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Listening to the Languages of the People: Lazare Sainéan on Romanian, Yiddish, and French

By (author) Natalie Zemon Davis

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normal price: R 4 802.95

Price: R 4 562.95

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| book description |

This tale of great achievements and great disappointments offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between scholarship and political sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. LazÄƒr È˜Äƒineanu (1859-1934), linguist and folklorist, was a pioneer in his native Romania, seeking out the popular elements in culture along with high literary ones. He was among the first to publish a study of Yiddish as a genuine language, and he uncovered Turkish features in Romanian language and customs. He also made an index of hundreds of Romanian folktales. Yet when he sought Romanian citizenship and a professorship, he was blocked by powerful figures who thought Jews could not be Romanians and who fancied the origins of Romanian culture to be wholly Latin. Faced with anti-Semitism, some of his friends turned to Zionism. Instead he tried baptism, which brought him only mockery and shame. Hoping to find a polity to which he could belong, È˜Äƒineanu moved with his family to Paris in 1900 and became Lazare SainÃ©an. There he made innovative studies of French popular speech and slang, culminating in his great work on the language of Rabelais. Once again, he was contributing to the development of a national tongue. Even then, while welcomed by literary scholars, SainÃ©an was unable to get a permanent university post. Though a naturalized citizen of France, he felt himself a foreigner, an â€œintruder,â€ into his old age.