Transcendental wordplay : America's romantic punsters and the search for the language of nature

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, America was captivated by a muddled notion of “etymology.” New England Transcendentalism was only one outcropping of a nationwide movement in which schoolmasters across small-town America taught students the roots of words in ways that dramatized religious issues and sparked wordplay.Shaped by this ferment, our major romantic authors shared the sensibility that Friedrich Schlegel linked to punning and christened “romantic irony.” Notable punsters or etymologists all, they gleefully set up as sages, creating jocular masterpieces from their zest for oracular wordplay. Their search for a primal language lurking beneath all natural languages provided them with something like a secret language that encodes their meanings. To fathom their essentially comic masterpieces we must decipher it.Interpreting Thoreau as an ironic moralist, satirist, and social critic rather than a nature-loving mystic, Transcendental Wordplay suggests that the major American Romantics shared a surprising conservatism. In this award-winning study, Professor West rescues the pun from critical contempt and allows readers to enjoy it as a serious form of American humor. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, America was captivated by a muddled notion of etymology. New England Transcendentalism was only one outcropping of a nationwide movement in which schoolmasters across small-town America taught students the roots of words in ways that dramatized religious issues and sparked wordplay. Shaped by this ferment, our major romantic authors shared the sensibility that Friedrich Schlegel linked to punning and christened romantic irony. Notable punsters or etymologists all, they gleefully set up as sages, creating jocular masterpieces from their zest for oracular wordplay. Their search for a primal language lurking beneath all natural languages provided them with something like a secret language that encodes their meanings. To fathom their essentially comic masterpieces we must decipher it. Interpreting Thoreau as an ironic moralist, satirist, and social critic rather than a nature-loving mystic, Transcendental Wordplay suggests that the major American Romantics shared a surprising conservatism. In this award-winning study, Professor West rescues the pun from critical contempt and allows readers to enjoy it as a serious form of American humor. Throughout The First Half Of The Nineteenth Century, America Was Captivated By A Muddled Notion Of “etymology.” New England Transcendentalism Was Only One Outcropping Of A Nationwide Movement In Which Schoolmasters Across Small-town America Taught Students The Roots Of Words In Ways That Dramatized Religious Issues And Sparked Wordplay.--publisher's Description. Spellers, Punsters, And Spread-eagle Linguistics -- Enlightened Europeans, Romantic Americans: Origins Of Our Transcendental Quest For The Language Of Nature -- Parsing The Language Of Nature -- Antebellum America Goes Gaga Over Grammar -- Copyrighting Etymological Ecstasy -- Thoreau And The Life Of Words -- The Ironic Drift In Antebellum Language Philosophy -- Go Slow: Man Thinking -- Wordplay, Romantic Irony, And The Forms Of Antebellum Fiction -- Savoring The Wiles Of Words -- Whitman's Experiments With Language -- Thoreau And The Sounds Of Silence -- Walden's Antic Dialectic Between Self And Society -- Scatology And Eschatology: The Heroic Dimensions Of Thoreau's Wordplay. Michael West. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 481-506) And Index.