12 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
The Printing Press and Dictionaries Crystallized Spelling
English spelling was at first practically fonetic, like
the spelling of Latin, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and
most other languages, and changed as pronunciation
changed. In its case, however, various causes com-
bined to interfere with this orderly process. Among
them wer the variations in the early dialects, the dif-
ferent spelling sistems of the Norman conquerors, the
later different spelling sistem of the imported Dutch
printers, the bungling attempts during the Renaissance
to mak...01 SEP 2014 by ideonexus
The Problem of Too Much Information in Literature
When I am reading Hamlet I often develop an urge to tell people about it, as if the Melancholy Dane's history had heretofore been classified as a top secret. I am bursting with information about Hamlet, so filled am I by the massive "evidence" presented by Shakespeare. So I sit down at my writing table and begin to put together an essay or a lecture in which I seem to extract a thesis out of the evidence in the play. I say "seem" because I think I actually begin with some kind of preconceived...Folksonomies: literature humanities
Folksonomies: literature humanities