct communication in the medieval kingdom of Hungary. My sources include travel accounts, chronicles, and vocabulary lists. These sources convey real and invented interaction and communication between various groups living in the kingdom. I will focus in particular on exchanges between Hungarian speakers and German speakers. How was communication represented in the texts and what can we learn from them about the mechanisms of real interactions? Did communication contribute to more friendly, or at least less hostile, relations?

Nora Berend is Professor of European History at Cambridge, working on medieval religious and cultural interaction, the formation of identity, and uses of the medieval in the present. Her recent publications include Stephen I, the first Christian King of Hungary: From Medieval Myth to Modern Legend and El Cid: the Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary.