The Multilingual Minister: languages in the life-writing of Scottish Highland scholar and traveller, Rev. James Fraser (1634-1709)

Prof. David Worthington, Thursday 22 September 2022

This talk aims to widen the focus of the debate around multilingualism in early modern Europe. Using the life-writing of a scholar, traveller and minister from the Highlands, Rev. James Fraser (1634-1709), from Kirkhill by the Beauly Firth, it will provide a neglected, North Sea perspective on the theme. The talk will shed light on how Fraser produced a dynamic scholarly contribution in local, regional, national and transnational terms, one that was defined by a culture of code-switching and polyglossia. Employing, in particular, his history of the Fraser family to 1674 and his three-volume memoir of his travels in Europe, it will find a constant in Fraser’s childhood and adult life in terms of its multilingual nature. Focusing first on the spoken word, and, subsequently, on reading and writing, the talk will show how the seventeenth-century Highlands can provide a vital insight into how the English language rose here and across the Atlantic archipelago, and, conversely, how early modern northern Europeans, speakers of minority languages (in Fraser’s case, Gaelic and Scots) could experience and sustain multilingual cultures.

Professor David Worthington is Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands and Director of the UHI Centre for History in Dornoch.