Literature, Language and Change: From Chaucer to the Present (The Interface Series)

Reading literature is a quest for sense, involving us in a need to grasp both how meaning is produced by the words on the page and how history, culture and ideology have influenced the choice of those words. Literary English changes from period to period as it reflects variations in the society and culture in which it is produced - variations in the ways writers construct images of their world, shifts in the relationships between readers, texts and writers, and linguistic change. "Literature, Language and Change" offers an historical perspective on literary English, from the mid-14th century to the present-day. Through detailed analyses of individual texts and comparisons with texts from different periods, Stephens and Waterhouse build up a picture of the important and distinctive characteristics of each period and examine the changes between them. Exercises provide students with the opportunity to apply the insights and methods presented in each chapter. Terms which may be unfamiliar are defined and explained in a glossary, and a bibliography gives useful pointers for supplementary reading.