Robert Estienne S Influence On Lexicography

Towering above printers of his time and their successors for many years afterward was the figure of Robert Estienne, the great French lexicographer of the sixteenth century, whose contribution to knowledge and its dissemination is the subject of this authoritative book. The span of Robert Estienne's life (1503–1559) encompassed the historical epochs and events which shaped his career: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the invention of printing by movable type. His keen interest in the revival of ancient literatures and languages and his training in the art of printing pointed the road he would travel, and the climate of opinion in the Reformation determined his destiny. Robert Estienne promoted classical learning by printing the works of good authors; to spread knowledge of ancient literature he compiled dictionaries and grammars which were adopted by most of the universities of Europe. His dictionary of proper names of Biblical and classical origin, the Dictionarium historicum ac poeticum, became one of the great source books for later compilers of dictionaries and for authors. His influence on English writers was pervasive. Ben Jonson showed familiarity with his texts; Spenser and Milton sometimes set trarislations of his phraseology directly into their poetry. Perpetuation of the few errors he made is one sure proof that his dictionaries were used and copied. An exemplar of learning in the classics and scripture, he searched in ancient manuscripts to avoid repeating the numerous errors that had crept into Bible translations over hundreds of years. For his efforts he was called a heretic by docteurs de theologie in the Sorbonne, but was protected by the royal favor of Francis I of France. Between attacks of theologians on the one side and the King's protection on the other, he became a "controversial" figure and after many years of calumny and persecution finally took refuge in Geneva. Estienne established a family tradition of printing correct and beautiful books, and the printing establishments which made the name of Estienne celebrated throughout the world continued for 162 years.

Laying the foundations for the first monolingual dictionaries of English, the sixteenth century in English lexicography is here shown to form a bridge between the glossarial compilations which had slowly evolved during the Middle Ages, and the more recognisably modern dictionary incorporating synonymy, illustrative citations and other standard features. The articles collected here treat general lexicography and dictionaries in this period, their uses, and the state of research in this field. The volume also covers a fascinating and diverse collection of lexicographers, from the well known - John Palsgrave, Thomas Cooper, Thomas Elyot and John Florio - to those about whom next to nothing is known - Richard Howlet, John Baret and Peter Levens.

The eighteenth century is renowned for the publication of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, which reference sources still call the first English dictionary. This collection demonstrates the inaccuracy of that claim, but its tenacity in the public mind testifies to how decisively Johnson formed our sense of what a dictionary is. The essays and articles in this volume examine the already flourishing tradition of English lexicography from which Johnson drew, as represented by Kersey, Bailey, and Martin, as well as the flourishing contemporary trade in encyclopedic, technical, pronunciation, and bilingual lexicons.

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.

The title Translating Investments, a manifold pun, refers to metaphor and clothing, authority and interest, and trading and finance. Translation, Latin translatio, is historically a name for metaphor, and investment, etymologically a reference to clothing, participates both in the complex symbolism of early modern dress and in the cloth trade of the period. In this original and wide-ranging book, Judith Anderson studies the functioning of metaphor as a constructive force within language, religious doctrine and politics, literature, rhetoric, and economics during the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts. Invoking a provocative metaphorical concept from Andy Clark's version of cognitive science, she construes metaphor itself as a form of scaffolding fundamental to human culture. A more traditional and controversial conception of such scaffolding is known as sublation-Hegel's Aufhebung, or raising, as the philosophers Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur have understood this term. Metaphor is the agent of raising, or sublation, and sublation is inseparable from the productive life of metaphor, as distinct in its death in code or cliché. At the same time, metaphor embodies the sense both of partial loss and of continuity, or preservation, also conveyed by the term Aufhebung. Anderson's study is simultaneously critical and historical. History and the theory are shown to be mutually enlightening, as are a wide variety of early modern texts and their specific cultural contexts. From beginning to end, this study touches the present, engaging questions about language, rhetoric, and reading within post-structuralism and neo-cognitivism. It highlights connections between intellectual problems active in our own culture and those evident in the earlier texts, controversies, and crises Anderson analyzes. In this way, the study is bifocal, like metaphor itself. While Anderson's overarching concern is with metaphor as a creative exchange, a source of code-breaking conceptual power, each of her chapters focuses on a different but related issue and cultural sector. Foci include the basic conditions of linguistic meaning in the early modern period, instantiated by Shakespeare's plays and related to modern theories of metaphor; the role of metaphor in the words of eucharistic institution under Archbishop Cranmer; the play of metaphor and metonymy in the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin and in John Donne's Devotions; the manipulation of these two tropes in the politics of the controversy over ecclesiastical vestments and in its treatment by John Foxe; the abuse of figuration in the house of Edmund Spenser's Busirane, where catachresis, an extreme form of metaphor, is the trope du jour; the conception of metaphor in the Roman rhetorics and their legacy in the sixteenth century; and the concept of exchange in the economic writing of Gerrard de Malynes, merchant and metaphorist in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. What emerges at the end of this book is a heightened critical sense of the dynamic of metaphor in cultural history.

The first grammatical descriptions of the French language were produced in England, several centuries before the first grammar written in French (but also several centuries after the Norman Conquest). This book describes the status of French in England during the period from the marriage of Emma of Normandy to thelred (1004) to the fixing of a (relatively) standard pedagogical scheme for the teaching of French of English speakers (ca. 1600). During this period French passed from a native language to a second language, became the official language of the legal profession, and ultimately fell back to a position of social accomplishment. At the same time, different pedagogical and descriptive traditions developed to meet these various needs. Here Kibbee traces the interaction of cultural, intellectual, social and technological history with the elaboration of a grammatical tradition. The book includes a bibliography and indexes of names, titles and subjects.

Covering the period comprising the Renaissance and Reformation, this volume introduces a unique set of interdisciplinary biographical dictionaries providing basic information on the people who have contributed significantly to the culture of Western civilization. Unlike general dictionaries which focus on political and military figures, this book covers such figures as the religious leaders who contributed to the Reformation, scientists who paved the way for a new view of the universe, and Renaissance painters, sculptors, and architects, as well as writers, musicians, and scholars. While the great personalities are included—Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Galileo—the volume covers lesser known figures as well—the Muslim scholar Leo Africanus, the Flemish geographer-astronomer Gemma Frisius, the English travel writer Thomas Coryate. Although many of the subjects also had political influence, the entries are written to highlight their individual cultural achievement. An exciting, tumultuous, and chaotic age, the years from 1500 to 1620 saw increasing discontent with Catholicism and the beginning of Protestantism with Luther's 95 theses, great strides in the development of the printing press and a resulting increase in literacy, the humanist movement with its emphasis on the arts of antiquity, a proliferation of literature and art inspired by but moving beyond classical forms, and conflict between the triumph of Renaissance culture and the theologians of the Protestant Reformation. The resulting cultural production was astounding. This volume covers those who contributed to the fields of art and architecture, music, philosophy, religion, political and social thought, science, mathematics, literature, history, and education. With over 350 entries written by 72 scholars, the book provides a good basic resource on an exciting age.