Hardy's Literary Language and Victorian Philology

By Dennis Taylor

Book Overview

This pioneering study is the first detailed exploration of Hardy's linguistic "awkwardness," a subject that has long puzzled critics. Dennis Taylor shows that Hardy's language must be understood as a distinctive response to the philological and literary issues of his time. Deeply influenced by the Victorian historical study of language, Hardy deliberately incorporated into his own writing a sense of language's recent and hidden history, its multiple stages and classes, and its arbitrary motivations. In what is the first major treatment of a writer's relation to the Oxford English Dictionary, Taylor's study also examines the influence on Hardy's language of the founding and development of this period of the OED.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198122616
• ISBN13: 9780198122616
• Release Date: February 1994
• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Length: 442 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.5"