Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
Etymology and the Invention of English in Early Modern Literature, Hardback Book

Etymology and the Invention of English in Early Modern Literature Hardback

Hardback

Out of stock

Description

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.

Information

Save 0%

£66.00

£65.45

Out of stock
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information