How vocabularies once associated with outsiders became objects of fascination in eighteenth-century Britain
While eighteenth-century efforts to standardize the English language have long been studied--from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary to grammar and elocution books of the period--less well-known are the era's popular collections of odd slang, criminal argots, provincial dialects, and nautical jargon. Strange Vernaculars delves into how these published works presented the supposed lexicons of the "common people" and traces the ways that these languages, once shunned and associated with outsiders, became objects of fascination in printed glossaries--from The New Canting Dictionary to Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue--and in novels, poems, and songs, including works by Daniel Defoe, John Gay, Samuel Richardson, Robert Burns, and others.
Janet Sorensen argues that the recognition and recovery of outsider languages was part of a transition in the eighteenth century from an aristocratic, exclusive body politic to a British national community based on the rhetoric of inclusion and liberty, as well as the revaluing of a common British past. These representations of the vernacular made room for the "common people" within national culture, but only after representing their language as "strange." Such strange and estranged languages, even or especially in their obscurity, came to be claimed as British, making for complex imaginings of the nation and those who composed it. Odd cant languages, witty slang phrases, provincial terms newly valued for their connection to British history, or nautical jargon repurposed for sentimental connections all toggle, in eighteenth-century jest books, novels, and poems, between the alluringly alien and familiarly British.
Shedding new light on the history of the English language, Strange Vernaculars explores how eighteenth-century British literature transformed the patois attributed to those on the margins into living symbols of the nation.
Examples of slang from Strange Vernaculars
bum-boat woman: one who sells bread, cheese, greens, and liquor to sailors from a small boat alongside a ship
collar day: execution day
crewnting: groaning, like a grunting horse
gentleman's companion: lice
gingerbread-work: gilded carvings of a ship's bow and stern
luggs: ears
mort: a large amount
thraw: to argue hotly and loudly
Автор: Toplis Название: The Clothing Trade in Provincial England, 1800–1850 ISBN: 1138664448 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781138664449 Издательство: Taylor&Francis Рейтинг: Цена: 7654.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: This detailed study is the first exploration of rural consumption of clothing in early nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing on evidence from a range of sources including newspapers, trade directories, court records, visual sources and surviving garments, Toplis investigates how the apparel of the mass of the British population was acquired.
Автор: White Название: Drama and Religion in English Provincial Society, 1485–1660 ISBN: 1107403642 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781107403642 Издательство: Cambridge Academ Рейтинг: Цена: 6018.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: Beginning in the early Tudor period, therefore defying the `medieval/renaissance` divide of past drama/literature scholarship, this book examines the interplay between theatre and religion in provincial England to 1660. It provides the first single-author study of play patronage, performance, and reception outside of London over this period.
Описание: In this study of one group of the new nobility, Jonathan Dewald argues that the origin, attitudes, and behavior of the noblesse de robe were in fundamental ways similar to those of the old nobility. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print
ООО "Логосфера " Тел:+7(495) 980-12-10 www.logobook.ru
