Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 19th century
|
Buy Now
In Search of Jane Austen - The Language of the Letters (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,539
Discovery Miles 25 390
|
|
In Search of Jane Austen - The Language of the Letters (Hardcover)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
Along with Shakespeare, Jane Austen (1775-1817) can be said to be
the most widely studied author in the history of English
literature. But unlike Shakespeare, her language has received
little scholarly attention. This is especially true for the
language of her letters. Jane Austen's letters, mostly addressed to
her sister Cassandra but to various other people as well, have been
described as the equivalent of telephone conversations, and if you
read them, you can almost hear her speak. We do not have access to
actual speech from the time in which she lived, but the letters
take us as close to the spoken language of the period as you might
hope to get. They are therefore a veritable linguistic goldmine.
This study, for the first time, offers a detailed sociolinguistic
account of all aspects of the language of her letters: spelling,
vocabulary and grammar. It also produces some evidence of
pronunciation as well as of local dialectal usage. The analysis
shows Jane Austen to be rather idiosyncratic in her language use:
she was consistent in her spelling (though she had unusual spelling
preferences), not very innovative in her vocabulary (though she did
coin a few new words), and not quite representative of grammatical
developments of the times (though her usage differed depending on
who she wrote to, her sister, her publisher or her nieces and
nephews). This study of Jane Austen's private language use shows
the extent to which she varied in her language use, just like any
of us do today, while is also provides evidence both for a date of
her unfinished novel The Watsons (for the first time on linguistic
grounds) and for the interplay there must have been between the
editors of her novels and her own linguistic preferences, in the
field of spelling and otherwise.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
You might also like..
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.