The Movement of English Prose [antikvár]

Foreword To the writing of The Movement of English Prose, Professor Gordon brings the rich experience of thirty years as Professor and Head of an important University English Department, and ten earlier years as a student and teacher in the University of Edinburgh. During this period he has been teaching the history of English language and literature, studying and vsrriting upon the problems of doing so, and publishing the results of notable pieces of research into the work of writers as different as John Skelton and Katherine Mansfield. These brief notes on Professor Gordon's career constitute an explanation of his readiness to tackle so formidable and so rarely attempted a task as an analysis of modern prose from the standpoint of its long and complex history and in relation to the constant features in the fabric of our language from Anglo-Saxon times. During this same period of forty years, there have been important developments in literary and linguistic scholarship which have deeply affected our assumptions and conditioned our thinking. They include on the one hand the thesis of the late Professor R. W. Chambers which insisted on the continuity of English prose, and on the other hand the emergence of modern linguistics with its special insistence on the analysis of spoken language and with the insights that have resulted from this. Such aspects of modern scholarship, shot through with a healthy controversy which is still with us, Professor Gordon has brought to bear on his accumulated reading and his intimate acquaintance with prose from the ninth to the twentieth centuries. After stating in Part I the grounds as he sees them for continuity in our prose, the author proceeds with a chronological account of prose style from Anglo-Saxon times, singling out for enlightening comment and evaluation the chief exponents in each period, with carefully chosen examples which excellently illustrate the continuity theme while clearly drawing attention to the important variations introduced because of changing models, fashion, purpose, and language itself. For the experienced reader, the book gathers a wealth of diverse information into a convenient survey presented with a unified viewpoint. For the less experienced reader, it would be difficult to imagine a more informative introduction - and for him the value of the book is enhanced