Etymology and the Invention of English in Early Modern Literature

ISBN-13: 9781107041769 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 228 str.

Hannah Crawforth

Opis

How did authors such as Jonson, Spenser, Donne and Milton think about the past lives of the words they used? Hannah Crawforth shows how early modern writers were acutely attuned to the religious and political implications of the etymology of English words. She argues that these lexically astute writers actively engaged with the lexicographers, Anglo-Saxonists and etymologists who were carrying out a national project to recover, or invent, the origins of English, at a time when the question of a national vernacular was inseparable from that of national identity. English words are deployed to particular effect as a polemical weapon, allegorical device, coded form of communication, type of historical allusion or political tool. Drawing together early modern literature and linguistics, Crawforth argues that the history of English as it was studied in the period radically underpins the writing of its greatest poets."

Recenzje

'… in addition to opening several fruitful avenues for future scholarly work, Crawforth has done readers one other service. By focusing on authors' systematic use of etymology, she shows us that Renaissance poets imagined the study of word origins, a philological and humanistic study, as, more than anything, a practical approach to the world.' Ryan Netzley, Milton Quarterly

Spis treści

Preface; Introduction: etymology in early modern literature; 1. Etymology and estrangement in the poems of Edmund Spenser; 2. Etymology and textual time in the masques of Ben Jonson; 3. Etymology and place in Donne's sermons; 4. Etymology and the ends of idealism in Milton's prose; Conclusion: a world in a word; Bibliography.