| Kommentar |
Course description:
(In Early Modern English)
Courteous readers whosoever: I have here published, for your sakes
A Course both very profitable and necessarie, gathered for the general good
of your knowledges.
It is but meet that we descend in as orderly a method as e'er can to the
profitable subject of our endeuer:
"Being the Recurring Entertaining and not at all Tragicall Historie of
William Shake-speare,
A famous Poet, and a pleasant wit, his SPEECH and WORDES, and others, that
spake
In the like kinde, to wit, the first beginning of this present tongue of
England,
As it has beene diuerse times presented in our Vniuersitie of Sarabriga.
Such speech being so full of wild and wherling words that een the wise know
aught of
From jygging vaines of riming mother wits, and such conceits as clownage
keepes in pay,
And verse and merriment thus, for a while, do giue his wilde humour scope,
and lerne
How they amazed the standers by with their laments, and strokd more then
wonder in iudiciall eares,
And also to pronounce this speech trippingly at the tongue, to split the
eares of the ignoraunt."
So, good Schollers, Ladies and Gentlemen, we begged your hearing patiently,
And therefore leave unto your learned censures the worthiness of the matter
here at hand,
Which if you vouchsafe to accept you shall employ what travails
And services we can to the advancing of your excellent degree.
(In Present-Day English)
Early Modern English (EME) was spoken and written in the 16th and 17th
centuries, and is best known today for being the language of Shakespeares
works. It is often called a transition language between Middle and our
Present-Day English. In this linguistics seminar, we will examine the
language itself rather than focusing on the literary side. In addition to
general features such as pronunciation, syntax, grammar, morphology, lexis
and phraseology, students will learn about sociolinguistic and pragmatic
aspects of EME texts, as well as individual language varieties. Previous
knowledge of Shakespeares works is, of course, unavoidable. However, this
seminar will approach the language from a fresh perspective, with practical
examples also from his lesser known contemporaries. This also includes
other texts, such as private letters, language guides, diaries, travel
accounts, cookbooks or wills. Several workshop sessions will give you the
opportunity to practise features such as pronunciation and versification,
and to apply corpus analysis methods - a considerable corpus of EME texts is
available online as part of the public domain.
Research topics can be found in the areas described above, such as
exploration and documentation of grammatical features, metre and rhyme,
spelling, phraseology, social variation, humour, narrative, pronunciation
and other synchronic as well as diachronic features. A list of topics for
presentations will be available in the first seminar session. The
accompanying tutorial offers students the opportunity to further explore the
topics discussed in the seminar. Near the end of the semester, a paper
conference will be held to make sure students are headed in the right
direction with their term papers. For detailed course requirements please
also consult the respective module descriptions. Participants must register
online via CLIX. For further questions please contact me at
s.diemer@umwelt-campus.de |
