Review article

Eugenio Coseriu and the history of Romance language studies in the 17th and 18th century

The two volumes under review bring to completion the opus magnum of the Romance scholar and general linguist Eugenio Coseriu [1921–2002] on the history of Romance linguistics (or more broadly but also more accurately: language-related investigations) up to the beginning of the 19th century. Based on carefully prepared materials for a series of Vorlesungen at Tübingen university, given by Coseriu between 1970 and 1976, this Geschichte der romanischen Sprachwissenschaft (henceforth: GesRomSpr; the numeral that follows indicates the respective volume) has now been published, thanks to the dedicated efforts of some of his students, principally the late Reinhard Meisterfeld [1940–2017], who prepared the edition of GesRomSpr1, which appeared in 2003, and Wolf Dietrich, who prepared the edition of the three following volumes which appeared in a time lapse of three years (2020, 2021, 2022), but also with the help of Johannes Kabatek, the director of the Coseriu-Archiv, and publisher-scholar Gunter Narr. The two text editors of the GesRomSpr not only reorganized and systematized the author’s manuscript materials into a set of four volumes corresponding to an overall chronological division (Middle Ages — 16th century — 17th and 18th century) and, within these periods, to a thematic and/or geographical subdivision; they also reworked the materials, adding explanatory notes (or, in some cases, useful diagrams), synthesizing digressions, and — most importantly — updating the information (especially bibliographical references). In GesRomSpr1, editor Reinhard Meisterfeld (who signed as co-author) inserted additional sections (printed in smaller size) offering biographical information on primary authors and providing some kind of bibliographical state of the art with reference to the topics dealt with in the chapter concerned. In volumes 2, 3 and 4 of GesRomSpr, editor Wolf Dietrich has proceeded with more restraint: his explanatory interventions and biographical notices on primary authors appear in footnotes (the footnotes are all by the editor), and additional information relevant for the historiographical account appears, in the main text, between brackets. Whereas for GesRomSpr1 Reinhard Meisterfeld considerably expanded the Vorlage, Wolf Dietrich at times condensed Coseriu’s manuscript text, as we learn from his Vorwort to GesRomSpr3 (11–17).