Emily A. Winkler
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198812388
- eISBN:
- 9780191850257
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198812388.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History, Historiography
It has long been established that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. This book presents a new perspective on previously ...
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It has long been established that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. This book presents a new perspective on previously unqueried matters: it investigates how historians’ individual motivations and assumptions produced changes in the kind of history written across the Conquest. It argues that responses to the Danish Conquest of 1016 and Norman Conquest of 1066 changed dramatically within two generations of the latter conquest. Repeated conquest could signal repeated failures and sin across the orders of society, yet early twelfth-century historians in England not only extract English kings and people from a history of failure, but also establish English kingship as a worthy office on a European scale. The book illuminates the consistent historical agendas of four historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar. In their narratives of England’s eleventh-century history, these twelfth-century historians expanded their approach to historical explanation to include individual responsibility and accountability within a framework of providential history, making substantial departures from their sources. These historians share a view of royal responsibility independent both of their sources (primarily the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and any political agenda that placed English and Norman allegiances in opposition. Although the accounts diverge widely in the interpretation of character, all four are concerned more with the effectiveness of England’s kings than with the legitimacy of their origins. Their new, shared view of royal responsibility represents a distinct phenomenon in England’s twelfth-century historiography.Less
It has long been established that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. This book presents a new perspective on previously unqueried matters: it investigates how historians’ individual motivations and assumptions produced changes in the kind of history written across the Conquest. It argues that responses to the Danish Conquest of 1016 and Norman Conquest of 1066 changed dramatically within two generations of the latter conquest. Repeated conquest could signal repeated failures and sin across the orders of society, yet early twelfth-century historians in England not only extract English kings and people from a history of failure, but also establish English kingship as a worthy office on a European scale. The book illuminates the consistent historical agendas of four historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar. In their narratives of England’s eleventh-century history, these twelfth-century historians expanded their approach to historical explanation to include individual responsibility and accountability within a framework of providential history, making substantial departures from their sources. These historians share a view of royal responsibility independent both of their sources (primarily the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and any political agenda that placed English and Norman allegiances in opposition. Although the accounts diverge widely in the interpretation of character, all four are concerned more with the effectiveness of England’s kings than with the legitimacy of their origins. Their new, shared view of royal responsibility represents a distinct phenomenon in England’s twelfth-century historiography.
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199950980
- eISBN:
- 9780199345991
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199950980.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
A Taste for China offers an account of how literature of the long eighteenth century generated a model of English selfhood dependent on figures of China. It shows how various genres of ...
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A Taste for China offers an account of how literature of the long eighteenth century generated a model of English selfhood dependent on figures of China. It shows how various genres of writing in this period call upon “things Chinese” to define the tasteful English subject of modernity. Chinoiserie is no mere exotic curiosity in this culture, but a potent, multivalent sign of England’s participation in a cosmopolitan world order. By the end of the eighteenth century, not only are English homes filled with it, but so too are English selves. Literature’s gradual insistence that things Chinese are incompatible with English identity is part of a strategy for organizing this imaginary material as part of modern subjectivity. Orientalism does not inform the literary incorporation of China into English self-definition, but is instead one of its most lasting effects.Less
A Taste for China offers an account of how literature of the long eighteenth century generated a model of English selfhood dependent on figures of China. It shows how various genres of writing in this period call upon “things Chinese” to define the tasteful English subject of modernity. Chinoiserie is no mere exotic curiosity in this culture, but a potent, multivalent sign of England’s participation in a cosmopolitan world order. By the end of the eighteenth century, not only are English homes filled with it, but so too are English selves. Literature’s gradual insistence that things Chinese are incompatible with English identity is part of a strategy for organizing this imaginary material as part of modern subjectivity. Orientalism does not inform the literary incorporation of China into English self-definition, but is instead one of its most lasting effects.
James N. Stanford
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190625658
- eISBN:
- 9780190625689
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190625658.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics, English Language
This chapter outlines each of the linguistic variables studied in this New England English project, including r-lessness, START/PALM-fronting, “broad-a” BATH, NORTH/FORCE distinctions, ...
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This chapter outlines each of the linguistic variables studied in this New England English project, including r-lessness, START/PALM-fronting, “broad-a” BATH, NORTH/FORCE distinctions, MARY/MARRY/MERRY distinctions, LOT/THOUGHT distinctions, nasal short-a, and other traditional regional features. Each variable is discussed in terms of prior work, with a focus on results of the 1930s Linguistic Atlas of New England and the 2006 Atlas of North American English. The chapter includes maps of prior work that are used as a comparison for the results of the current study.Less
This chapter outlines each of the linguistic variables studied in this New England English project, including r-lessness, START/PALM-fronting, “broad-a” BATH, NORTH/FORCE distinctions, MARY/MARRY/MERRY distinctions, LOT/THOUGHT distinctions, nasal short-a, and other traditional regional features. Each variable is discussed in terms of prior work, with a focus on results of the 1930s Linguistic Atlas of New England and the 2006 Atlas of North American English. The chapter includes maps of prior work that are used as a comparison for the results of the current study.
Jim Wood
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199367221
- eISBN:
- 9780199367245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199367221.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
This chapter is an in-depth study of the New England So AUXn’t NP/DP (SAND) construction, in which a sentence like so aren’t you is truth-conditionally identical to so are you (= “You are too”). The ...
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This chapter is an in-depth study of the New England So AUXn’t NP/DP (SAND) construction, in which a sentence like so aren’t you is truth-conditionally identical to so are you (= “You are too”). The SAND construction, which is geographically restricted, is compared to geographically widespread negative exclamatives such as Aren’t you cute! Negative exclamatives, like SAND, have a negative marker but affirmative meaning (≈ “You are very cute”). This chapter shows that these cases fail negation tests but proposes that n’t is nevertheless not a semantically vacuous morphological marking. Instead, it serves a systematic syntactic and semantic function, one that explains pragmatic constraints on such sentences. Both SAND and negative exclamatives involve double negation, which is achieved by syntactically constructing a question-answer pair clause-internally.Less
This chapter is an in-depth study of the New England So AUXn’t NP/DP (SAND) construction, in which a sentence like so aren’t you is truth-conditionally identical to so are you (= “You are too”). The SAND construction, which is geographically restricted, is compared to geographically widespread negative exclamatives such as Aren’t you cute! Negative exclamatives, like SAND, have a negative marker but affirmative meaning (≈ “You are very cute”). This chapter shows that these cases fail negation tests but proposes that n’t is nevertheless not a semantically vacuous morphological marking. Instead, it serves a systematic syntactic and semantic function, one that explains pragmatic constraints on such sentences. Both SAND and negative exclamatives involve double negation, which is achieved by syntactically constructing a question-answer pair clause-internally.
