| Description |
1 online resource (550 pages) |
| Contents |
Part I. From the first philologists to 1800. "Cloistered bookworms, quarreling endlessly in the muses' bird-cage": from Greek antiquity to circa 1400 -- "A complete mastery of antiquity": Renaissance, Reformation, and beyond -- "A voracious and undistinguishing appetite": British philology to the mid-eighteenth century -- "Deep erudition ingeniously applied": revolutions of the later eighteenth century -- Part II. On the brink of the modern humanities, 1800 to the mid-nineteenth century. "The similarity of structure which pervades all languages": from philology to linguistics, 1800-1850 -- "Genuinely national poetry and prose": literary philology and literary studies, 1800-1860 -- "An epoch in historical science": the civilized past, 1800-1850 -- "Grammatical and exegetical tact": biblical philology and its others, 1800-1860 -- Part III. The modern humanities in the modern university, the mid-nineteenth to the twentieth century. "This newly opened mine of scientific inquiry": between history and nature: linguistics after 1850 -- "Painstaking research quite equal to mathematical physics": literature, 1860-1920 -- "No tendency toward dilettantism": the civilized past after 1850 -- "The field naturalists of human nature": anthropology congeals into a discipline, 1840-1910 -- "The highest and most engaging of the manifestations of human nature": biblical philology and the rise of religious studies after 1860 -- Epilogue |
| Summary |
"Many today do not recognize the word, but 'philology' was for centuries nearly synonymous with humanistic intellectual life, encompassing not only the study of Greek and Roman literature and the Bible but also all other studies of language and literature, as well as religion, history, culture, art, archaeology, and more. In short, philology was the queen of the human sciences. How did it become little more than an archaic word? In Philology, the first history of Western humanistic learning as a connected whole ever published in English, James Turner tells the fascinating, forgotten story of how the study of languages and texts led to the modern humanities and the modern university. This compelling narrative traces the development of humanistic learning from its beginning among ancient Greek scholars and rhetoricians, through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment, to the English-speaking world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Turner shows how evolving researches into the texts, languages, and physical artifacts of the past led, over many centuries, to sophisticated comparative methods and a deep historical awareness of the uniqueness of earlier ages. But around 1800, he explains, these interlinked philological and antiquarian studies began to fragment into distinct academic fields. These fissures resulted, within a century or so, in the new, independent 'disciplines' that we now call the humanities. Yet the separation of these disciplines only obscured, rather than erased, their common features. The humanities today face a crisis of relevance, if not of meaning and purpose. Understanding their common origins--and what they still share--has never been more urgent"--Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Philology -- History
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Historical linguistics.
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Humanities.
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historical linguistics.
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LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES -- Alphabets & Writing Systems.
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Historical linguistics.
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Humanities.
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Philology.
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| Genre/Form |
History.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781400850150 |
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1400850150 |
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