Transforming Early English: The Reinvention of Early English and Older Scots.
- Author / Editor
- Smith, Jeremy J.
Transforming Early English: The Reinvention of Early English and Older Scots.
- Published
- New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- Physical Description
- xvii, 294 pp.
- Description
- Historical-pragmatic analysis of the formal features of texts in manuscript and in print (e.g., punctuation, spelling, capitalization, script, font, etc.) in relation to the texts’ “socio-cultural” functions—linguistic, aesthetic, ethical, practical, etc. Studies examples from early modern reclamations of Old English to eighteenth-century revival of Old Scots, with multiple case studies from Middle English prose and poetry, including comparative analyses of samples of Chaucer’s text from the earliest anuscripts to the Riverside Chaucer, emphasizing the demands manuscripts make on audiences, Thynne’s and Speght’s aesthetic and moral concerns, Urry’s antiquarian goals, and Tyrwhitt’s responses to elocutionary concerns of his age. Mentions Chaucer recurrently and, with Langland and Gower, he is central to Chapter 4, “The Great Tradition.”
- Chaucer Subjects
- Language and Word Studies
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations