Oxbow Spring 2013.pdf - Oxbow Books

Rigmaroles and Ragamuffins
Unpicking Words we Derive from Textiles
Elinor Kapp (Author)
The English language has developed over many centuries from many diverse
languages and cultures, some now lost. If we want to bring to life something of its
impressive history, we might use the metaphor of a great river into which streams and
rivulets constantly flow. Alternatively we could liken it to a mighty tree that has grown
organically from buried roots, spreading out into a living canopy of innumerable
and constantly renewed twigs and leaves. Elinor Kapp prefers to think of English as
a wonderful piece of embroidery, stitched with a multitude of varied threads onto
a base of primitive communication. The upper surface dazzles us with its range of
colours, tones and textures. But to understand its construction, we need to take a
look at the underside of the work. Here we can see the untidiness – the awkward
seams, peculiar knots and frayed ends. In places, time has worn away our words to
leave threadbare gaps; in others, swathes have been cutaway by changing tastes and
trends, allowing flamboyant new threads to be spliced in. When we unpick the English
language, it is quite startling to find how many of our common words, sayings, figures
of speech, folklore, myths, nursery rhymes and stories come from thread and all the
fascinating processes it had to go through to create textiles. The author is fascinated
by the way English weaves the threads of our past into today’s figures of speech,
bringing richly layered meaning to our lives.
Language & Literature
9780957475908, £9.99, 31 January 2013
PB, 160p, 155 x 235 mm, illus, Elinor Kapp
Form and
Feeling in
Modern
Literature
Essays in Honour of
Barbara Hardy
William Baker (Editor);
Isobel Armstrong (Editor)
After Reception
Theory
Fedor Dostoevskii in
Britain, 1869–1935
Lucia Aiello (Author)
Essays, short stories and poems by eminent creative
writers, critics and scholars from three continents
celebrate the literary achievements of Barbara
Hardy, the foremost exponent of close critical
reading in the latter half of the twentieth century
and today. Her work, as the essays in the volume
bear witness, encompasses 19th and 20th century
British fiction, poetry, and Shakespeare. In addition
to an introduction outlining and assessing Hardy’s
career and writing, ere is an extensive bibliography
of her work.
This study deals with the reception of Fedor
Dostoevskii in Britain from a double perspective. The
detailed analysis of primary sources such as reviews,
essays and monographs on Dostoevskii is associated
here with a critical investigation of the dynamics of
the reception process. On the one hand, the available
sources are examined with the intention of exposing
their underlying ideological tensions and impact on
British literary circles. On the other hand, Fedor
Dostoevskii’s novels are shown to function as a prism,
through which significant aspects of nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century British intellectual life are
refracted.
9781907975370, £45.00, January 2013
HB, 226p, Legenda Main Series, Legenda
9781907975448, £45.00, January 2013
HB, Legenda Main Series, Legenda
39