Narrative and Persuasion in Early Modern English Dictionaries and Phrasebooks

Abstract

The dictionaries (and phrasebooks: the distinction is sometimes a very fine one) made in the early modern period were intended to be read more or less consecutively. They told stories, and they persuaded their readers to adopt beliefs and perform actions. Sir Thomas Elyot's Dictionary of 1538, for instance, argued for the importance of learned men, and particularly of Elyot himself, in the state; this argument was made more strongly in Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus of 1565. Polyglot dictionaries suggested the interchangeability of ideas from one language to another, and therefore had irenical implications. So did two seventeenth-century phrasebooks, Marten Le Mayre's of Dutch (1606) and Roger Williams's of Narragansett (1643), both of which promoted very specific agendas of peacemaking and missionary work. John Cowell's censored Interpreter (1607) argued for absolute monarchy, and Henry Manwayring's SeaMans Dictionary (1644) for English naval expansion. Each of these wordbooks served a political function as well as a linguistic one: they were meant to change people's lives.