Etymology and the invention of English in early modern literature / Hannah Crawforth, Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, King's College, London.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crawforth, Hannah Jane, 1980- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

English language--Early modern, 1500-1700--Etymology.

English language.

Poetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 218 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Etymology & the invention of English in early modern literature

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction: Etymology in early modern literature

Etymology and estrangement in the poems of Edmund Spenser

Etymology and textual time in the masques of Ben Jonson

Etymology and place in Donne's sermons

Etymology and the ends of idealism in Milton's prose

Conclusion: A world in a word.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-45473-5

1-107-46179-0

1-139-89342-4

1-107-45961-3

1-107-47248-2

1-107-30075-4

1-107-46532-X

1-107-46887-6

OCLC:

862077028