Abstract
This article examines medieval portrayals of language contact across a range of texts, including travel narratives and plays depicting xenoglossia (speaking in tongues). Engaging with John Law's discussion of the mobile ship and Actor Network Theory (ANT), this essay conceives polyglot contact zones – spaces where languages come together and influence one another – as dynamic ‘network objects.’ Literary texts about travel employ innovative strategies for conveying the experience of transit over land and sea, and they encourage readers to imagine the subjective experience of moving through ever-shifting linguistic environments. In their intricate modes of representing life in transit, medieval texts invite multiple avenues for theorizing the ‘network object’ (such as a ship or a pilgrimage company) that is itself in perpetual motion.
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