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Manuel Calecas’ Grammar: Its Use and Contribution to the Learning of Greek in Western Europe

From the book Making and Rethinking the Renaissance

  • Fevronia Nousia

Abstract

The paper examines Manuel Calecas’ Grammar, its extant manuscrips, its structure and content, in an attempt to assess its value and contribution to the learning of Greek in Western Europe. Composed ca. 1391-1396, Calecas’ Grammar appealed to an audience of non-Greek-speaking students, who did not need the detailed and vast grammatical theory in order to acquaint themselves with the language. In terms of content and structure, Calecas follows the Byzantine grammatical tradition, drawing the theoretical grammatical sections from Moschopoulos’ Erotemata or his Peri schedōn. Calecas bridged the gap with the previous grammatical tradition, accommodating, abbreviating, and re-organising to a degree the vast grammatical theory for the needs of foreign students, thus paving the way for his contemporary Manuel Chrysoloras to further organise grammatical theory and provide a new impetus for the learning and studying of Greek language and literature in the West.

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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