1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910788946903321

Autore

Crawforth Hannah Jane <1980->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2013

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

Descrizione fisica

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

Disciplina

820.9/357

Soggetti

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

English language - Early modern, 1500-1700 - Etymology

Poetics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

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

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.