Language Arts & Disciplines

A unique historical and linguistic resource for those in anthropology, art, folklore, history, linguistics, literature, psychology, religion, sociology, and environmental studies, as well as performers and poets.



Not simply relics of the past, proverbs are an oral tradition containing historical and anthropological knowledge missing from conventional sources, and as micro-histories, provide a valuable source for the reconstruction of the manners, characteristics, and worldviews of societies. While only a few hundred Kamba proverbs have ever appeared in print, thousands have circulated over time, from the monsoon exchange era of the Roman Empire through the advent of Islam, European imperialism and colonialism to independence. Today, a resurgence of interest in the form has been generated via social media, songs and vernacular radio programmes.
This book provides the first, comprehensive collection of Kamba proverbs from Eastern Kenya in their original Kĩkamba language and in translation. Analysing 2,000 proverbs drawn from oral interviews, archival collections, museum artefacts and published sources, the author traces the origins of each and explores their meaning, interpretation and use. Covering a diverse range of subjects that ranges from plants, animals, birds and insects, to weather, land, the roles of men and women, cosmology, ritual and belief, healing, trade, politics and peacemaking, the book offers new insights into Kenya's rural world and the expansion of Kamba society, East African history, language and culture of vital significance for the social sciences. A valuable comparative work for societal change elsewhere in Africa and beyond, the book also suggests an innovative, alternative approach to the study of the African past.

A magisterial survey, across the entire European literary tradition to the early fourteenth century, of exemplary figures in literary tradition.

The book is a study of comparison and identification with exemplary figures drawn from myth, history and historical legend, the Bible, the authorial canon, and literary tradition, from Homer to the interrelated branches of the medieval European vernacular lyric up to the end of the fourteenth century. The first half treats Homer, Virgil, Latin poets from Catullus to Ovid, and late and medieval Latin poets. The second half discusses the troubadour lyric, including Italian and Catalan poets who wrote in the language of the troubadours, the trouvère lyric, the German lyric, and the Sicilian and Italian lyric up to Petrarch. The languages covered are thus classical Greek, classical, post-classical and medieval Latin, Occitan/Old Provençal, Old French, and medieval German and Italian.Representative examples of comparison and identification are given in the original language, followed by translation and textual and literary analysis.

OLIVE SAYCE is Emeritus Fellow and Tutor in Modern Languages, Somerville College, Oxford.

Significant Anglo-Saxon papers, with postscripts, illustrate advances in knowledge of life and culture of pre-Conquest England.

Thomas Northcote Toller, of the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, is one of the most influential but least known Anglo-Saxon scholars of the early twentieth century. The Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies at Manchester, where Toller was the first professor of English Language, has an annual Toller lecture, delivered by an expert in the field of Anglo-Saxon Studies; this volume offers a selection from these lectures, brought together for the firsttime, and with supplementary material added by the authors to bring them up to date. They are complemented by the 2002 Toller Lecture, Peter Baker's study of Toller, commissioned specially for this book; and by new examinations ofToller's life and work, and his influence on the development of Old English lexicography. The volume is therefore both an epitome of the best scholarship in Anglo-Saxon studies of the last decade and a half, and a guide for the modern reader through the major advances in our knowledge of the life and culture of pre-Conquest England.
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Contributors: RICHARD BAILEY, PETER BAKER, DABNEY ANDERSON BANKERT, JANET BATELY, GEORGE BROWN, ROBERTA FRANK, HELMUT GNEUSS, JOYCE HILL, DAVID A. HINTON, MICHAEL LAPIDGE, AUDREY MEANEY, KATHERINE O'BRIEN O'KEEFFE, JOANA PROUD, ALEXANDER RUMBLE.

The problems of translating literature explored through both theoretical approaches and practical case studies.

Interest in the issues of translation continues to grow, and is reflected in this collection of essays by specialists in both literature and translation studies, all of whom have experience of translating literary texts themselves. The essays include both diverse theoretical approaches and practical case studies, and a wide range of topics are covered, including the history of translation in Scotland, the problems of translating Chinese poetry into English, renaissance theories of translation, George Eliot's translations, and Eastern European perceptions of English Romantic literature.

Professor SUSAN BASSNETT teaches at the Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick.

Contributors: SUSAN BASSNETT, THEO HERMANS, FELICITY ROSSLYN, ANDRE LEFEVERE, PIOTR KUHIWCZAK, JOHN CORBETT, SUSANNE STARK

This study explores the interaction of language, culture and identity in contemporary Catalonia and rejects the exclusion of Castilian as a language capable of expressing 'Catalan-ness'.

This study, charting the construction of a Catalan identity from the nineteenth-century cultural renaissance until the present day, explores the interaction of language, culture and identity in contemporary Catalonia.
Drawing on postcolonial and multicultural literary theories, it argues that Castilian- and Catalan-language narratives are expressions of the same culture. Through detailed analyses of texts by Terenci Moix, Francisco Candel, Ignasi Riera, Montserrat Roig, Juan Marsé, Ramon Pallicé, and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, among others, the author demonstrates that such writers share similar preoccupations and points of view and also engage in a complex literary and cultural dialogue that cuts across the established linguistic divisions that characterise cultural politics in Catalonia. The Catalan literary establishment's exclusion of Castilian as a language capable of expressing 'Catalan-ness' ischallenged and the author proposes redefining traditional understandings of Catalan literature to take into account texts produced by all members of Catalan society.

Stewart King is a lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Monash University, Australia.

A unique historical and linguistic resource for those in anthropology, art, folklore, history, linguistics, literature, psychology, religion, sociology, and environmental studies, as well as performers and poets.



Not simply relics of the past, proverbs are an oral tradition containing historical and anthropological knowledge missing from conventional sources, and as micro-histories, provide a valuable source for the reconstruction of the manners, characteristics, and worldviews of societies. While only a few hundred Kamba proverbs have ever appeared in print, thousands have circulated over time, from the monsoon exchange era of the Roman Empire through the advent of Islam, European imperialism and colonialism to independence. Today, a resurgence of interest in the form has been generated via social media, songs and vernacular radio programmes.
This book provides the first, comprehensive collection of Kamba proverbs from Eastern Kenya in their original Kĩkamba language and in translation. Analysing 2,000 proverbs drawn from oral interviews, archival collections, museum artefacts and published sources, the author traces the origins of each and explores their meaning, interpretation and use. Covering a diverse range of subjects that ranges from plants, animals, birds and insects, to weather, land, the roles of men and women, cosmology, ritual and belief, healing, trade, politics and peacemaking, the book offers new insights into Kenya's rural world and the expansion of Kamba society, East African history, language and culture of vital significance for the social sciences. A valuable comparative work for societal change elsewhere in Africa and beyond, the book also suggests an innovative, alternative approach to the study of the African past.

Seminal studies of Spain's greatest dramatist on his fourth centenary.

Dr Pring-Mill is one of the most eminent Calderón scholars, and this volume demonstrates the development of his critical thinking over a period of some forty years. The essays, collected in one volume for the first time, and fullyrevised and updated, include his classic exposition of the critical method for which he coined the term `análisis temático-estructural', and his comparison of Calderón's approach to the different media of auto and comedia. As a whole, the volume makes a major contribution to the study of Spain's greatest dramatist on the eve of his fourth centenary.
Spanish language.
Dr R.D.F. PRING-MILL is an Emeritus Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, and the author of numerous studies on Hispanic literature, ranging from Ramón Lull to Cardenal and Neruda.

Of interest to linguists, artists, ma-youth, scholars of urban studies, educationalists, policy makers and language planners who are grappling with the challenges of multilingualism and language of education in Kenya.

The city of Nairobi is a rich context for the study of sociolinguistic phenomena. The coexistence of speakers of many different languages, further differentiated by socio-economic status, age and ethnicity provide conditions for the development of a mixed code such as Sheng, an urban variety of Kenyan Swahili which has morphed from a "youth language" into a vernacular of wider use. Sheng is a unique phenomenon in the study of linguistic change and innovation in an African context, a reflection of the ethnolinguistic diversity of Kenya, and language asymmetry created by socio-economic disparities. It also provides a window into understanding the processes of urban multilingualism, within the specific space structuring of Nairobi city.

This book is a detailed account of the rise and development of Sheng, its linguistic structure, social functions, and possible future directions. The author's analysis ofits presence in newspapers, TV, radio and online, makes it clear that Sheng functions as a particularly useful lens through which to explore contemporary Kenya.

Of interest to linguists, artists, ma-youth, scholars of urban studies, educationalists, policy makers and language planners who are grappling with the challenges of multilingualism and language of education in Kenya.

The city of Nairobi is a rich context for the study of sociolinguistic phenomena. The coexistence of speakers of many different languages, further differentiated by socio-economic status, age and ethnicity provide conditions for the development of a mixed code such as Sheng, an urban variety of Kenyan Swahili which has morphed from a "youth language" into a vernacular of wider use. Sheng is a unique phenomenon in the study of linguistic change and innovation in an African context, a reflection of the ethnolinguistic diversity of Kenya, and language asymmetry created by socio-economic disparities. It also provides a window into understanding the processes of urban multilingualism, within the specific space structuring of Nairobi city.

This book is a detailed account of the rise and development of Sheng, its linguistic structure, social functions, and possible future directions. The author's analysis ofits presence in newspapers, TV, radio and online, makes it clear that Sheng functions as a particularly useful lens through which to explore contemporary Kenya.

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Essays examining aspects of German book history -- in relation to writers, readers, and publishers -- from the 1780s to the 1930s.

Over the long nineteenth century, German book publishing experienced an unprecedented boom, outstripping by 1910 all other Western nations. Responding to the spread of literacy, publishers found new marketing methods and recalibrated their relationships to authors. Technical innovations made books for a range of budgets possible. Yearbooks, encyclopedias, and boxed sets also multiplied. A renewed interest in connoisseurship meant that books signified tasteand affiliation. While reading could be a group activity, the splintering of the publishing industry into niche markets made it seem an ever-more private and individualistic affair, promising variously self-help, information, Bildung, moral edification, and titillation. The essays in this volume examine what Robert Darnton has termed the "communications circuit": the life-cycle of the book as a convergence of complex cultural, social, and economicphenomena. In examining facets of the lives of select books from the late 1780s to the early 1930s that Germans actually read, the essays present a complex and nuanced picture of writing, publishing, and reading in the shadow of nation building and class formation, and suggest how the analysis of texts and the study of books can inform one another.

Contributors: Jennifer Askey, Ulrich Bach, Kirsten Belgum, Matthew Erlin, Jana Mikota, Mary Paddock, Theodore Rippey, Jeffrey Sammons, Lynne Tatlock, Katrin Voelkner, Karin Wurst.

Lynne Tatlock is Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.

Explores the uses of Yiddish language in German literary and cultural texts 1781 until the late nineteenth century.

This book explores the uses of Yiddish language in German literary and cultural texts from the onset of Jewish civil emancipation in the Germanies in 1781 until the late 19th century. Showing the various functions Yiddish assumedat this time, the study crosses traditional boundaries between literary and non-literary texts. It focuses on responses to Yiddish in genres of literature ranging from drama to language handbooks, from cultural criticism to the realist novel in order to address broader issues of literary representation and Jewish-German relations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Professor Grossman shows how the emergence of attitudes toward Jews and Yiddish is directly related to linguistic theories and cultural ideologies that bear a complex relationship to the changing social and political institutions of the time. Amidst the rise of national ideologies and modern anti-Semitism, the increasing consolidation of institutions, and the drive to cultural homogeneity in the 18th- and 19th-century German context, Yiddish functioned as an anarchic element that, in the view of its opponents, "threatened" to dissolve German nationalculture. Grossman locates the response to Yiddish in the context of historical events (the Hep Hep Riots of 1819, the Revolution of 1848) and institutional changes (Jewish legal emancipation, the promotion of Bildung as an educational and cultural ideal). In its methodology and its focus, this study seeks to show how the conflicted responses to the Yiddish language point to the problems that connected and frequently divided Jews and Germans as they soughtto re-invent themselves for a new and unsettling context.

Introduction to the use of runes as a practical script for a variety of purposes in Anglo-Saxon England.

Runes are quite frequently mentioned in modern writings, usually imprecisely as a source of mystic knowledge, power or insight. This book sets the record straight. It shows runes working as a practical script for a variety of purposes in early English times, among both indigenous Anglo-Saxons and incoming Vikings. In a scholarly yet readable way it examines the introduction of the runic alphabet (the futhorc) to England in the fifth and sixth centuries, the forms and values of its letters, and the ways in which it developed, up until its decline at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. It discusses how runes were used for informal and day-to-day purposes, on formal monuments, as decorative letters in prestigious manuscripts, for owners' or makers' names on everyday objects, perhaps even in private letters.
For the first time, the book presents, together with earlier finds, the many runic objects discovered over the last twenty years, with a range of inscriptions on bone, metal and stone, even including tourists' scratched signatures found on the pilgrimage routes through Italy. It gives an idea of the immense range of informationon language and social history contained in these unique documents.

The late R.I. PAGE was former Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge.

Pioneer catalogue for one of the most important collections of English legal manuscripts.

The English legal manuscripts in Cambridge University Library form one of the most important collections in the world. The principal treasures derive from the renowned library, containing over 230 volumes, collected by John Moore(d.1714), Bishop of Ely, presented to the University by King George I in 1715. It includes some of the old manuscripts collected by Francis Tate (d.1616), and the working manuscript library of Mr Justice Nicholas (d.1667). The collection also contains medieval statute-books, year-books, medieval and early modern readings and moots in the inns of court, and law reports from the Tudor period down to the reign of Charles II, together with examples of every other major type of manuscript law book in use in England prior to the eighteenth century.
As well as being an essential finding-aid, this new catalogue includes a description of the contents of each manuscript, bibliographicalnotes on the text (listing hundreds of related manuscripts in other libraries), and full codicological descriptions of the medieval manuscripts by Dr Jayne Ringrose. No similar catalogue of English legal manuscripts has ever beenpublished before.

Professor J.H. BAKER is Professor of English Legal History at Cambridge University.