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Cambridge History of English Literature 3: Renascence and Reformation
No dust jacket, boards marked and worn, foxing to the tanned page edges, 1980 reprint. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.
474 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1920
About the author
Adolphus William Ward
420 books2 followersSir Adolphus William Ward (2 December 1837 – 19 June 1924) was an English historian and man of letters.
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April 3, 2016
The essays in this volume (and in the entire series) are by different authors. Thus some have different emphases and some are more interesting than others.
What comes through as a whole in this volume, however, is a picture of a people and a language in transition: from medieval to Renaissance, from scholasticism to humanism, from Catholic to Protestant, from dependence on other countries to a nationalistic individualism, from Latin and Greek to English. Of course this did not occur smoothly and effortlessly. Scholars were often caught between a desire to conserve the old and to experiment with the new. So language and literature were moving in sometimes confusing but often exciting ways.
Here is the final paragraph in the last essay ("The Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare" by J.W.H. Atkins). The opinion expressed may be subjective, but the excitement about language is infectious:
"But Elizabethan English, alone among the earlier stages of our language, still plays a part in modern intellectual life. Thanks to the English Bible, the prayer-book and Shakespeare, it has never become really obsolete. Its diction and its idioms are still familiar, endeared and consecrated by sacred association. It yet remains the inspiration of our noblest styles, for beyond its concrete strength, its picturesque simplicity and its forceful directness, English expression cannot go. And so, in moments of exaltation the old phrases are recalled, untainted by any mingling in the market place, and, with their rich suggestiveness, they heighten the passion or beauty which a more explicit idiom would destroy. Modern English is the fitting medium of an age which leaves little unexplained; while Elizabethan English stands for an age too hasty to analyse what it felt. The one has the virtues of maturity, a logic, uncompromising and clear: the other, a vigour and a felicity, the saving graces of youth."
What comes through as a whole in this volume, however, is a picture of a people and a language in transition: from medieval to Renaissance, from scholasticism to humanism, from Catholic to Protestant, from dependence on other countries to a nationalistic individualism, from Latin and Greek to English. Of course this did not occur smoothly and effortlessly. Scholars were often caught between a desire to conserve the old and to experiment with the new. So language and literature were moving in sometimes confusing but often exciting ways.
Here is the final paragraph in the last essay ("The Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare" by J.W.H. Atkins). The opinion expressed may be subjective, but the excitement about language is infectious:
"But Elizabethan English, alone among the earlier stages of our language, still plays a part in modern intellectual life. Thanks to the English Bible, the prayer-book and Shakespeare, it has never become really obsolete. Its diction and its idioms are still familiar, endeared and consecrated by sacred association. It yet remains the inspiration of our noblest styles, for beyond its concrete strength, its picturesque simplicity and its forceful directness, English expression cannot go. And so, in moments of exaltation the old phrases are recalled, untainted by any mingling in the market place, and, with their rich suggestiveness, they heighten the passion or beauty which a more explicit idiom would destroy. Modern English is the fitting medium of an age which leaves little unexplained; while Elizabethan English stands for an age too hasty to analyse what it felt. The one has the virtues of maturity, a logic, uncompromising and clear: the other, a vigour and a felicity, the saving graces of youth."
Displaying 1 of 1 review