"MIXT AND MANGELED": LINGUISTIC/STYLISTIC VARIETY AND THE CASE OF THOMAS NASHE'S LATIN (ENGLAND).
Item
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Title
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"MIXT AND MANGELED": LINGUISTIC/STYLISTIC VARIETY AND THE CASE OF THOMAS NASHE'S LATIN (ENGLAND).
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Identifier
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AAI8023695
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identifier
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8023695
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Creator
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COSTA, PATRICIA WALLACE.
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Contributor
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Allen Mandelbaum
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Date
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1980
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative
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Abstract
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This dissertation proposes a new reading of the foreign language insertions which appear in Renaissance vernacular prose. It treats the mostly Latin insertions from a sociolinguistic perspective: not as isolated rhetorical tags, but as meaningful tokens of particular situational styles or registers which were available to the Renaissance writer and reader as members of a specific speech community. This situational perspective is particularly valid for Latin inasmuch as the Renaissance is a bilingual age. By recuperating for the twentieth century reader the lost or fuzzy linguistic, stylistic, and cultural significance of this "bilingual" register, the dissertation confirms the bilingualism by demonstrating the possibility of meaningful interaction between Latin and the vernacular.;To this end, the work mobilizes register, a method of linguisti stylistic description which defines style as a correlation of the three situational dimensions of field, mode, and tenor. Passing the formal (lexical and grammatical) features of each insertion through these dimensional grids regenerates the socio-cultural vitality of the style.;The information so recuperated contributes to our knowledge of the internal variety of Renaissance Latin. Distinguishing between the different kinds of Latin appearing in vernacular texts, it corrects impressionistic notions of that style. In the chosen test case, Nashe's Pierce Penilesse His Sypplication to the Divell, it refutes cliched conceptions of Latin insertions as eminently written and formal while substantiating their predominantly literary origins. With such information, we develop a keener, if always approximate, sense of the Renaissance reader's bilingual competence.;This information serves literary analysis in two ways.;Mixed language texts provide excellent material for directly gauging the impact of foreign languages on the development of the literary vernacular. Register advances such analysis by generating the stylistic particulars for the foreign component. But its dimensions can also be applied in description of the vernacular and, moreover, applied in ways particularly relevant to the latter's development. The dimension of mode, for example, necessarily deals with the oralism so prevalent in Tudor prose.;The information so recuperated also uncovers motives, generally considered lacking or exclusively pedantic, for inclusion of the insertion. Register interprets the shift from English to Latin as a stylistic strategy, the implied meaning of which is available to co-sharers of the socio-cultural context. The act of code-switching palpably demonstrates that language is behavior and style, whatever its situational type, a mode of behavior, meaning, and creativity.;Register is a pragmatic concept of style, that is, it assumes meaningfulness in communication even though such meaningfulness may not be immediately apparent. Register emphasizes a socio-cultural, as distinct from logical, contextual theory of language. While critical attention generally focuses on the latter, the dissertation develops at length the socio-cultural component of context as the one necessary for grasping the semiotic plenitude of the linguistically and stylistically variegated Renaissance text. A socio-cultural contextual view of language, while highly complex, is the only theory that adequately accounts for the materiality of style. It also asks us to look to the broader patterns of culture, to the various contexts in which language and language behavior are learned, to account for deviations from the norm, be it empirical or prescriptive (as with literary style). While some variation inevitably remains idiosyncratic, much--including bilingual insertions--can be meaningfully integrated into discourse.;Register and the theory of language behind it render "mixt and mangeled" texts such as Nashe's more intelligible and hold considerable potential as an approach to mixed style in general.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Comparative Literature
