The language of literature : English grammar in action

Front Matter....Pages i-vii The Nature of English Grammar, and its First Records....Pages 1-10 Middle English Grammar: Verse....Pages 11-19 Middle English Grammar: Prose....Pages 20-27 Grammar on the Eve of the Reformation....Pages 28-33 The Sixteenth Century and Bacon....Pages 34-40 Shakespeare....Pages 41-52 Popular Rhetoric: the Language of Funerary Inscriptions....Pages 53-56 The Seventeenth Century: Milton....Pages 57-64 Informal English: Aubrey....Pages 65-68 The Eighteenth Century: Gothic Revival English....Pages 69-77 The Nineteenth Century: ‘language really used by men’....Pages 78-87 The Nineteenth Century: Various Affectations....Pages 88-93 Tennyson....Pages 94-99 Emily Dickinson....Pages 100-106 Late Victorian Experimentation....Pages 107-117 Novels Social and Anti-social....Pages 118-131 Critical and Devotional Prose....Pages 132-136 Humour, Mature and Childlike....Pages 137-140 The Present State of English Grammar....Pages 141-147 The Present State of English Syntax....Pages 148-153 Back Matter....Pages 155-158