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The Establishment of Modern English Prose in the Reformation and the Enlightenment

Ian Robinson author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:3rd Dec '98

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The Establishment of Modern English Prose in the Reformation and the Enlightenment cover

Traces the history of prose and the evolution of the sentence as a literary form.

Ian Robinson traces the legacy of prose writing as a form distinct from verse. Engaging with histories of rhetoric and the work of the great prose writers, Robinson provides a bold reappraisal of this literary form, and shows how the sentence itself is historically conditioned and no older than the post-medieval world.In The Establishment of Modern English Prose in the Reformation and the Enlightenment Ian Robinson traces the legacy of prose writing as an art form that was theorised and propagated in a manner quite distinct from verse. Robinson argues that the history of English prose has been misrepresented by critics who have failed to understand the grammatical complexities of the language. Engaging with histories of rhetoric as well as the work of the great prose writers in English, Robinson provides a bold reappraisal of this literary form, combining literary criticism with linguistic and textual analysis. He shows that the formal construct of the sentence itself is historically conditioned and no older than the post-medieval world. The relationship between rhetorical style and literary meaning, Robinson argues, is at the heart of the way we understand the external world.

ISBN: 9780521480888

Dimensions: 236mm x 161mm x 20mm

Weight: 450g

236 pages