Dictionary of Early English

Dictionary of Early English PDF

Author: Joseph T. Shipley

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1955-01-15

Total Pages: 768

ISBN-13: 1442233990

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An alphabetical discussion of words from early English authors, including the most interesting, informative—and revivable—English words that have lapsed from general use. Includes: 1) Words likely to be met in literary reading. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, the Tudor pamphlets and translations, are richly represented in words and illustrative quotations. The late 18th and early 19th century revival has been culled: Chatterton, Ossian; Percy’s Reliques and Child’s Ballads; Scott, in his effort to bring picturesque words back into use. In addition, anthologies, for the general reader or the student, have been examined, and works they include combed for forgotten words. 2) Words that belong to the history of early England, describing or illuminating social conditions, political (e.g. feudal) divisions or distinctions, and all the ways of living, of thinking and feeling, in earlier times. Anxiety, for example, is indicated, not in the 99 phobias listed in a psychiatric glossary of the 1950s but in the 120 methods (see areomancy) of determining the future. 3) Words that in various ways have special interest, as in meaning, background, or associated folklore. Included in this group are various imaginary beings, and a number of magic or medicinal plants. 4) Words that are not in the general vocabulary today, but might be usefully and pleasantly revived.

Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries

Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries PDF

Author: John Considine

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-04-08

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0192568299

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This is the first volume in the trilogy Dictionaries in the English-Speaking World, 1500-1800, which will offer a new history of lexicography in and beyond the early modern British Isles. The volume explores the dictionaries, wordlists, and glossaries that were compiled and read by speakers of English from the end of the Middle Ages to the year 1600. These include the first printed dictionaries in which English words were collected; the dictionaries of Latin used by all educated English-speakers, from young children to Shakespeare to adult royalty; the dictionaries of modern languages that gave English-speakers access to the languages and cultures of continental Europe; dictionaries and wordlists documenting other languages from Armenian to Malagasy to Welsh; and a great variety of specialized English wordlists. No unified history has ever surveyed this vast, lively, and culturally significant lexicographical output before. The guiding principle of the book, and the trilogy, is that a story about dictionaries must also be a story about human beings. John Considine offers a full and sympathetic account of those who compiled and used these works, and those who supported them financially, paying particular attention to records of dictionary use and its traces in surviving copies. The volume will appeal to all those interested in the languages and literary cultures of the sixteenth-century English-speaking world.

Chaucer's Early Modern Readers

Chaucer's Early Modern Readers PDF

Author: Devani Singh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1009231103

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The first extended study of the reception of Chaucer's medieval manuscripts in the early modern period, this book focuses chiefly on fifteenth-century manuscripts and discusses how these volumes were read, used, valued, and transformed in an age of the poet's prominence in print. Each chapter argues that patterns in the material interventions made by readers in their manuscripts – correcting, completing, supplementing, and authorising – reflect conventions which circulated in print, and convey prevailing preoccupations about Chaucer in the period: the antiquity and accuracy of his words, the completeness of individual texts and of the canon, and the figure of the author himself. This unexpected and compelling evidence of the interactions between fifteenth-century manuscripts and their early modern analogues asserts print's role in sustaining manuscript culture and thus offers fresh scholarly perspectives to medievalists, early modernists, and historians of the book. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Chaucer

The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Chaucer PDF

Author: M. Andrew

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-01-18

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0230273963

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This study aims to provide readers with a convenient source of reliable, scholarly, and accessible information on Chaucer's work, life, and times. Topics include Chaucer's works, major fictional characters, social, and political contexts, writers who influenced Chaucer or influenced by him, people and places of significance in Chaucer's life.