Companion to Johnson's Dictionary

Companion to Johnson's Dictionary PDF Author: John Mendies
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bengali language
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description

Companion to Johnson's Dictionary

Companion to Johnson's Dictionary PDF Author: John Mendies
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bengali language
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description


The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson

The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson PDF Author: Greg Clingham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521556255
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This Companion, first published in 1997, provides an introduction to the works and life of one of the key figures in English literary history.

The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries

The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries PDF Author: Sarah Ogilvie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108568459
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
How did a single genre of text have the power to standardise the English language across time and region, rival the Bible in notions of authority, and challenge our understanding of objectivity, prescription, and description? Since the first monolingual dictionary appeared in 1604, the genre has sparked evolution, innovation, devotion, plagiarism, and controversy. This comprehensive volume presents an overview of essential issues pertaining to dictionary style and content and a fresh narrative of the development of English dictionaries throughout the centuries. Essays on the regional and global nature of English lexicography (dictionary making) explore its power in standardising varieties of English and defining nations seeking independence from the British Empire: from Canada to the Caribbean. Leading scholars and lexicographers historically contextualise an array of dictionaries and pose urgent theoretical and methodological questions relating to their role as tools of standardisation, prestige, power, education, literacy, and national identity.

The Doubter's Companion

The Doubter's Companion PDF Author: John Ralston Saul
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743236602
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
A long and distinguished tradition of writers have used the form of a satirical dictionary to undermine the received ideas of their day. Voltaire wrote a sharply humorous "Philosophical Dictionary," while Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language was derisive and opinionated. These early dictionaries and encyclopedias were really weapons in a struggle for the soul of civilization between forces of humanistic enlightenment and the forces of orthodoxy and dogmatism. Their authors attacked and exposed the half-truths of their day by showing that it was possible to think differently about the social and political arrangements that everyone took for granted. But as John Ralston Saul argues in this decidedly unorthodox book, modern dictionaries have once again been captured by the forces of orthodoxy—albeit this time a rationalist orthodoxy. Our language has become as predictable, fragmented, and rhetorical as it was in the 18th century, divided as it is by special interest groups into dialects of expertise that are hermetically sealed off and inaccessible to citizens. In The Doubter's Companion, a mar­velous subversive contribution to the great 18th century tradition of the humanist dictionary, Saul skewers and discredits the accepted content of common terms like Advertising, Academics, and Air Conditioning (defined as "an efficient means for spreading disease in enclosed public spaces"); Cannibal, Conservative, and Croissant; Dandruff, Death, and Dictionary ("opinions presented as truth in alphabetical order"); and several hundred others, including Biography ("a respectable form of pornography"), Museum ("safe storage for stolen objects"), and Manners ("people are always splendid when they're dead"). There is much in this volume that will stimulate, offend, provoke, perplex, and entertain. But Saul deploys these tactics of guerilla lexicography to advance the more serious purpose of reclaiming public language from the stultifying dialects of modern expertise.

Johnson's dictionary, with additions, ed. by J.H. Murray

Johnson's dictionary, with additions, ed. by J.H. Murray PDF Author: Samuel Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words (1604)

A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words (1604) PDF Author: Robert Cawdry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Defining the World

Defining the World PDF Author: Henry Hitchings
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429928948
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
“[A] marvelous account” of Johnson’s towering achievement, nearly a decade of labor and linguistic fact-finding, presented by “a buoyant, zestful writer” (The Boston Globe). By the early eighteenth century, France and Italy had impressive lexicons, but there was no authoritative dictionary of English. Impelled by a mixture of national pride and commercial expedience, the prodigious polymath Samuel Johnson embraced the task, turning over the garret of his London home to the creation of his own giant dictionary. Johnson imagined that he could complete the job in three years. But the complexity of English meant that his estimate was wildly inadequate. Only after he had expended nearly a decade of his prime on the task did the dictionary finally appear—magisterial yet quirky, dogmatic but generous of spirit, and steeped in the richness of English literature. It would come to be seen as the most important British cultural monument of the eighteenth century, and its influence fanned out across Europe and throughout Britain’s colonies—including, crucially, America. Brilliantly entertaining and enlightening, Defining the World is the story of Johnson’s heroic endeavor. In alphabetically sequenced chapters, Henry Hitchings describes Johnson’s adventure—his ambition and vision, his moments of despair, the mistakes he made along the way, and his ultimate triumph.

Johnson's Dictionary, with ... Additions from the Most Eminent Authorities

Johnson's Dictionary, with ... Additions from the Most Eminent Authorities PDF Author: Samuel Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description


Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading

Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading PDF Author: Robert DeMaria Jr.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801854792
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
In Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading, Robert DeMaria considers the surprising influence of one of the greatest readers in English literature. Johnson's relationship to books not only reveals much about his life and times, DeMaria contends, but also provides a dramatic counterpoint to modern reading habits. As a superior practitioner of the craft, Johnson provides a compelling model for how to read—indeed, he provides different models for different kinds of reading. DeMaria shows how Johnson recognized early that not all reading was alike—some requiring intense concentration, some suited for cursory glances, some requiring silence, some best appreciated amid the chatter of a coffeehouse. Considering the remarkable range of Johnson's reading, DeMaria discovers in one extraordinary career a synoptic view of the subject. "Enacts Johnson's celebrated variation on a theme from Horace—it does not merely delight and instruct, but rather instructs by delighting us . . . DeMaria proves himself a reader altogether worthy of his subject."—Times Literary Supplement "Fascinatingly perceptive both of Johnson's own reading habits and of their significance in the cultural history of reading."—Modern Language Review "Both a scholarly and an imaginative achievement, combining detailed detective work, abstract categorization, and sympathetic understanding. The finished product re-creates the detailed fabric of Johnson's reading career while locating it in a cultural landscape of rapid publication and growing literacy . . . Eminently readable, learned, and thoughtful."—Modern Philology "An intellectual history of the writer and his age."—Magill's Literary Annual "DeMaria presents an imaginative re-creation of Johnson's library and suggests how his reading habits offered a model for preventing the disappearance of the reader."—Biblio

Women and Dictionary-Making

Women and Dictionary-Making PDF Author: Lindsay Rose Russell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316953548
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Dictionaries are a powerful genre, perceived as authoritative and objective records of the language, impervious to personal bias. But who makes dictionaries shapes both how they are constructed and how they are used. Tracing the craft of dictionary making from the fifteenth century to the present day, this book explores the vital but little-known significance of women and gender in the creation of English language dictionaries. Women worked as dictionary patrons, collaborators, readers, compilers, and critics, while gender ideologies served, at turns, to prevent, secure, and veil women's involvements and innovations in dictionary making. Combining historical, rhetorical, and feminist methods, this is a monumental recovery of six centuries of women's participation in dictionary making and a robust investigation of how the social life of the genre is influenced by the social expectations of gender.