ÆLFRIC’S COLLOQUY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

It is a foregone conclusion that the study of literary texts can never go disjointed from the understanding of the cultural contexts where they saw the light and were originally read. This is especially true in the field of late antique and medieval philology, where a certain degree of historical reconstruction is often required to make up for the lack of biographical information on most authors and on the circumstances giving rise to the production of their works. Written by one of the most significant authors of late Old English literature, a text like AElfric’s Colloquy -a 10th-century didactic dialogue redacted with the aim of teaching conversational Latin to Anglo-Saxon monks - is no exception to this rule. Its interrelationship with history is certainly heightened by its belonging to the educational establishment, a domain that has always been subordinated to the logics of power and politics.