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Instructors: Dr. Matthias Eitelmann
Event type:
Proseminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.008.160
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
6,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 45
Registration group: ELing Hist
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Contents:
This seminar aims to provide students with an overview of the English culture and language from about 1500 to 1700, with an emphasis on the most prominent Early Modern English representative, William Shakespeare. During the Early Modern English period, English underwent some of its most radical changes, forming the language into the English spoken worldwide today. We will discuss all levels of linguistic survey, i.e. phonology, spelling, morphology, syntax and the lexicon.
The linguistic aspects to be focussed include the development of modal verbs, the rise of the DO-periphrasis (in questions and negations), the GOING TO-future and, last but not least, the watershed in the history of English phonology: the Great Vowel Shift.
Various exemplary texts from the period will be analysed (both prose and poetry), among them passages from Shakespeare and his contemporaries Christopher Marlowe, Elizabeth I, James I and Ben Jonson.
Recommended reading list:
Crystal, David. 2008. 'Think on my words'. Exploring Shakespeare's Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nevalainen, Terttu. 2006. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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