During the Renaissance a great number of Latin-English and English-Latin dictionaries were compiled, following a surprisingly long tradition of English lexicography whose dawn can be traced back to between 600 and 700 A.D. At that time, the first Latin glosses of religious and practical treatises appeared with the primary purpose of explaining difficult Latin words; later on, these glosses came to be written in vernacular, especially after English had been sanctioned for general use, and were often collected in glossaries which evolved into authentic Latin-English dictionaries, arranged either alphabetically or under classified entries. Their object was essentially to provide a Latin dictionary for the use of Englishmen. It was not before the fifteenth century, however, that English-Latin dictionaries began to enrich the scene of English lexicography; by that time the aim of lexicographic works had turned from Latin to English, since they were mainly concerned with glossing English entries. It is generally acknowledged that the first English-Latin bilingual dictionaries were more innovative in approach than their Latin-English counterparts. Indeed, Latin-English dictionaries and glosses were heavily indebted to earlier monolingual Latin works and often simply glossed the works of previous scholars. In contrast, most English-Latin dictionaries drew on material from a greater number of sources; for example, John Withals’ Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners (1553) had at least twelve sources, including previously published dictionaries as well as scientific and literary treatises of his century; moreover, in the contents of his work, Withals also registered proverbs, wise sayings, legends, and myths. In 16th- and 17th-century England glossaries and vocabularies gradually gave way not only to monolingual, bilingual and polyglot dictionaries, but also to indexes and glossaries appended to grammar books for pedagogic reasons. The practice of appending small dictionaries and indexes to textbooks was explicitly welcomed by William Bullokar and Richard Mulcaster; as teachers, they knew what their students needed and thus insisted on the importance of joining a dictionary to a grammar book. Yet neither Bullokar’s Booke at large, for the Amendment of Orthographie for English speech (1580) nor Mulcaster’s Elementaire (1582) succeeded in carrying out such a task. In 1594 Paul Graves published his Grammatica anglicana containing also a Dictionariolum of English words with their Latin equivalents; other teachers followed this custom, thus paving the way for a joint productive work between grammarians and lexicographers. These writers were far from being inclusive in their works and quite often ended up writing simplified indexes for the use of their students. In turn, most grammarians assumed that, since Latin was still the official language taught at school, what was pertinent to the description of Latin would be equally pertinent to the description of English. Due to this incorrect belief, their books were often devised in a latinised framework and turned out to be little more than Latin grammars in disguise. Indeed, at that time there was still no codified set of rules for the English language; nor did anyone question the authoritative Latin tradition, which had its main representatives in Varro, Donatus, and Priscian. William Lily was one of the early English grammarians and his Latin grammar (ca. 1540) became so popular that it was imposed by the Tudors as the ‘authorised grammar’ for England; as such, all subsequent grammarians had to come to terms with its overriding importance and often ended up publishing mere approving annotations of the same text. No doubt, at that time the publication of translations, elucidations and supplements of this book was, as pointed out by Padley (1985), partly a subterfuge allowing publication, which would otherwise have been thwarted by the royal privilege enjoyed by Lily’s grammar. Such royal privilege was still in force more than two centuries later, when the Anglo-American Lindley Murray published his English Grammar (1795). His text was introduced, supplemented, imitated, enlarged, simplified, improved and, as will be seen in this volume, even parodied. Parody is certainly no latecomer to the various genres, its roots being in the Greek world, at the time of Hegemon of Thasos and Hipponax of Ephesus, who are credited to be the first who used a kind of comic imitation and transformation of an epic verse text. After them, Aristotle employed the term ‘parody’ to qualify Hegemon’s work, while Aristophanes satirically imitated Aeschylus, Euripides and Socrates. Parodies of the liturgy, hymns and the Bible were also in use in the Latin world and later on in the Middle Ages. In England, Chaucer’s tale of Sir Thopas, mocking the chivalry stereotypes of medieval romances, paved the way for a whole host of writers who, with more or less creativity, poked fun at different forms of literature and at various people. The analytical, critical, polemical, argumentative and, at times, didactic qualities of parody are to be viewed in Ben Jonson’s satirical imitations of literary affectations, in Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s parodies of Lyly’s euphuistic style, in Pope’s and Swift’s satire and burlesque, not to mention Fielding’s parody of Richardson’s books, the 18th-century politically-orientated attacks prompted by the French Revolution and by the rise of Romanticism and, last but not least, Percival Leigh’s comic parody of Lindley Murray’s grammar. It is against the background of this intertwining of scholarly serious texts on the one hand and of irreverently pungent satire on the other that lexico-grammatical studies on English have been thriving in England through the centuries, and it is against this background that the authors and works touched on in the present volume need to be viewed. The book delves into three scholars who, in different ways, contributed to the advancement of English lexicographic and grammar writing tradition. Specifically, Peter LEVINS authored the first hard-word rhyming dictionary – Manipulus Vocabulurom, aimed at promoting learning and divulging his mother-tongue; Anthony HUISH’s Priscianus Nascens and Priscianus Ephebus aptly bridge the gap between lexicography and grammar writing to meet the language needs of English schoolboys learning to translate from English into Latin and vice versa. Finally, Percival LEIGH’s Comic English Grammar lays bare a cross section of English socio-linguistic idiosyncrasies that could hardly be unveiled in a ‘serious’, scholarly way. From language teaching to translation, from lexicology to lexicography, from description to prescription, from theoretical studies to socio-linguistic parody, the works examined in the present volume aptly complement each other in terms of genres exploited, content analysed and methodology enacted; most of all, these works testify to the fact that viewing language – particularly lexico-grammar – from different perspectives is a winning way to understand the past (and present) of language itself.
Lexicographers and Grammarians in the History of English
Facchinetti, Roberta
2019-01-01
Abstract
During the Renaissance a great number of Latin-English and English-Latin dictionaries were compiled, following a surprisingly long tradition of English lexicography whose dawn can be traced back to between 600 and 700 A.D. At that time, the first Latin glosses of religious and practical treatises appeared with the primary purpose of explaining difficult Latin words; later on, these glosses came to be written in vernacular, especially after English had been sanctioned for general use, and were often collected in glossaries which evolved into authentic Latin-English dictionaries, arranged either alphabetically or under classified entries. Their object was essentially to provide a Latin dictionary for the use of Englishmen. It was not before the fifteenth century, however, that English-Latin dictionaries began to enrich the scene of English lexicography; by that time the aim of lexicographic works had turned from Latin to English, since they were mainly concerned with glossing English entries. It is generally acknowledged that the first English-Latin bilingual dictionaries were more innovative in approach than their Latin-English counterparts. Indeed, Latin-English dictionaries and glosses were heavily indebted to earlier monolingual Latin works and often simply glossed the works of previous scholars. In contrast, most English-Latin dictionaries drew on material from a greater number of sources; for example, John Withals’ Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners (1553) had at least twelve sources, including previously published dictionaries as well as scientific and literary treatises of his century; moreover, in the contents of his work, Withals also registered proverbs, wise sayings, legends, and myths. In 16th- and 17th-century England glossaries and vocabularies gradually gave way not only to monolingual, bilingual and polyglot dictionaries, but also to indexes and glossaries appended to grammar books for pedagogic reasons. The practice of appending small dictionaries and indexes to textbooks was explicitly welcomed by William Bullokar and Richard Mulcaster; as teachers, they knew what their students needed and thus insisted on the importance of joining a dictionary to a grammar book. Yet neither Bullokar’s Booke at large, for the Amendment of Orthographie for English speech (1580) nor Mulcaster’s Elementaire (1582) succeeded in carrying out such a task. In 1594 Paul Graves published his Grammatica anglicana containing also a Dictionariolum of English words with their Latin equivalents; other teachers followed this custom, thus paving the way for a joint productive work between grammarians and lexicographers. These writers were far from being inclusive in their works and quite often ended up writing simplified indexes for the use of their students. In turn, most grammarians assumed that, since Latin was still the official language taught at school, what was pertinent to the description of Latin would be equally pertinent to the description of English. Due to this incorrect belief, their books were often devised in a latinised framework and turned out to be little more than Latin grammars in disguise. Indeed, at that time there was still no codified set of rules for the English language; nor did anyone question the authoritative Latin tradition, which had its main representatives in Varro, Donatus, and Priscian. William Lily was one of the early English grammarians and his Latin grammar (ca. 1540) became so popular that it was imposed by the Tudors as the ‘authorised grammar’ for England; as such, all subsequent grammarians had to come to terms with its overriding importance and often ended up publishing mere approving annotations of the same text. No doubt, at that time the publication of translations, elucidations and supplements of this book was, as pointed out by Padley (1985), partly a subterfuge allowing publication, which would otherwise have been thwarted by the royal privilege enjoyed by Lily’s grammar. Such royal privilege was still in force more than two centuries later, when the Anglo-American Lindley Murray published his English Grammar (1795). His text was introduced, supplemented, imitated, enlarged, simplified, improved and, as will be seen in this volume, even parodied. Parody is certainly no latecomer to the various genres, its roots being in the Greek world, at the time of Hegemon of Thasos and Hipponax of Ephesus, who are credited to be the first who used a kind of comic imitation and transformation of an epic verse text. After them, Aristotle employed the term ‘parody’ to qualify Hegemon’s work, while Aristophanes satirically imitated Aeschylus, Euripides and Socrates. Parodies of the liturgy, hymns and the Bible were also in use in the Latin world and later on in the Middle Ages. In England, Chaucer’s tale of Sir Thopas, mocking the chivalry stereotypes of medieval romances, paved the way for a whole host of writers who, with more or less creativity, poked fun at different forms of literature and at various people. The analytical, critical, polemical, argumentative and, at times, didactic qualities of parody are to be viewed in Ben Jonson’s satirical imitations of literary affectations, in Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s parodies of Lyly’s euphuistic style, in Pope’s and Swift’s satire and burlesque, not to mention Fielding’s parody of Richardson’s books, the 18th-century politically-orientated attacks prompted by the French Revolution and by the rise of Romanticism and, last but not least, Percival Leigh’s comic parody of Lindley Murray’s grammar. It is against the background of this intertwining of scholarly serious texts on the one hand and of irreverently pungent satire on the other that lexico-grammatical studies on English have been thriving in England through the centuries, and it is against this background that the authors and works touched on in the present volume need to be viewed. The book delves into three scholars who, in different ways, contributed to the advancement of English lexicographic and grammar writing tradition. Specifically, Peter LEVINS authored the first hard-word rhyming dictionary – Manipulus Vocabulurom, aimed at promoting learning and divulging his mother-tongue; Anthony HUISH’s Priscianus Nascens and Priscianus Ephebus aptly bridge the gap between lexicography and grammar writing to meet the language needs of English schoolboys learning to translate from English into Latin and vice versa. Finally, Percival LEIGH’s Comic English Grammar lays bare a cross section of English socio-linguistic idiosyncrasies that could hardly be unveiled in a ‘serious’, scholarly way. From language teaching to translation, from lexicology to lexicography, from description to prescription, from theoretical studies to socio-linguistic parody, the works examined in the present volume aptly complement each other in terms of genres exploited, content analysed and methodology enacted; most of all, these works testify to the fact that viewing language – particularly lexico-grammar – from different perspectives is a winning way to understand the past (and present) of language itself.
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
