Sara Harris, The Linguistic Past in Twelfth-Century Britain. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, ix, 279 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 412-412
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern Half

Contrary to many expectations, medieval intellectuals were rather deeply concerned with linguistics, etymology, and the history of languages, especially as they pertained to regional, territorial, and ‘national’ identity. England proves to be a particularly fertile ground in that regard because of the various languages spoken there from early on, with the Anglo-Saxons having marginalized the ancient Celtic population in the fourth and fifth centuries, with the Normans imposing their form of French on the land after the conquest in 1066, with Vikings and Flemish arrivals throughout the centuries and leaving their mark, etc., not to forget the continued presence of Welsh and Cornish. Sara Harris offers a detailed investigation of the intellectual debate about the various languages as they were encountered in the documents and in reality, and which regularly served the commentators to reflect upon the country’s past, at least in the southern half of the island, although the linguistic connection, among many others, to the Continent via French and Latin continued strongly throughout the centuries.

Literary Histories

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Lerer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Literary History ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Heinrich Heine ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Histories

Literary history has had a mixed history among the readers and the writers of the European traditions. For William Warburton, an eighteenth-century ecclesiast and critic, literary history was “the most agreeable subject in the world.” However, the early nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine describes literary history as a “morgue where each seeks out the friend he most loved.” The complex connotation of literary history stems in part from the modern European understanding of the place of literature in the formation of national identity. This article examines how the history of medieval literature was received during the Renaissance. It first looks at the regulations of late Henrician reading, particularly the 1543 Act for the Advancement of True Religion, before focusing on Miles Hogarde and his poetry. It then discusses Richard Tottel’sMiscellanyin the context of English literature and its past, along with the poetry of love and loss that follows Tottel.

scholarly journals Stages of formation and development of Scottish lexicography

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (25) ◽  
pp. 164-169
Author(s):  
Ekaterina M. Grigorieva ◽  
◽  
Galina E. Kalacheva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Specific Time ◽  
Language System ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
History Of ◽  
Real Phenomenon ◽  
Continuous Work

It is well known that lexicography, this fertile ground for scientific research, owes a lot to English researchers. This is confirmed by a historical reference pointing to a specific time period (sixteenth century) when the first reference books started to appear in England, which was ahead of the rest of Europe in this aspect. In spite of this, English lexicography has become pivotal in this matter, it is clear that it has not developed the science of lexicography autonomously. For instance, Scottish lexicographers have introduced authentic and separate dictionary directions, such as glossaries of difficult and obscure Scottish words. The collective monograph Scottish in Definition. A History of Scottish Dictionaries. published in Edinburgh in 2012 and edited by I. McLeod and J. Derrick McClure was an inspiration to correct the situation. The preconditions for the emergence and continued existence of variant national lexicographies have been considered by science for many centuries. During the course of this continuous work a great number of patterns and tendencies have been described accompanying the birth of the lexicography of a particular state, and there is no doubt that all these cases were made possible only by the release of a comprehensive explanatory dictionary, responsible for the description of one particular language. Scottish lexicography plays a prominent role in recent research, as the issue of national identity is particularly relevant at present. The objective of this paper is to address the problems of authenticity of Scottish lexicography within the language system using methods of classifying the evolution stages of Scottish lexicography along with lexicographic analysis of modern Scottish dictionaries. The undertaken research shows that Scottish lexicography is a real phenomenon in British lexicography.

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