English Literature and Ancient Languages
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:19th Apr '07
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- Hardback£97.00(9780199261901)
Literature in English is hardly ever entirely in English. Contact with other languages takes place, for example, whenever foreign languages are introduced, or if a native style is self-consciously developed, or when aspects of English are remade in the image of another language. Since the Renaissance, Latin and Greek have been an important presence in British poetry and prose. This is partly because of the importance of the ideals and ideologies founded and elaborated on Roman and Greek models. Latin quotations and latinate English have always been ways to represent, scrutinize, or satirize the influential values associated with Rome. The importance of Latin and Greek is also due to the fact that they have helped to form and define a variety of British social groups. Lawyers, Catholics, and British gentlement invested in Latin as one source of their distinction from non-professionals, from Protestants, and from the unleisured. British attitudes toward Greek and Latin have been highly charged because the animus that existed between groups has also been directed toward these languages themselves. English Literature and Ancient Languages is a study of literary uses of language contact, of English literature in conjunction with Latin and Greek. While the book's emphasis is literary, that is formal and verbal, its goal is to discover how social interests and cultural ideas are, and are not, mediated through language.
Review from previous edition In general, the book's structure is remarkable and admirable. A succinct book, it moves freely and convincingly at all times between concrete instances and first principles. Likewise it hinges on the validations which only philology can give without losing sight of what philology is for, so that a host of new readings of important texts keeps the reader on tiptoe. Many poems and passages will be defamiliarized and energized for the reader whether monoglot or polyglot. The final chapter is enthralling, not despite but because of its distinct relationship to the linguistic and philological: its nimble transitions from language to language and poet to poet have the alacrity and rightness of Pindar at his best, which means that the book's structure is in harmony with its theme. The excitement increases to the finish line, and the open ending is very well judged. * John Hale, Translation and Literature *
This is an unusual and welcome book, probably the first monograph of its kind, devoted to the influence of the Latin and Greek languages upon English literature from the Renaissance onwards . . . it is one of the virtues of this study that it contains a wealth of detailed, precise, and discriminating analysis of actual usages and quotations, that will be of great interest and value to linguists and literary critics, within the context of broader more general topics central to linguistic interaction and the history of influence . . . [Haynes'] admirably rich survey will undoubtedly stimulate more studies in this valuable area. * Robin Sowerby, Modern Language Review *
This book's application of linguistic and historical scholarship to its examination of English literature makes a real contribution to the study of the history of the classical tradition and to comparative studies of English and classical literature. * Travis Feldman, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
The book is organized to address general topics of permanent interest . . . [The judgements] are always grounded in close, intelligent reflection on language, syntax and metre. * Adrian Poole, Review of English Studies *
English Literature and Ancient Languages is as beautifully written as it is informative. Not since Kenner's The Pound Era have style and information been so rigorously balanced. * Guy Davenport *
ISBN: 9780199212125
Dimensions: 215mm x 138mm x 12mm
Weight: 284g
226 pages