Seth Lerer

Why is there such a striking difference between English spelling and English pronunciation? How did our seemingly relatively simple grammar rules develop? What are the origins of regional dialect, literary language, and everyday speech, and what do they have to do with you?Seth Lerer's Inventing English is a masterful, engaging history of the English language from the age of

How and why did the academic style of writing, with its emphasis on criticism and correctness, develop? Seth Lerer suggests that the answer lies in medieval and Renaissance philology and, more specifically, in mistakes. For Lerer, erring is not simply being wrong, but being errant, and this book illuminates the wanderings of exiles, émigrés, dissenters, and the socially estranged as they helped fo

This revisionary study of the origins of courtly literature reveals the culture of spectatorship and voyeurism that shaped early Tudor English literary life. Through new research into the reception of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, it demonstrates how Pandarus became the model of the early modern courtier. In close readings of early Tudor poetry, court drama, letters, manuscript anthologies and p

This book treats Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as a work of imaginative literature, and applies modern techniques of criticism to his writings. The author's central purpose is to demonstrate the methodological and thematic coherence of The Consolation of Philosophy .Originally published in 1985.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to

Challenging the view that the fifteenth century was the "Drab Age" of English literary history, Seth Lerer seeks to recover the late-medieval literary system that defined the canon of Chaucer's work and the canonical approaches to its understanding. Lerer shows how the poets, scribes, and printers of the period constructed Chaucer as the "poet laureate" and "father" of English verse. Chaucer appea

(12 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) Course Lecture Titles 1. Introduction to Chaucer's Life and World 2. The Scope of Chaucer's Work 3. Chaucer's Language 4. Chaucerian Themes and Terms 5. Troilus and Criseyde-Love and Philosophy 6. Troilus and Criseyde-History and Fiction 7. The Canterbury Tales-The General Prologue 8. The Canterbury Tales-The First Fragment 9. The Wife of Bath 10. The Pardoner 11.

High quality, university level teaching! Course Lecture Titles (12 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) 1. Introduction to Milton's Life and Art 2. Milton's Early Poetry 3. “Lycidas” 4. Political Milton 5. Paradise Lost—An Introduction 6. Paradise Lost, Book I 7. Paradise Lost, Book II 8. Paradise Lost, Book III 9. Book IV—Theatrical Milton 10. Book IX—The Fall 11. Late Milton—Paradise Regained and Samso

18 audio CDs and Course Guide Books in 3 hard shell cases. Course is divided into 36 lectures.

Ever since children have learned to read, there has been children’s literature. Children’s Literature charts the makings of the Western literary imagination from Aesop’s fables to Mother Goose, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Peter Pan, from Where the Wild Things Are to Harry Potter.The only single-volume work to capture the rich and diverse history of chi

At the close of the ninth century Alfred the Great lamented the decay of teaming in England and proposed a program of official translations and scholarly study to set his country back on the path of intellectual inquiry. In his Preface to Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, Alfred equated a knowledge of texts with the right governance of self and state. That document, rich in the history of Anglo-Saxon

“This book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciousnesses and almost two epochs.” That’s how Edmund Gosse opened Father and Son , the classic 1907 book about his relationship with his father. Seth Lerer’s Prospero’s Son is, as fits our latter days, altogether more complicated, layered, and multivalent, but at its heart is that same the fraught relationship between father

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities.The category of "the literary" has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is skep

What does it mean to have an emotional response to poetry and music? And, just as important but considered less often, what does it mean not to have such a response? What happens when lyric utterances—which should invite consolation, revelation, and connection—somehow fall short of the listener’s expectations?As Seth Lerer shows in this pioneering book, Shakespeare’s late plays invite

AC COURSE

A course guide covering the scope of humor throughout history for a class at Stanford University.

This essential new text provides a comprehensive, modern account of how the English language originated, developed, changed, and continues to morph into new forms in contemporary society. It first offers a rigorous, approachable introduction to the building blocks of language itself and then traces English language usage’s messy development in society, beginning with its origins in the Indo-Europe