Tag: The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Literature

Word Origin Stories

In my ongoing perusal of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature, published in 1939, from time to time I come upon fascinating (to me) word origin stories and thought you would enjoy the following items.

Gerrymander, so to arrange election districts that a particular political party shall obtain representation out of proportion to its numerical strength. The word is derived from Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts, who in 1812 so arranged the boundaries of the constituencies in that state that the map presented the appearance, someone said, of a salamander. “Gerrymander,” exclaimed Gerry, and the word became a proverb.

Gipsy (or Gypsy) a corruption of Egyptian, a member of a wandering race, by themselves called ROMANY, of Hindu origin, which first appeared in England about the beginning of the 16^th century and was then believed to have come from Egypt.

Gnome, from modern Latin gnomus used by Paracelsus, though perhaps not invented by him, to signify beings that have earth for their element. The word as generally used means one of a race of diminutive spirits fabled to inhabit the earth and to be guardians of its treasures.

Peeping Tom (see Godiva)

Godiva, the wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia, one of Edward the Confessor’s great earls. According to legend, her husband, having imposed a tax on the inhabitants of Coventry, promised to remit it if she would ride naked through the streets at noonday. She agreed, directed the people to keep within doors and shut their windows, and complied with his condition. Peeping Tom, who looked out, was struck blind. The story is told by Drayton in his Polyolbion, by Leigh Hunt, and by Tennyson in his Godiva.

Great Go, university slang for the final examination for the degree of B.A. at Oxford. The term is now obsolete.

Nobel Prizes, THE, were established under the will of Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-96), a Swedish chemist distinguished in the development of explosives, by which annual prizes are given for the most important discoveries in the sciences, to the author of the most important literary work of an idealist tendency, and to the person who shall have most promoted the fraternity of nations.

Vignette, an ornamental design on a blank space in a book, especially at the beginning or end of a chapter, of small size, and unenclosed in a border. The word is a diminutive of the French vigne, a vine; originally meaning an ornament of leaves and tendrils.

Tawdry (see Audrey)

Audrey, Saint, St. Etheldreda, patron saint of Ely.

Appears in the earliest quotation as St. Audrey’s Lace. It was probably offered for sale at her fair, and this doubtless led to the production of cheap and showy qualities of the article, which at length gave to tawdry its later meaning.

Mocha Dick, a whale legendary among whalers, the model of Melville’s white whale, Moby Dick.

Pidgin, a Chinese corruption of the English word business. Hence PIDGIN ENGLISH, the jargon used for inter-communication between Chinese and Europeans in China.

Zany, from the Italian zani, the name of servants who act as clowns in Commedia dell’ Arte, a comic performer attending on a clown. Hence an attendant, follower (almost always in a contemptuous sense); or a buffoon; or a fool, simpleton.

fin

Incongroovity piano solo from Todd’s album Incongroovity.

Tags Gerrymander, gnome, Mocha Dick, Peeping Tom, Pidgin English, Tawdry Audrey, The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Literature, The Nobel Prizes, Todd Walton Under the Table Books, Vignette, Word Origin Stories blog by Todd, Zany zani

Uncategorized

Time Capsule Tidbits #2

Having had encouraging responses to my previous post featuring excerpts from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature published in 1939, a volume I love for being a delightful British-centric time-capsule full of fascinating factoids, here is another batch of goodies from that tome.

Auto-da-fé, a Portuguese expression meaning act of faith, popularly applied to the burning alive of heretics.

Bohemian, frequently used in the sense of a gipsy of society, especially an artist, literary man, or actor, who leads a free, vagabond, or irregular life, and despises conventionalities. This meaning was introduced into English by Thackeray.

Brummel, George Bryan (1778-1840), called BEAU BRUMMEL, a friend of the prince regent (George IV) and leader of fashion in London. He died in poverty at Caen.

Caligula, GAIUS CAESAR, son of Germanicus, so called from his wearing, when a boy, caligae or soldiers’ boots, was Roman emperor A.D. 37-41. The cruelties and vices that marked his reign were perhaps due to his madness. He was finally murdered.

Chiasmus, a figure of speech by which the order of the words in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second, e.g. He saved others; himself he cannot save.

Cook, Eliza (1818-89). Her complete collected poems were published in 1870. The most popular of these was The Old Arm Chair, which had appeared in 1837.

Darien Scheme, THE, a scheme proposed by William Paterson (1658-1719), the projector of the Bank of England, for a Scottish settlement on the isthmus of Panama; the scheme was abandoned in 1700. Practically the whole circulating capital of the Scottish people was invested in the scheme; and so, at the Union (1707), a sum of money was paid by England in compensation for the losses sustained by Scotland.

Derrick, a noted hangman at Tyburn, c. 1600, the origin of the word derrick, a crane.

Deus ex machina, God from the machine, an unexpected event or intervention in a play or novel, which resolves a difficult situation. When a god was introduced in the ancient Greek drama, he was brought on the stage by some mechanical device.

Dolly Dialogues, The, by Anthony Hope (Hawkins) (1894) They are amusing and witty conversations hung on a slight thread of story, in which figure Samuel Travers Carter, a middle-aged bachelor, and the attractive Dolly Foster.

D’Urfey, Thomas (1653-1723), familiarly known as Tom Durfey, wrote a large number of songs, tales, satires, melodramas, and farces. He was a scurrilous fellow, but the familiar friend of everyone, including Charles II and James II.

Elliot, Jane (1727-1805), author of the most popular version of the old lament for Flodden, The Flowers of the Forest, beginning with I’ve heard them lilting at our ewe-milking.

Field, Michael, the pseudonym adopted by Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913). They wrote several novels and some good poetry.

Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939) born at Frieberg in Moravia, of a Jewish family, is known as the inventor of psychoanalysis. His studies led him to important conclusions as the to the influence of a subconscious element in the mind and also as to the importance of the sexual motive in human behavior. He was expelled from Austria in 1938.

fin

Mystery Music Box, piano and bass, from Todd’s album Mystery Inventions.

Tags Mystery Inventions Todd CD, Mystery Music Box Todd Walton, The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Literature, Time Capsule Tidbits More Todd Blog, Todd Walton Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Time Capsule Tidbits

One of the few material possessions I inherited from my grandmother Goody is a book entitled The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature, first published in 1939 and reprinted in 1942.

I love this book for many reasons, among them: the perspective of the editors is extremely British-centric, much of the information is so antiquated as to verge on fiction, the writing of the entries is delightfully snobby, and the totality is a time-capsule of the English literary landscape eighty years ago, a landscape so unlike the literary landscape of today this book might be about life on another planet where they also happen to have Shakespeare, Dickens, and Jane Austen.

Here, for your enjoyment, are a handful of entries I especially enjoyed during my latest perusal of the goodly tome.

Southcott, Joanna (1750-1814), a religious fanatic. In 1792 she began to write doggerel prophecies and to claim supernatural gifts, and in time attracted a very large number of followers. She died of brain disease, leaving a sealed box with directions that it should be opened at a time of national crisis. It was opened in 1927 and was found to contain nothing of interest.

Macaulay, Rose, contemporary author among whose chief works are: Potterism (1920), Dangerous Ages (1921), Told By an Idiot (1923) Orphan Island (1924), all novels; also two volumes of verse. She is notable for a deft and epigrammatic style and for her wide reading.

Burnell the Ass, the hero of the Speculum Stultorum of Wireker, Burnell, an ass who wishes to acquire a larger tail, goes to Salerno and to Paris to study, meets with various adventures, and finally loses his tail altogether.

Genius, in classical pagan belief, the tutelary god or attendant spirit allotted to every person at his birth, to govern his fortunes and determine his character; also the spirit similarly connected with a place.

Hesperia, the western land for the Greek poets was Italy. The Roman poets similarly gave the name to Spain.

Lover, Samuel (1797-1868), Irish novelist and song-writer, is remembered for his ballad, and the novel developed out of it, Rory O’More (1836), which deals with the tragic events in Ireland in 1798 and also for his novel Handy Andy in which he developed the whimsical aspects of Irish character.

Wilcox, MRS. ELLA WHEELER (née Wheeler) (1855-1919), American poet and journalist, described as the most popular poet of either sex and of any age, read by thousands who never open Shakespeare. She began to publish poems at the age of seven, and her last volume Poems of Affection was published posthumously in 1920. Her Collected Poems were published in 1921.

fin

The Way Things Go from Todd’s album Lounge Act In Heaven

Tags Burnell the Ass, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Genius defined, Hesperia defined, Joanna Southcott, Lounge Act In Heaven CD, Rose Macaulay, Samuel Lover, The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Literature, The Way Things Go Todd Song, Time Capsule TIdbits Todd blog, Todd Walton Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Old Books

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser November 2015)

I recently came upon an old book I inherited from my grandmother Goody, The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Literature published in 1939, a seventy-five-year-old book that has provided me with several days of enjoyable reading. Part of my enjoyment comes from frequently encountering words I have to look up in my trusty Oxford English Dictionary. But the larger part of my pleasure comes from the fascinating details to be found in the hundreds of miniature biographies of once-famous writers who are largely forgotten today.

In terms of my vocabulary, I have learned that a cottar is the equivalent of a sharecropper, a prebend is a stipend derived from a percentage of a church’s profits, a squib is a satirical jab, a suppostitious child is one fraudulently substituted to displace the real heir, and a pindaric is an ode in the manner of Pindar.

Of Pindar, this little old book says, “(c.522-442 B.C.) the great Greek lyric poet, acquired fame at an early age and was employed by many winners at the Games (Olympics) to celebrate their victories.”

I first came upon the word pindaric while reading the two-column biography of Jonathan Swift who was a cousin of Dryden, who also garners a two-column biography. Only Shakespeare warrants three columns, which means Swift and Dryden are thought to be among the most famous writers of all time, according to the editors of this edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Literature.

Also according to this dictionary, Dryden, upon reading one of Swift’s pindarics, remarked, “Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.”

And the last line of Swift’s little biography states, “Nearly all his works were published anonymously, and for only one, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, did he receive any payment (£200).”

Famous writers making little money from their writing is a recurring theme in this dictionary, as is the fact that many noted writers from the 1600’s through the early 1900’s died insane. Syphilis, the cause of madness in most of those cases, is never mentioned in the dictionary, but the editors doubtless assume their readers know about the link between syphilis and insanity in the days before the advent of antibiotics.

Indeed, the editors make a number of assumptions about their readers, which assumptions in 1939 were probably sound. For instance, they assume anyone reading this volume will probably be fairly fluent in Latin and know most of the famous writers of the past three hundreds years by their last names. Scott is Sir Walter Scott, Arbuthnot is John Arbuthnot, Pope is Alexander Pope, and so on. Fortunately for the likes of me, if an author is referred to solely by his last name, he will have a biography in the good book and I can discover why he was so famous.

As one might expect of a book published in 1939 summarizing the history of English Literature, there are few women authors mentioned therein, though Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, George Sand, Virginia Woolf, Anne Bronte, and Emily Bronte all garner tiny paragraphs, with George Eliot and Jane Austen winning half-columns, and Charlotte Bronte nearly a whole one.

Another delightful feature of the book is that for super famous authors—Dickens, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Melville, Thackeray etc.—in addition to their biographies, there are separate entries synopsizing of each of their most famous books, plays, and poems, as well as separate entries for important characters in those works.

What a different culture we had before the advent of television. In that sense, the 1939 edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Literature is a fascinating time capsule from the end of an epoch in our cultural history when literature was of paramount importance and influence, and hundreds of great novels and plays and poems lived for hundreds of years as part of the contemporary cultural fabric.

Have you perchance heard of the book The Old Wives’ Tale? “…a novel by E. A. Bennett (1908) one of the greatest novels of modern times. It is the long chronicle of the lives of two sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, daughters of a draper of Bursley, from their ardent girlhood, through disillusionment, to death. The drab life of the draper’s shop, its trivial incidents, are made interesting and important. Constance, a staid and sensible young woman, marries the insignificant Samuel Povey, the chief assistant in the shop, and spends all her life in Bursley. The more passionate and imaginative Sophia elopes with the fascinating Gerald Scales, an unprincipled blackguard, who carries her to Paris, where she is exposed to indignities, and finally deserts her. She struggles to success as a lodging-house keeper in Paris, where she lives though the siege of 1870. The sisters are reunited and spend their last years in Bursley.”

Never heard of E.A. Bennett, the author of this greatest of novels? “Bennett, (Enoch) Arnold (1867-1931), became a solicitor’s clerk in London and in 1893 assistant editor and subsequently editor of the periodical ‘Woman’. After 1900 he devoted himself exclusively to writing, theatre journalism being among his special interests. His fame as a novelist rests chiefly on ‘The Old Wives’ Tale’ and the ‘Clayhanger’ series. ‘Clayhanger’ (1910) ‘Hilda Lessways’ (1911) ‘These Twain’ (1916). The ‘Five Towns’ which figure prominently in these works are Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, and Longton, centers of the pottery industry; and the features, often ugly and sordid of this background are skillfully woven into stories of lives which he presents dispassionately, with an infinite delight in significant detail. Among Bennett’s other best-known works are: ‘Riceyman Steps’, ‘The Grand Babylon Hotel’, ‘Milestones’, and ‘The Matador of the Five Towns’ (short stories, 1912)”

Then there is John Knox (1505-72) who “…addressed epistles to his brethren in England suffering under the rule of Mary Tudor, and in Scotland under the regency of Mary of Lorraine. It was this situation which led to the publication of his ‘First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’ (1558), of which the title, Saintsbury remarks, was the best part.”

Saintsbury? “George Edward Bateman Saintsbury (1845-1933), a distinguished literary critic and historian…”