The literarisation of the early modern Baltic Sea region was a long and complex process with varying trajectories for different vernacular languages. This volume highlights the interaction of local social and cultural settings with wider political and confessional contexts. Using rarely examined materials, such as prints, court protocols, letters and manuscripts in Latin and a range of vernacular languages, including Estonian, Finnish, German, Ingrian, Karelian, Latvian, Lenape, Sami languages and Swedish, the thirteen authors chart the social and literary developments of the area. Wide networks of learned men and officials but also the number of native speakers in the clergy defined the ways the poetic resources of transnational and local literary and oral cultures benefited the nascent literatures.
Contributors include: Eeva-Liisa Bastman, Kati Kallio, Suvi-Päivi Koski, Ulla Koskinen, Miia Kuha, Anu Lahtinen, Tuija Laine, Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, Ilkka Leskelä, Aivar Põldvee, Sanna Raninen, Kristiina Ross, Taarna Valtonen, and Kristi Viiding.
Kati Kallio, PhD is an Academy Research Fellow at the Finnish Literature Society (SKS). Her research has focused on genres, poetics, intertextuality and performance of Finnic oral poetry in different regions and historical contexts.
Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen is Secretary General of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS). His recent research centres on the relationship between oral and literary cultures, and the vernacular and Latin languages in early modern Baltic Sea region.
Anu Lahtinen is Professor of Finnish and Nordic History at the University of Helsinki. Her fields of expertise include social history and gender history, especially in the sixteenth century.
Ilkka Leskelä is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He studies the fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Swedish-Hanseatic trade networks and shipping in the Baltic Sea region, combining data from customs registers and entrepreneurial family histories.
Preface Acknowledgements A Note on Terms and Names Abbreviations List of Figures, Maps and Appendices Notes on Contributors
Part 1: Translations and Transmissions of Texts and Music
1
Written Word and Social Networks in the Multilingual Early Modern Baltic Sea Region Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, Kati Kallio and Anu Lahtinen
2
Catholic Heritage, Lutheran Networks and Family Reputation: the Case of the Piae Cantiones Collection (1582–1625) Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen
3
The Musical, Material and Social Networks of Swedish Clergy in the Early Seventeenth Century A Case Study of Manuscript S 110 from the National Library of Sweden
Sanna Raninen
4
A Discovery in Germany: a Previously Unknown Early Finnish Hymnbook and Catechism Suvi-Päivi Koski
5
Arranging Learned Literary and Book Culture around the Baltic Sea in the Early Seventeenth Century The Case of the Livonian-Polish Humanist David Hilchen
Kristi Viiding
Part 2: Textualising Vernacular in Multilingual Societies
6
Swedish Missionary Work among the Sami, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Native Americans in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century Tuija Laine
7
Olaus Sirma: Sami Poetics and Clerical Networks in Early-Modern Swedish Lapland Taarna Valtonen and Kati Kallio
8
The Letters of Käsu Hans and the History of Estonian as a Written Language Aivar Põldvee
Part 3: Interfaces of Oral and Literary Cultures
9
Religious Expressions in Literate Laypeople’s Correspondence in Finland, 1570–1600: a Quantitative and Qualitative Database Analysis Ulla Koskinen and Anu Lahtinen
10
The Teachers and the Listeners? The Encounter of Oral and Literary Cultures in the Peripheral Parishes of Eastern Finland in Seventeenth-Century Sweden Miia Kuha
11
‘Turning Simple Speech into Beautiful Song’: Imitative Poetics and the Combination of Registers in Ilo-Laulu Jesuxesta (1690) Eeva-Liisa Bastman and Kati Kallio
12
German Pastors Creating Estonian Rhyming Poetics in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Kristiina Ross
Bibliography Index
Academics interested in early modern book history, the interaction of oral and literary poetics, and developments of literary culture in vernacular languages.
Keywords: literarisation, literarization, vernacular languages, Estonian, Finnish, Karelian, Ingrian, Kemi Sami, North Sami, Swedish, Latvian, German, Lenape, catechism, hymnal, Piae Cantiones, David Hilchen, Olaus Sirma, Käsu Hans, literary language, correspondence, Republic of Letters, religious expressions, Arvid Tavast, Fleming, court records, popular education, Passion, oral poetry, folklore.