Language and the Grand Tour: Linguistic Experiences of Travelling in Early Modern Europe by Arturo Tosi

Abstract

Reviewed by: Language and the Grand Tour: Linguistic Experiences of Travelling in Early Modern Europe by Arturo Tosi Weiao Xing Language and the Grand Tour: Linguistic Experiences of Travelling in Early Modern Europe. By Arturo Tosi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2020. xiv+306 pp. £85. ISBN 978–1–108–48727–6. In 1764, the young Scot James Boswell took the opportunity to converse with Voltaire during his visit to France. He asked the Enlightenment giant if he still spoke English. 'No', Voltaire joked, 'to speak English one must place the tongue between the teeth[,] and I have lost my teeth' (p. vi). Starting from this anecdote, Arturo Tosiʼs book depicts the linguistic experiences of Grand Tour travellers. The author adopts the broad definition of 'Grand Tour' that spans from the sixteenth century to the dawn of the nineteenth. Over three hundred years, Anglophones crossing the Channel for educational sojourns in France and Italy were the protagonists of mobility. Scrutinizing their letters, memoirs, and travel accounts, Tosi elucidates how these travellers acquired foreign tongues and responded to the immersion environment. At the frontier of contact, many travellers tasted exotic cultures and recorded their translingual experiences. Their varied language proficiency and cultural attitudes further mirrored the linguistic panorama of early modern Europe. [End Page 284] In the vibrant scholarship of the Grand Tour, social and cultural historians rarely give centre stage to the linguistic experiences of travellers who visited different European speech communities. Tosi, as a sociolinguist, takes language learning, contact, and diversity as his key themes (p. 21) and casts new light on linguistic pedagogies, including literary and non-literary approaches (pp. 84–88). In the early phase of the Grand Tour, various educational sources covering conversation manuals underpinned multilingual experiences in the heyday of the eighteenth century (John Gallagher, Learning Languages in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 158). Through borrowings, loanwords, and code-switching, Tosi exemplifies the dynamic nature of language contact during the Grand Tour. In this process, travellers not only acquired and used foreign languages but also witnessed the rich linguistic diversity, from vernaculars to variations of spoken Latin. Another highlight of this work lies in its attempt to connect translingual practice with intercultural communication in the Grand Tour. Before approaching his linguistic investigation, Tosi addresses the core question of 'the relationship between motivation for language acquisition and attitudes to foreigners' (p. 25). During their tours, a few Anglophone travellers faked their identities by passing themselves off as native speakers (p. 59). More travellers, whether proficient in foreign tongues or not, encountered cultural shocks from 'eccentric' customs such as cicisbeo (p. 75), and were apt to stereotype national characters (p. 25). These observations also foreground the issue of gender, as female travellers were no longer rare during the late eighteenth century. Compared with their male counterparts, they usually attached more attention to cultural diversity and otherness (p. 248). Noticeably, boundaries between these linguistic and cultural issues are confluent but not non-existent. Some discussions, such as the figure of the castrato (pp. 77–79), seemingly relate more to cultural awareness than languages per se, and their relations with linguistic experiences invite a closer examination. In general, this inspiring monograph illuminates sociolinguistic aspects of travel experiences, substantially contributing to social and cultural debates about the Grand Tour. It contains rich evidence that showcases intriguing stories of travellers, such as the young Robert Boyle and Edward Gibbon, who lodged in continental Europe for their intellectual cultivation. The author casts these personal encounters within the frame of major linguistic issues in early modern Europe. For instance, travel records detailed the decline of Latin as a lingua franca and the rise of vernaculars in competition (p. 168). In the late eighteenth century, the monolingual complacency that hindered travellers' second-language proficiency took root in the prevailing national superiority (p. 166). Some references, such as Lady Montaguʼs visit to the Ottoman lands (p. 245), provoke readers to ponder non-European contexts, and the transition into the modern age (p. 257) raises concerns about the continuity and mutation of these early modern linguistic experiences. In this [End Page 285] sense, thanks to its inclusive horizons, this...