Introduction: An essay on language, culture, and identity: Medieval and early modern perspectives on and approaches to communication, translation, and community

Human society throughout time has always struggled hard to come to terms with its fundamental needs, that is, above all, good, functional, and productive communication. Constructive communication establishes community, which in turn is predicated on compromise, compassion, coordination, and companionship. A community without basic agreements of that sort cannot survive and will easily become a victim of devastating atomization, as western society seems to experience increasingly since the turn of the new millennium. This phenomenon was already clearly addressed in pre-modern literature and also historiography, possibly in the arts and even music. This introductory study examines the theoretical and practical implications and illustrates the issues by means of a critical discussion of particularly pertinent cases.