Vulgar Tongue Research Articles

Strange Vernaculars. How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English by Janet Sorensen

Reviewed by: Strange Vernaculars. How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English by Janet Sorensen Julie Coleman Janet Sorensen. Strange Vernaculars. How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English. Princeton: Princeton, 2017. Pp. xii + 334. $39.95. Ms. Sorensen's book is a widely ranging and densely written account of the documentation and representation of nonstandard English in the eighteenth century, arguing that unfamiliar and obscure linguistic forms were incorporated into a broader notion of Britishness during this period. A thread running through the analysis is the multiplicity of linguistic forms found in eighteenth-century Britain and represented in the literature of the period: "many people would have encountered linguistic strangeness and multiplicity in what was supposed to be one linguistically unified nation." Britain has never been without linguistic variety, but it would necessarily have become more apparent as national and international trade increased, particularly in the context of a rapidly growing capital city. Different forms of English are merely covariants unless there is an accepted standard form; however, a great deal of the conscious work of codification of that standard took place in the eighteenth century. Borders between different types of nonstandard language are both fluid and porous, and it can be difficult three centuries later to distinguish between cant and proverb, or cant and colloquial language or vulgarity and swearing. Ms. Sorensen makes some notable observations on the incomprehensibility of works that use too much unfamiliar language. Regarding Dekker's Lanthorne and Candlelight (1608), for example, she argues that glossaries are an inadequate key to canting verse and that this "stage[s] the unfamiliarity of cant as mysterious and not fully knowable." Readers' partial incomprehension [End Page 183] generates a sentimental (emotional) rather than a strictly semantic response. Similarly, she argues that footnoted technical language in Falconer's The Shipwreck (1762) impedes readers' comprehension and flattens their emotional response to sailors' attempts to avoid shipwreck and "also raises emotions with its disorienting obscurity." It is, however, worth noting that Dekker needed to churn out publications to make a living and that Falconer added the footnotes after writing his poem. Thus, I would be tempted to argue that Dekker did not compile his glossary very carefully and that Falconer's footnotes are an aid to comprehension rather than a literary device. In her discussion of cant, Ms. Sorensen argues that realist fiction and dictionaries of the eighteenth century shared "generic work in producing the very idea of the nation"; writers such as Smollett, Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson, "who have come to define Britishness" and who set their work in "unmistakeably British landscapes," used rhetoric, which is "recognizably … British." The value of this argument is not necessarily undermined by distance, but there is a circularity in categorizing a group of authors on the basis of a very general shared characteristic and then using that broad categorization to define their purpose in very specific terms. The discussion of slavery in relation to cant concludes that "The abstraction of the universal freedom of the 'free' British subject depends upon particularization, on the development of the notion of nationalized and racialized subjects who form defining counters to that freedom." This is built on a discussion of Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack's transportation to America and later affluence there, a passing allusion to ancient slavery in the introduction to B.E.'s New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew (c. 1699), and a few entries in that dictionary and in Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785). For example, B.E. defines Black Indies as "Newcastle, from whence the coals are brought," which Ms. Sorensen reads as "an evocative use of distant, colonized zones of slavery to name English places, specifically introducing connections between blackness and brutal labor." This represents an elision between our contemporary understanding of the inhumanity of the transatlantic slave trade and an allusive use of Indies to refer to a region from which riches can be derived (OED, s.v. Indies 2), which does not, in my view, necessarily suggest any sensitivity to the means of production. The connection hinges on the...

GEÇMİŞTEN GÜNÜMÜZE TÜRKÇE- GÜRCÜCE ARASINDA EDEBİ İLİŞKİLER

Turkey and Georgia have deep relations for centuries. However, relations on literature among countries have just recently begun. It was introduced by the Turkologists at the Tbilisi State University and the Institute of Oriental Studies, the Turkish literary world has also known to the Georgian readers. The Georgian Turkologists have used Turkish quotes in Georgian, Turkish words in the South dialect of Georgian, Georgian words in Anatolian dialects, Georgian words in Artvin dialects, Turkish-Georgian language, Turkish anthropomorphisms in Georgian, generally, relations between Turkish-Georgian languange are examined based on the accent and dialect of Turks living in Georgia, Georgians living in Turkey and their vulgar tongue etc. Translation is a cultural bridge between countries. At this point, It is of very important that the works of the writers and poets between two counturires are mutually translated in the aspect of developing the cultural and literary relations. While the cultural dimension is being improved through translation, in the same time, the two different societies will get to know better one another. Culture is acknowledged as an important tool for the recognition of the people, while literary translation is an important tool for the cultural transfer that brings them together.

A Missing Distich in Thomas Drant

THOMAS DRANT (c.1540–78) is best remembered today, if at all, for an audacious metaphor. Drant was the first to translate all of Horace’s Satires into English, and in the preface to this translation, included in his volume A Medicinable Morall (1566), he writes: First, I have done as the people of God were commanded to do1 with their captive women that were handsome and beautiful: I have shaved off his [Horace’s] hair and pared off his nails, that is, I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter … I have Englished things not according to the vein of the Latin propriety, but of our own vulgar tongue. I have interfarced (to remove his obscurity and sometimes to better his matter) much of my own devising. I have pieced his reason, eked and mended his similitudes, mollified his hardness, prolonged his curtal kind of speeches, changed and much altered his words, but not his sentence; or at least, I dare say, not his purpose.2

The Vulgar Tongue: Green’s History of Slang by Jonathon Green (review)

The Vulgar Tongue: Green’s History of Slang by Jonathon Green (review)

Editorial

Editorial Edward Finegan Seven articles, three reports of reference works in progress, and reviews of eight books appear in this issue of Dictionaries. Contributors come from Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, although Germany’s Annette Klosa is currently working in Vietnam, while Hong Kong’s Janny Leung is spending a year in the US. Seven contributors appear in the journal’s pages for the first time, while among the more familiar names are two former presidents of the Dictionary Society of North America and two former editors of the journal. Most of the contributors—including several with an academic affiliation—are practicing lexicographers and bring that perspective and experience to bear in their contributions. Four contributions originated as presentations at DSNA’s 20th biennial meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. E-dictionaries have enabled study of user practices in a way not possible or imagined with paper dictionaries, and in this issue Annette Klosa reports results from an online study of how users of a German e-dictionary use and regard citations presented in alternative formats. Four contributions treat the increasingly prominent intersection of lexicology, lexicography, and the law, with discussions about trademark disputes by Orin Hargraves, Adam Kilgarriff, and Ronald R. Butters, and with a review of a book about legal lexicography itself by Janny H. C. Leung. Sadly, Adam Kilgarriff passed away while his contribution was still in progress, and it is published here with respect for Adam’s significant contributions to lexicography. From its earliest years the journal has maintained a special place for historical lexicography and the history of lexicography. That pattern continues with Peter Gilliver’s article exemplifying an outline history of quotation collecting for the OED and with Suzanne Power’s report on a project that digitizes the quotation slips collected for the Dictionary of Newfoundland English; both pieces tell engaging human stories. In a [End Page ix] related vein, Steve Kleinedler reviews published histories of the Concise Oxford Dictionary and The Chambers Dictionary, and Ammon Shea reviews David Crystal’s more popular treatment of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. The lexicography of slang also features prominently in the reviews. Tom Dalzell reviewed the second edition of Jonathon Green’s Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang in an earlier volume of the journal and in this issue reviews The Vulgar Tongue: Green’s History of Slang. Dalzell’s and Terry Victor’s edition of The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is reviewed here by J. Lawrence Mitchell. An updated and expanded edition of the Origin of New York City’s Nickname “The Big Apple” is reviewed by Allan Metcalf. Also in this issue, Orion Montoya reviews Dictionaries: An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Supplementary Volume: Recent Developments with Focus on Electronic and Computational Lexicography. Contributions from two former editors of the journal top the table of contents. With many years’ experience editing OUP’s Dictionary of Quotations, Elizabeth Knowles leads us through the twists and turns of frequently cited aphorisms ascribed to Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Michael Adams, focusing principally on The American Heritage Dictionary in various editions, treats language ideologies, especially those surrounding prescriptivism and descriptivism. In addition to the digitization project mentioned above, Reference Works in Progress describes two programs that highlight ways in which lexicography thrives in disparate guises. In the one, Ilan Kernerman sets out three multi-language lexicographic datasets and their interlinking across dozens of languages. In the other, Rebecca Rickman introduces the Los Angeles Public Library’s showcasing of language and lexicography in the Oxford English Dictionary; the month-long showcase aims to draw Angelenos, from all walks of life and speaking a myriad of native languages, into dialog with that great dictionary. All the articles published here received guidance from two or, in most cases, three referees. Referees’ guidance is invaluable—to editors and authors—and the service of referees sometimes goes unremarked, despite its being crucial to a journal’s success. As editor, I am deeply appreciative of the generosity of the scholars and lexicographers who refereed articles for this issue. I am also thankful to Wendalyn Nichols, the reviews editor, for her contribution...

Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the Confessio Amantis

Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the <i>Confessio Amantis</i>

T. Matthew N. McCabe Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the Confessio AmantisGower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the Confessio Amantis. T. Matthew N. McCabe. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Pp. vi+258.

<i>T. Matthew N. McCabe</i> Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the <i>Confessio Amantis</i><i>Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the <i>Confessio Amantis</i></i>. T. Matthew N. McCabe. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Pp. vi+258.

Gower's Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the ‘Confessio Amantis

Gower's Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the ‘Confessio Amantis

Gower's vulgar tongue: Ovid, lay religion, and English poetry in the Confessio amantis

Gower's vulgar tongue: Ovid, lay religion, and English poetry in the Confessio amantis

La Mujer Barbuda by Ribera, 1631: a gender bender

The picture (Figure 1) showing a markedly virilized central figure with an infant at the breast was painted in 1631 by Jose Ribera, a Spaniard living in Naples. It was commissioned by Ribera’s patron, the Duke of Alcala and in due course returned to Spain. It was exhibited in Paris and in the Royal Academy of San Fernando in the early 19th century and hung for many years in the Hospital Tavera in Toledo. It is now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Figure 1. La mujer barbuda by Ribera, 1631. The central figure poses a conundrum but a case for the diagnosis of the underlying medical condition which would explain all the features seen can be made from evidence in the picture. The medical history of this real named person is given in the Latin inscription on the stone tablets in the picture, enhanced in Figure 2. The inscription translates as follows: Look, a great miracle of nature. Magdalena Ventura from the town of Accumulus in Samnium, in the vulgar tongue Abruzzo in the Kingdom of Naples, aged 52 and what is unusual is when she was in her 37th year she began to go through puberty and thus a full growth of beard appeared such that it seems rather that of a bearded gentleman than a woman who had previously lost three sons whom she had borne to her husband, Felici de Amici, whom you see next to her. Joseph de Ribera, a Spaniard, marked by the cross of Christ, a second Apelles of his own time, by order of Duke Ferdinand II of Alcala, Viceroy at Naples, depicted in a marvellously lifelike way. 17th February 1631.Magdalena Ventura’s features show frontal balding, a luxuriant beard, coarse skin but no acne, masculine face and large but not acromegalic hands. …

The Dante Anecdote in Gower's Confessio Amantis, Book VII

In the second recension of the Confessio Amantis, John Gower added an anecdote on the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri as an example in his discussion of flattery in Book VII. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Petrarch's Rerum memorandarum libri has been indicated as the source for such an anecdote. The anecdote in question does not appear in what is currently considered to be the third and final version of Gower's work; it together with other passages is one of the characteristics defining the second version of the Confessio Amantis. In this article I investigate the origins and early history of this anecdote and the most likely channels for its transmission to Gower. This investigation revises previous assessments of Petrarch's influence and suggests the likelihood that Gower had recourse to oral sources based upon a received synthesis of the two main strands of the anecdote. These findings offer support for a revision of the chronology of recensions 2 and 3 of the Confessio Amantis, and also raise wider questions about the use of source material not only by Gower but also by other medieval and early modern poets. My contention, as illustrated below, is that the Dante anecdote in the Confessio Amantis represents the earliest known written manifestation of an oral tradition that is in fact the conflation of two different strands of the tale. A specific, practical consequence of this contention is to rule out the possibility, should anyone be so inclined, of referring to such anecdote as evidence of Gower's direct knowledge of Petrarch's Rerum memorandarum libri. More importantly, an awareness of the multifarious background from which the anecdote arose provides a useful case study illustrating the importance of oral traditions as narrative material for medieval writers and showing that the lines of demarcation between oral and written sources were far from clear-cut. Tracing oral traditions is ipso facto a hazardous enterprise. However, in this case, we are fortunate in that this specific tradition has left behind a trail of written clues. In an important and influential study of Dante's fortune in England, published in 1909, Paget Toynbee indicated a paragraph in Petrarch's [End Page 420] Rerum memorandarum libri as the source of the Dante anecdote in the second recension of John Gower's Confessio Amantis.1 The Gower anecdote reads in this manner: Nota exemplum cuiusdam poete de Ytalia, qui Dante vocabatur. How Dante the poete answerde To a flatour, the tale I herde. Upon a strif bitwen hem tuo He seide him, "Ther ben many mo Of thy servantes than of myne. For the poete of his covyne Hath non that wol him clothe and fede, But a flatour may reule and lede A king with al his lond aboute." (VII.2329–37*)2 The Petrarch text is as follows: Dantes Allegherius, et ipse concivis nuper meus, vir vulgari eloquio clarissimus fuit, sed moribus parumper contumacior et oratione liberior quam delicatis ac fastidiosis etatis nostre principum auribus atque oculis acceptum foret. Is igitur exul patria cum apud Canem Magnum veronensem, comune tunc afflictorum solamen ac profugium, versaretur, primo quidem in honore habitus deinde pedetentim retrocedere ceperat minusque in dies domino placere. Erant in eodem convictu histriones ac nebulones omnis generis, ut mos est; quorum unus procacissimus obscenis verbis ac gestibus multum apud omnes loci ac gratie tenebat. Quod moleste ferre Dantem suspicatus Canis, producto illo in medium ac magnis laudibus concelebrato, versus in Dantem: "Miror" inquit, "quid cause subsit, cur hic cum sit demens nobis tamen omnibus placere novit et ab omnibus diligitur, quod tu qui sapiens diceris non potes." Ille autem: "Minime" inquit, "mirareris, si nosses quod morum paritas et similitudo animorum amicitie causa est."3 Dante Alighieri, also a former fellow citizen of mine, was a most excellent author in the vulgar tongue, but of rather more insolent manners and freer speech than is...

The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Post Medieval Vernacularity

Contents Preface: On Acknowledgments Introduction: King Solomon's Tablets Nicholas Watson Part I: 1100-1300: The Evangelical Vernacular 1. Using the Ormulum to Redefine Vernacularity Meg Worley 2. Talking the Talk: Access to the Vernacular in Medieval Preaching Claire M. Waters 3. The of Conversion: Ramon Llull's Art as a Vernacular Harvey Hames 4. Mechthild von Magdeburg: Gender and the Unlearned Tongue Sara S. Poor Part II: 1300-1500: Vernacular Textualities 5. Creating a Masculine Vernacular: The Strategy of Misogyny in Late Medieval French Texts Gretchen V. Angelo 6. Teaching Philosophy at School and Court: Vulgarization and Translation Charles F. Briggs 7. Vernacular Textualities in Fourteenth-Century Florence William Robins 8. Moult Bien Parloit et Lisoit le Franchois, or Did Richard II Read with a Picard Accent? Andrew Taylor 9. Professionalizing Translation at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century: Ullerston's Determinacio, Arundel's Constitutiones Fiona Somerset Part III: 1500-2000: Making the Mother Tongues 10. Purity and the of the Court in the Late-Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Netherlands Jeroen Jansen 11. The Politics of ABCs: Language Wars and Literary Vernacularization Among the Serbs and Romanians of Austria-Hungary, 1780-1870 Jack Fairey 12. Indian Shakespeare and the Politics of in Colonial India Nandi Bhatia 13. Poets Laureate and the of Slaves: Petrarch, Chaucer, and Langston Hughes Larry Scanlon Further Reading About the Contributors Index

The Decline in the Use of Latin for Will- and Testament-making in Early Sixteenth-century Bedfordshire

In recent years historians have placed increasing emphasis on the importance of understanding the contexts in which the 'reforms, reactions and reversals' of the reformation process were enacted} A stimulus to (and sometimes a product of) the development of the contextual approach to Reformation history has been a growing awareness of the significance of the beliefs and attitudes of ordinary members of sixteenth-century society. Scholars have become preoccupied with the question of whether the 'English Reformation' was the result of authoritative action from above or whether it was brought about by popular demand from below. In order to illuminate further this central question of Reformation dynamics it may be valuable to examine some of the linguistic contexts of Tyndale's great work of translating the Bible into English. Was the vulgar tongue accepted in non-scriptural ecclesiastical documents? Or did the preReformation Church attempt to maintain its authority and separateness by insistence on the universal application of Latin for Church activities? If so, how successful was the Church in that attempt and what pressures were there from the populace for change? One early-sixteenth-century ecclesiastical document which survives in sufficient numbers to be of value to the historian and which may provide some answer to these questions is the canonical will. The formularized character of late medieval wills has made their utility for historians limited and problematical, particularly where the evaluation of patterns of individual belief is concerned. However, the formal style of wills and testaments, reflecting as it does the complex mixture of canon law, common law and the principles of equity which characterized the medieval law of succession, does provide valuable evidence for the study of the tensions and changing relations between Church and laity. This paper will examine the evidence provided by the eight hundred wills and testaments recorded in the first three surviving probate registers of the court of the Archdeacon of Bedford. Willand testament-making developed from the teaching of the early Christian Church that a dying man should make atonement for his sins by devoting a portion of his worldly goods to the relief of the poor and other pious purposes.s Thus, the 'will' or 'testament' began as a form of charity which provided a motive for the right of bequest and which was closely associated with the last confession. So close was this association that an individual who died intestate was suspected of dying without the ministrations of the Church. During the medieval period the Church developed laws and institutions, administered by the Church courts, that supervised and saw to the enforcement of testamentary bequests and thus the Church became involved in the law of succession. The jurisdiction

The expert deposes, but the court disposes: The concept of malingering and the function of a medical expert witness in the forensic process

The term malingerer, which derives from the French word malingre, meaning ailing and sickly, was introduced in 1785, in a publication titled Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. The word was originally used in a military setting, to describe persons who pretended to be sick or disabled so as to evade military or naval duty. Although the term malingerer itself is thus of relatively recent origin, the pretense of sickness to achieve "a consciously desired end" has a long history.

"P 905 .A512 x 100": An Ethnographic Essay

THE CROAKERS, William Sloane wrote on page 3 of the first issue of the American Historical Review, have been saying that indulgence in generalizations must necessarily destroy thoroughness in detail. Croakers, I thought, in ethnographic mode. Surely an Americanism. But, being in historical mode as well, I consulted my 1811 Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue and Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence, and there croaker was. Croaker. One who is always foretelling some accident or misfortune: an allusion to the croaking of a raven, supposed ominous. Very ethnographic, I thought. Ravens, indeed. Croakers: Raw and Cooked flashed through my mind as a possible title for this essay, getting ravens and blackbirds baked in a pie momentarily confused. It would be nice, however, if the ethnographic truth of the American Historical Review was to be its anti-croakerism. At the time, I was sitting on the basement floor of the Baillieu Library, the University of Melbourne, observing a hundred years of P 905 .A512. It was one of those dark spots in the farthest corner of the library. Perhaps you know it well. The lights are eternally clicking off. The space between shelves is so designed that the human body can neither squat nor bend to see the bottom shelves. The nearest place to read and rest a book is a floor and a labyrinthine walk away. I say I was sitting, but I was really moping. I had just lost a fight with the Borrowing Rights Librarian over my request to borrow any one volume of the AHR for more than three days at a time. No matter that I, an alien Stranger, had been invited to write an ethnography of one of the most prestigious historical journals in the world-to take more than one volume for more than three days was unprecedented and, worse, would set a precedent. No matter[Editor, AHR: I was fightingfor my sanity and meant no harm] -no matter that the only evidence of any volume having been borrowed at any time was one that had Be Returned by the Last Date Shown Below-27 July 1973. I had borrowed it myself. I had been writing an article called History as a Social System and was looking at the first volumes of all the great historical journals of Europe and the English-speaking world to see how they socialized their profession to think and write historically. No matter, the librarian said, somebody might want them. But, for the sake of my concerns, he would take my case to the Privileges Sub-Committee of the Library Committee of the Council of the University. So I sat moping, awaiting my fate. To be honest, I was observing very little: no rituals, no mythologizing, nothing ethnoat all. The color of the binding changed

THE VULGAR TONGUE

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question. Hence all parties are obliged to borrow, in their daily controversies, the ideas, and even the language, peculiar to judicial proceedings ... The Language of the law thus becomes, in some measure, a vulgar tongue; the spirit of the law, which is produced in the schools and courts of justice, gradually penetrates beyond their walls into the bosom of society, where it descends to the lowest classes, so that at last the whole people contract the habits and the tastes of the judicial magistrate.

Urban Elites in Search of a Culture: The Brussels Snow Festival of 1511

N THE WINTER of 1510-11, a long period of cold and frost prompted the citizens of Brussels to build all over the city groups of snowmen which gave expression to their ambitions, fears, and frustrations in a highly entertaining way. In addition to short accounts in several chronicles, this event is the subject of a lengthy ballad by the Brussels city poet Jan Smeken which was published by his friend Thomas van der Noot.1 The individual figures and groups represented narratives and themes drawn from a wide variety of cultures and periods, ranging from biblical and classical antiquity to the immediate local past. In addition, all sorts of mythological and folklore figures were included, such as the unicorn, the wildman, and the sea knight, as well as representations of current events. The text of Smeken's poem has been completely neglected by literary historians in spite of its availability in a modern edition published in 1946.2 Its neglect is due to the fact that as the product of one of the late medieval rhetorical societies, it has been classified as popular literature belonging to the artisan class. In other words, it has traditionally been viewed as the work of amateurs who took up the pen after working hours to express themselves in rhyme in a vulgar tongue on account of their ignorance of Latin and French. The work of the rhetoricians is usually thought to exemplify incompetence and a failure to comprehend the canonical works of high medieval literature. Smeken's text has been singled out as an egregious example of this debased literary form. The editors of the modern edition, for example, fault him time and again for his confusion without realizing that he may have manipulated established literary forms for humorous or moralizing effect.3 The classification of this poem as low art appears ensured by its subject matter. Playing with snow is not usually regarded as a

The Ascetical Meditative Literature of Renaissance Spain: An Alternative to Amadis, Elisa and Diana

During the two hundred years beginning with 1450 and running through 1650 there were roughly three thousand religious works published in Spain in Latin as well as in Spanish. These works were written for a variety of reasons and appeared in diverse forms. For example, some were theological tracts which were products of the ThomisticScholastic tradition. Others were catechetical in nature and a third category were the ascetical and mystical works belonging to the Platonic-Augustinian tradition (Monasterio 4-7). The regular or monastic orders benefited from the production of theological treatises written in Latin which enhanced the training of aspirants for entrance into their communities whereas catechetical literature expedited the religious education of the faithful.' The religious literature of Renaissance Spain, depending on whether it had catechetical, ascetical, meditative designs or resulted from the mystical experiences of religious reformers, produced different types of works: e.g., tratados, vidas, opfzsculos, abecedarios, guias espirituales, manuales, ejercicios espirituales and catecismos (Gutierrez 227-29). The religious literature of the period was in effect a Renaissance version of late Medieval Nominalism or it represented a form of Neo-Scholasticism; another class had definite Neo-Platonic qualities (Gonzailez 286-88). In addition to the training of monks, the explication of complex theological precepts, a vehicle for guidance in prayer and meditation or the rendering into human language of the mystical union, the religious prose also took the forms of Biblical exegeses and commentaries on Old and New Testament texts together with the various interpretations of the writings of the Church Fathers or of St. Thomas Aquinas. This study, however, will focus on certain works of an ascetical, devotional or meditative nature which proffered the reading public an alternative body of literature which could serve to counteract the influence of the secularizing effects of the chivalric and pastoral modes in vogue (Sanz Pascual 275). This ascetical meditative and devotional literature wielded influence both inside the Iberian peninsula as well as in other countries of Europe.2 Ascetical works (the ascetical process in prayer and meditation) comprise the purgative and illuminative stages which prepare the person meditating for the final stage of the via mystica, the unitive (Valbuena Prat 60415). They include works written in the vulgar tongue meant to expedite the spiritual edification of the layperson. These devotional treatises, spiritual guides and exercises together with the meditative manuals were written in Castilian instead of the traditional Latin of the Aristotelian-Scholastic-Thomistic tradition.3 The various members of the great religious orders and, in particular, the Augustinians and Franciscans, produced a significant number of these works. Writers such as Mal6n de Chaide, Luis de Granada, Alonso de Soria and Antonio de Guevara wrote a type of devotional literature that could deleitar in the spiritual sense as well as ensefiar doctrina cristiana; in other words, a type of literature that would maintain the reader's interest and at the same time enhance his spiritual and moral wellbeing.4 These devotional works were not meant to serve as catechetical manuals nor as orthodox, doctrinal exegeses; neither were they intended to be highly complex, speculative theological tracts. Indeed, a limited number

Classic American Graffiti: Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America, A Glossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary (review)

148RICHARD E. WOOD The main body of the dictionary is an alphabetical hst of Surinamese Dutch words and expressions, with gloss in Standard Dutch, a citation or citations , an etymology where appropriate and where known, and helpful "see" and "see also" references which attest to van Donselaar's background in library science or a related field. Though the author is a biologist, he has clearly read extensively in linguistics, creóle languages, Dutch lexicography, and other areas. Latin names are given for the majority of flora and fauna entries-exceptions appear to be instances where the folk name is broad and covers several species or geni. In appropriate cases, entries are identified as regional, obsolescent, recent coinages, or associated with a particular ethnic group. Besides the ethnic languages mentioned above, non-Dutch influences come from English (for some time the official language of Surinam, and the metropolitan language with which the main local creóle, Sranan Tongo, is chiefly affihated), French, Portuguese (rarely Spanish), Amerindian languages, German (through the influence of the Moravian Brethren or Herrnhutters, active for centuries in theterritory), Hebrew (from the Sephardim, whose ancient synagogue at Jodensavanna is now a major tourist attraction), etc. Important also are regional Dutch influences from the southern Netherlands, and terms which have been archaisms in form or meaning in The Netherlands. What began for van Donselaar as a hobby has grown into a sophisticated piece of lexicography characterized by careful attention to method and sources, genuine fieldwork (so often lacking in lexicography for better-known languages), and a non-judgemental attitude of scientific inquiry. Van Donselaar even gave the dictionary a post-test, reported in a supplement. After the completion of the MS, he read carefuUy through Edgar Cairo's new novel, Kollektieve schuld, which is rich in SD vocabulary. He checked his listings and found some lacunae. These he Usts with a gloss though, for lack of time, without an etymology or citations on usage. Work in Surinamese Dutch lexicography, then, is not complete . But an important beginning has been made. Van Donselaar's dictionary deserves to serve as a model for future lexicography in the French of Canada, francophone Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, the German of Namibia, the EngUsh of anglophone Africa and elsewhere, U.S. Black English, and other language varieties in what is undoubtedly a growing linguistic category throughout the world. Richard E. Wood Southeast Missouri State University AUen Walker Read, Classic American Graffiti: Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America, A Glossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary, Wawkesha, Wisconsin: Maledicta Press, 1977, 89 pages, no price. REVIEWS149 Though in England the 181 1 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue had long been an underground classic, it was not untU AUen Walker Read's privately printed study, this present work, was published at his own expense in Paris in 1935 that lexicographers and other researchers could examine a published document of American folk epigraphy. In 1950 Hyman E. Goldin, Frank O'Leary and Morris Lipsius pubUshed the Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo. Though it is a valuable work, it is as guüty as the then current standard dictionaries of omitting the controversial folk words (such as fuck) that Read, fifteen years earUer, had carefuUy documented. Even then Read believed that he was making not only a valuable contribution to linguistics but was at the same time providing source material for other disciplines such as abnormal psychology. Another important work that also sidesteps most of the so-caUed dirty words documented by Read is A Dictionary of the Underworld compiled by Eric Patridge and published in 1949. Though Read's preface and introduction are overly defensive and somewhat apologetic he nevertheless makes soUd, useful comments on the nature of obscenity and folk epigraphy. After reminding us that "The determinant of obscenity lies not in words or things, but in the attitudes that people have towards these words and things" (p. 9), he goes on to another important point: "The stigma on the obscene words was caused in the first place by unhealthy attitudes towards the bodUy functions" (p. 16). After a plea for a sane sense of the body and...

Michelangelo's Harsh Music

In his late seventies Michelangelo wrote to Vasari, “You will surely say I am old and crazy to want to produce sonnets, but since many say I am in my second childhood, I wanted to act the part.”1 This half-humorous excuse reveals the artist's compelling need to express himself in poetry as well as in the visual arts. Michelangelo's first efforts at writing poetry took place in 1503, fifty years before the letter to Vasari. Condivi, his pupil and biographer, described the origin of his writing: “It was some time since he had worked at that art [sculpture], having given himself up to the study of poets and authors in the vulgar tongue and writing sonnets for his own pleasure.”2 Thus he started writing at a time when he was not busy with a project in sculpture, perhaps because the need for a creative outlet was too strong to remain unfulfilled. His intense study of the poets led to an active participation in the making of his own poems. It was the beginning of a life-long habit which intensified at times, pa...