Polyglot resources in Francesco Colsoni’s "The New Trismagister" (1688) for Italian learners of English

This paper examines Francesco Colsoni’s "The new trismagister" Italian-English-French grammar (London, 1688) within the context of Anglo-Italian relations and the multilingual backdrop of 17th-century Europe. By means of historical discourse analysis methods, it analyses the grammar’s prefatory materials and sample sections of the microstructure, exploring its generic features and the metalinguistic strategies for teaching English to Italian speakers. It also explores the book’s position within the discourse community of grammaticographers and language teachers, as well as investigates the nature of the target learners and prospective consumers in the language book market of the period. Findings confirm that merchant communities in London and Italy may have significantly influenced English (and Italian) learning practices. The inclusion of three languages in the work is a reflection of the decline of Italian, the increasing prominence of French, and the emergence of English for commercial purposes in that period. Structurally, the text follows the Donato-Priscian grammar tradition; ample space is devoted to practical materials for language acquisition (i.e., glossaries and letters) in which strategies of comparison and contrast between the three languages are employed.