La Cavalleria Umanistica Italiana The Italian Humanistic Chivalry

This book aims to contribute to the knowledge of the cultural and linguistic relations between Italy and the Crown of Aragon in the 15th century. In particular, it studies some relevant aspects of the chivalric romance entitled Curial e Guelfa, written in Italy around 1443-1448 in Catalan, but mainly Italian in spirit, sources and onomastics. It is probably the very first work of a genre known as “humanistic chivalry”, the epitome of which will be Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. The literary context of Milan and Naples (The Three Crowns, Troubadour Lyrics, Humanism) is analyzed in the first part of the volume. It is this context that made possible the gestation of the Curial, an extraordinary anonymous romance, which was most likely written by the knight Enyego d’Àvalos (Inico d’Avalos), born in Toledo but raised in Valencia. The second part of the volume is devoted to the study of some lexical, stylistic and syntactic aspects of the Curial, which show the author's excellent knowledge of Catalan and the constant influence of Italian in the romance. Questo libro si propone di contribuire alla conoscenza delle relazioni culturali tra l'Italia e la Corona d’Aragona nel XV secolo. In particolare, studia il romanzo dal titolo Curial e Güelfa, scritto in Italia intorno al 1443-1448, dotato di italianità, fonti e onomastica, ma scritto in catalano. È probabilmente la primissima opera di un genere noto come “cavalleria umanistica| , la cui epitome sarebbe l’Orlando Furioso dell’Ariosto. Questo volume analizza il contesto letterario di Milano e Napoli che ha reso possibile questo straordinario romanzo anonimo, di cui conosciamo ormai con quasi assoluta certezza che il suo autore era Enyego o Inico d'Avalos. I contributi in questo volume approfondiscono alcuni degli aspetti lessicali, stilistici e sintattici di Curial e Güelfa, e mettono in evidenza l'eccellente conoscenza del catalano da parte del suo autore, nonché la presenza onnipresente della lingua italiana. El libro pretende contribuir al conocimiento de las relaciones culturales entre Italia y la Corona de Aragón en el siglo XV. En concreto se ocupa de la novela Curial e Güelfa , gestada en Italia hacia 1443-1448, de espíritu, fuentes y onomástica principalmente italianos, pero redactada en lengua catalana. Es probablemente la manifestación más primeriza del género literario conocido como “caballería humanística”, que tendrá su punto culminante con el Orlando furioso, d’Ariosto. Este volumen analiza el contexto literario de Milán y Nápoles que hizo posible esta extraordinaria novela anónima, de la que ahora sabemos con casi absoluta certeza que su autor fue Enyego o Inico d’Avalos. Las contribuciones de este volumen profundizan en algunos de los aspectos léxicos, estilísticos y sintácticos de Curial e Güelfa, y destacan el excelente conocimiento del catalán de su autor, así como la presencia omnipresente de la lengua italiana.

"Professor Weiss traces the gradual growth of the Renaissance from the late thirteenth century onwards. He devotes a whole chapter to Boccaccio and Petrarch, another to Sannazzaro, Castiglione, Ariosto and Machiavelli. One of his recurrent themes is the conflict between Platonism and Aristotelianism in the thought of the times. After considering the novel literary genres developed by the Italian writers, he turns to the influence of humanism in western Europe generally, and in particular the rise of Petrarchism and pastoral literature in France, Spain, and England. A final chapter discusses Renaissance fiction which, with de Rojas' play, La Celestine, the work of Rabelais, and the Spanish picaresque novel, looks forward to Cervantes and Shakespeare." -- Book jacket.

Chinese, Japanese, South (and North) Koreans in East Asia have a long, intertwined and distinguished cultural history and have achieved, or are in the process of achieving, spectacular economic success. Together, these three peoples make up one quarter of the world population.They use a variety of unique and fascinating writing systems: logographic Chinese characters of ancient origin, as well as phonetic systems of syllabaries and alphabets. The book describes, often in comparison with English, how the Chinese, Korean and Japanese writing systems originated and developed; how each relates to its spoken language; how it is learned or taught; how it can be computerized; and how it relates to the past and present literacy, education, and culture of its users.Intimately familiar with the three East Asian cultures, Insup Taylor with the assistance of Martin Taylor, has written an accessible and highly readable book. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese is intended for academic readers (students in East Asian Studies, linguistics, education, psychology) as well as for the general public (parents, business, government). Readers of the book will learn about the interrelated cultural histories of China, Korea and Japan, but mainly about the various writing systems, some exotic, some familar, some simple, some complex, but all fascinating.

The relationship between language and conceptualization remains one of the major puzzles in language research. This monograph addresses this issue by means of an in depth corpus based and experimental investigation of the major types of expressions of epistemic modality in Dutch, German and English. By adopting a systematic functional orientation, the book explains a whole range of peculiarities of epistemic expression forms (synchronically and diachronically), and it offers a clear perspective on which cognitive systems are needed to get from the concept of epistemic modality to its linguistic expression. On that basis the author postulates a sophisticated, layered view of human conceptualization. This book is of interest both to scholars working on modality and related semantic dimensions, and to the interdisciplinary field of researchers concerned with the cognitive systems involved in language use.

The languages indigenous to North America are characterized by a remarkable genetic and typological diversity. Based on the premise that linguistic examples play a key role in the origin and transmission of ideas within linguistics and across disciplines, this book examines the history of approaches to these languages through the lens of some of their most prominent properties. These properties include consonant inventories and the near absence of labials in Iroquoian languages, gender in Algonquian languages, verbs for washing in the Iroquoian language Cherokee and terms for snow and related phenomena in Eskimo-Aleut languages. By tracing the interpretations of the four examples by European and American scholars, the author illustrates their role in both lay and professional contexts as a window onto unfamiliar languages and cultures, thus allowing a more holistic view of the history of language study in North America.

In 1978, Nelson Goodman explored the relation of “worlds” to language and literature, formulating the term, “worldmaking” to suggest that many other worlds can as plausibly exist as the “world” we know right now. We cannot catch or know “the world” as such: all we can catch are the world versions - descriptions, views or workings of the world – that are expressed in symbolic systems (words, music, dancing, visual representations). Over the twenty-five years since then, creative works have played a crucial role in realigning, reshaping and renegotiating our understandings of how worlds can be made and preserved in the face of globalizing trends. The volume is divided into three sections, each engaging with worlds as malleable constructs. Central to all of the contributions is the question: how can we understand the relationships between natural, political, cultural, fictional, literary, linguistic and virtual worlds, and why does this matter?

Despite the fact that, if only by number, small and peripheral cities played an important role in fifteenth and sixteenth-century European print culture, book history has mainly been dominated by monographs on individual big book centres. Through a number of specific case studies, which deploy a variety of methods and a wide range of sources, this volume seeks to enhance our understanding of printing and the book trade in small and peripheral European cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and to emphasize the necessity of new research for the study of print culture in such cities.

The essays collected in this volume engage in a conversation among lexicography, the culture of the book, and the canonization and commemoration of English literary figures and their works in the long eighteenth century. The source of inspiration for each piece is Allen Reddick’s scholarship on Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the great English lexicographer whose Dictionary (1755) included thousands upon thousands of illustrative quotations from the “best” authors, and, more recently, on Thomas Hollis (1720-1774), the much less well-known bibliophile who sent gifts of books by a pantheon of Whig authors to individuals and libraries in Britain, Protestant bastions in continental Europe, and America. Between the covers of Words, Books, Images readers will encounter canonical English authors of prose and poetry—Bacon, Milton, Defoe, Dryden, Pope, Richardson, Swift, Byron, Mary Shelley, and Edward Lear. But they will also become acquainted with the agents of their canonization and commemoration—the printers and publishers of Grub Street, the biographer John Aubrey, the lexicographer and biographer Johnson, the bibliophile Hollis, and the portrait painter Reynolds. No less crucially, they will meet fellow readers of then and now—women and men who peruse, poach, snip, and savour a book’s every word and image.

Writing is not just about conveying 'content' but also about the representation of self. (One of the reasons people find writing difficult is that they do not feel comfortable with the 'me' they are portraying in their writing. Academic writing in particular often poses a conflict of identity for students in higher education, because the 'self' which is inscribed in academic discourse feels alien to them.)The main claim of this book is that writing is an act of identity in which people align themselves with socio-culturally shaped subject positions, and thereby play their part in reproducing or challenging dominant practices and discourses, and the values, beliefs and interests which they embody. The first part of the book reviews recent understandings of social identity, of the discoursal construction of identity, of literacy and identity, and of issues of identity in research on academic writing. The main part of the book is based on a collaborative research project about writing and identity with mature-age students, providing: - a case study of one writer's dilemmas over the presentation of self;- a discussion of the way in which writers' life histories shape their presentation of self in writing;- an interview-based study of issues of ownership, and of accommodation and resistance to conventions for the presentation of self;- linguistic analysis of the ways in which multiple, often contradictory, interests, values, beliefs and practices are inscribed in discourse conventions, which set up a range of possibilities for self-hood for writers.The book ends with implications of the study for research on writing and identity, and for the learning and teaching of academic writing.The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of social identity, literacy, discourse analysis, rhetoric and composition studies, and to all those concerned to understand what is involved in academic writing in order to provide wider access to higher education.

Bridging the gap between the fields of World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition, this volume offers an in-depth comparative analysis of two postcolonial varieties of English (Singapore and Malaysian English) and neighbouring Indonesian learner English in order to examine the Outer/Expanding Circle distinction and shed light on the genesis of postcolonial varieties of English. The study identifies and analyses more than thirty linguistic features in the categories phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse, concluding that in spite of clear syntactic differences, the distinction between the Outer and Expanding Circles is gradual rather than strictly categorical, and should rely on current sociolinguistic realities rather than on historical criteria. The volume will be highly relevant for researchers interested in the dynamics of Outer Circle and Expanding Circle Englishes, the structural and sociolinguistic aspects of English in Southeast Asia, or the integration of the paradigms of World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition. World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition received honourable mention at the 2018 ESSE Book Awards.