Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, America was captivated by a muddled notion of etymology. New England Transcendentalism was only one outcropping of a nationwide movement in which schoolmasters across small-town America taught students the roots of words in ways that dramatized religious issues and sparked wordplay.
Shaped by this ferment, our major romantic authors shared the sensibility that Friedrich Schlegel linked to punning and christened romantic irony. Notable punsters or etymologists all, they gleefully set up as sages, creating jocular masterpieces from their...