37.Renaissance in England and the Language of Shakespeare

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in Tuscany in the 14th century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era", the first period in English and British history to be named after a reigning monarch.

Poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton produced works that demonstrated an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs, such as the allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queen and the retelling of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost; playwrights, such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composed theatrical representations of the English take on life, death, and history. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty, philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published their own ideas about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society, pushing the limits of metacognition at that time. England came closer to reaching modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method

Something of this same charm is to be found in most of the literature of the era, in accordance with that subtle relationship existing between the literature and the art of any period. It is in the lawless mixture of Gothic and Grecian characterizing the Elizabethan that Shakespeare peoples his A Midsummer Night's Dream with Gothic fairies reveling in the Athenian forest, and poet Edmund Spenser fills his pages with a pageantry of medieval monsters and classic masks. Shakespeare is a peculiar product of the Renaissance. The machinery of The Tempest and the setting of The Merchant of Venice are direct results of its spirit.[1]

Early Modern English is the period of language in which William Shakespeare was writing. Early Modern English as a literary medium was unfixed in structure and vocabulary in comparison to Greek and Latin, and was in a constant state of flux. When William Shakespeare began writing his plays, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages due to wars, exploration, diplomacy and colonization. By the age of Elizabeth, English had become widely used with the expansion of philosophy, theology and physical sciences.

During the lifetime of William Shakespeare most of simplification of old English inflections and the other grammatical changes of Middle English had already been accomplished. Changes in pronunciation continued, however, and the earlier practice of articulating of all consonants had all but disappeared by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Pronunciation of vowels in Old English words had already begun to change by the fifteen century: for example, the final vowel in nama (name) had diminished to the schwa sound before disappearing entirely. Even greater changes in the pronunciation of long vowels occurred during the period of Early Modern English and continued through the eighteen century. These changes, taken as a whole, were so extensive and important in the development of the language that they have been called the Great Vowel Shift.

The most striking feature of Shakespeare is his command of language. It is all the more astounding when one not only considers Shakespeare's sparse formal education but the curriculum of the day. There were no dictionaries; the first such lexical work for speakers of English was compiled by schoolmaster Robert Cawdrey as A Table Alphabetical in 1604. Although certain grammatical treatises were published in Shakespeare's day, organized grammar texts would not appear until the 1700s. Shakespeare as a youth would have no more systematically studied his own language than any educated man of the period.

Despite this, Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3,000 words into the language. His vocabulary, as culled from his works, numbers upward of 17,000 words (quadruple that of an average, well-educated conversationalist in the language). In the words of Louis Marder, "Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them - more than occur in the whole King James version of the Bible - only once and never again."

Shakespeare's English is only one linguistic generation removed from that which we speak today. Although the Elizabethan dialect differs slightly from Modern English, the principles are generally the same. There are some (present day) anomalies with prepositional usage and verb agreement, and certainly a number of Shakespeare's words have shifted meanings or dropped, with age, from the present vocabulary. Word order, as the language shifted from Middle to Early Modern English, was still a bit more flexible, and Shakespeare wrote dramatic poetry, not standard prose, which gave some greater license in expression. However, Elizabethan remains a sibling of our own tongue, and hence, accessible.

This facility with language, and the art with which he employed its usage, is why Shakespeare is as relevant today as he was in his own time.

The scholars have different opinions on the reasons of the sound [w] appearance the opposite process disappearance can be shown in such words in unstressed position :answer[Λnsә]], conquerer[konkәrә], liqueur вместо kw-k : southwark [sΛθәk] ; Berwick[bәrәk];Chiswick[tſizik] ; Greenwich[fri:nidg] ; Norwich[no:ridg]

История английского языка. Изучение английского языка.

История развития английского языка включает в себя три исторических периода. Зарождение английского языка принято связывать с расселением племен англов, ютов и саксов на Британских островах. Этот период охватывает V-X века. Именно в это время произошло формирование четырех англосаксонских государств и возникновение четырех древнеанглийских диалектов. Следующий период истории английского языка начинается с момента завоевания Англии нормандцами и объявления государственным языком нормандского диалекта французского. В ходе постепенной ассимиляции норманнов английский язык снова получил распространение и в конце 14 века приобрел статус государственного. Новый этап развития языка начался с наступлением эпохи Возрождения. В это время английский язык окончательно укрепляет свои позиции и вытесняет латынь, бывшую официальным религиозным и научным языком.

Кроме этого, установление абсолютной монархии способствовало выделению и закреплению государственного английского языка из существовавших на тот момент в Англии диалектов. Дальнейшее развитие английский язык получил с изобретением книгопечатания, которое обеспечило его широкое распространение, как в Англии, так и за ее пределами.