Elizabeth Elstob against Jonatan Swift: the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns and Anglo-Saxon Studies in Eighteenth-Century Britain

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Abstract

The article analyses E. Elstob’s preface to her “Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue” as a document illustrating the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon studies in eighteenth-century Britain. Highlighting Elstob’s polemic with the authors denying the value of the Anglo-Saxon heritage, the author demonstrates that in the ‘Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns’ the researchers of the Old English language and culture took the side of ‘ the Moderns’ due to the accent on the Anglo-Saxon identity of Britons and the use of modern textological methods.

About the authors

Natalia Nikolaevna Guermanova

Moscow State Linguistic University

Author for correspondence.
Email: nata-germanova@yandex.ru

Doctor of Philology (Dr. habil), Associate Professor, Professor at the Department of General and Comparative Linguistics

Russian Federation

References

  1. Elstob, E. (1715). The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, First Given in English: With an Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities. Being Very Useful Towards the Understanding Our Ancient English Poets, and Other Writers. London: W. Bowyer.
  2. Swift, J. (1712). A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue. London: printed for Benj. Tooke.
  3. Gildon, Ch., Brightland, J. (1712). A Grammar of the English Tongue, with Notes, Giving the Grounds and Reason of Grammar in General. London: R. Brugis for John Brightland.
  4. Felton, H. (1713). A Dissertation on Reading the Classics, and Forming a Just Style. London: J. Bowyer.
  5. Temple, W. (1754). An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning. The Works of Sir William Temple (vol. 2, pp. 141–181): in 4 vols. Edinburgh: G. Hamilton & J. Balfour, A. Kincaid & A. Donaldson etc.
  6. Wotton, W. (1697). Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning. 2nd ed. London: J. Leake.
  7. Levine, J. M. (2018). The Battle of the Books. History and Literature in the Augustan Age. Ithaca – London: Cornell University press.
  8. Vysokova, V. V. (2014). Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns and the Development of Historicism in 18th Century British Historiography. Izvestia. Ural Federal University Journal. Series 2: Humanities and arts, 4(133), 110–122. (In Russ.)
  9. Niles, J. D. (215). The Idea of the Anglo-Saxon England 1066–1901: Remembering, Forgetting, Deciphering, and Renewing the Past. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
  10. Greenwood, J. (1711). An Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, Describing the Genius and Nature of the English tongue. London: R. Toukey.
  11. Maittaire, М. (1712). The English Grammar: or, an Essay on the Art of Grammar, Applied to and Exemplified in the English Tongue. London: W. B.

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