The Establishment of Modern English Prose in the Reformation and the Enlightenment

by Ian Robinson

Overview

Ian Robinson traces the legacy of prose writing as a form theorized and propagated as an art distinct from verse. Engaging with histories of rhetoric as well as the work of the great prose writers in English, Robinson provides a bold reappraisal of this literary form, and shows that the formal construct of the sentence itself is historically conditioned and no older than the post-medieval world. The relationship between rhetorical style and literary meaning, Robinson argues, is at the heart of the way we understand the external world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521480888
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/03/1998
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

1. Sentence and period; 2. Prose rhythm; 3. Syntax and period in Middle English; 4. Cranmer's commonwealth; 5. Shakespeare vs the Wanderers; 6. Dryden's democracy; 7. The prose world; Appendices.