From koine to standard: the early modern origin of a key linguistic term

In this paper, I explore the early history of the word standard as a linguistic term, arguing that it came to compete with the designation common language in the seventeenth century. The latter phrase was, in turn, formed by ideas on the Greek koine during the Renaissance and appears to have been the first widely used collocation referring to a standard language-like entity. In order to sketch this evolution, I first discuss premodern ideas on the koine. Then, I attempt to outline how the intuitive comparison of the koine with vernacular norms that were being increasingly regulated resulted in the development of the concept of common language, termed lingua communis in Latin (a calque of Greek hē koinḕ diálektos), in the sixteenth century. This phrase highlighted the communicative functionality of the vernaculars, which were being codified in grammars and dictionaries. Scholars contrasted these common languages with regional dialects, which had a limited reach in terms of communication. This distinction received a social and evaluative connotation during the seventeenth century, which created a need for terminological alternatives; an increasingly popular option competing with common language was standard, which was variously combined with language and tongue by English authors from about 1650 onwards, especially in Protestant circles, where the vernaculars tended to play a more prominent role than in Catholic areas. Of major importance for this evolution was the work and linguistic usage of the poet John Dryden (1631–1700). This essay uncovers the early history of standard as a key linguistic term, while also presenting a case study which shows the impact of the rediscovery of the Greek heritage on language studies in Western Europe, especially through the term common language.

«You saved her life and she adores you for it»: la buena salvaje en el melodrama inglés de los 1860

El origen del personaje tipo del buen salvaje o «noble savage» se remonta a 1672, cuando John Dryden atribuyó cierta cualidad de pureza o libertad al salvaje que vivía ajeno a la civilización. Más adelante, el filósofo francés Jean Jacques Rousseau (1754), definió al buen salvaje como un ser inocente y no corrupto. Aunque el buen salvaje ha sido principalmente representado como hombre, también existen figuras femeninas que siguen el mismo patrón. El presente artículo pretende arrojar luz sobre la representación de la buena salvaje en el teatro de sensaciones o «sensation drama» de Londres a mediados del siglo XIX. Tras revisar la figura del buen salvaje, sus alternativas femeninas y su consiguiente iconografía, se ofrecen dos estudios de caso: Cahontas, the Delaware’s Daughter (1860) y The Prairie Flower (1860). Las protagonistas de estas obras de ambientación western nos permitirán explorar la representación y percepción pública de la buena salvaje.

Dryden’s Debts

This essay considers the ways in which the late seventeenth-century critic John Dryden uses the metaphor of coinage, and the related ideas of commerce and debt, trade and empire, to think about past writers. It argues that the figure of the coin, as something of both intrinsic and contingent value, allows Dryden to isolate the ‘wit’ of works he admires—by Virgil, Shakespeare, and Donne—and translate it, in his own writing, for his own time. The essay argues that this trope is both fundamental to the development of Dryden’s critical voice and a creative stimulus, particularly when he comes to think about the sound of verse in his late career as a translator of the classics.

Pope’s Social Contexts

Pope’s earliest poems emerged from his various childhood and teenage relationships. For whom did he write those poems and by whom were they read? This chapter investigates Pope’s early social milieu through a focus on two specific communities: the Catholic diaspora of the Thames Valley and the friends of the late John Dryden, including Buckingham, Granville, St John, and Higgons. It traces Pope’s earliest contact with those figures and their influence on his poems. Reconstructing Pope’s connections to these circles provides essential context for understanding his early literary development. It also enables new understanding of his political awakening as a teenager. The final section of the chapter examines An Essay on Criticism (1711) within the context of similar poems by Buckingham and Granville, notably An Essay upon Satire (1679), An Essay upon Poetry (1682), and An Essay on Unnatural Flights in Poetry (1701). By ignoring Buckingham and Granville as irrelevant and second-rate authors, previous scholars have overlooked the fact that their poems were Pope’s principal generic models for the Essay

John Dryden (1631 - 1700)

Portrait of John Dryden, poet and playwright

Plotting the Modern City: John Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-All on the Dorset Garden Stage

Over the course of four days in September, 1666, a fire sparked in a bakery turned four-fifths of central London to dust. Wandering the streets around his home three days after the Great Fire subsided, the diarist John Evelyn describes a city in ruins—its buildings and landmarks “mealted, & reduc'd to cinders by the vehement heats,” its “bielanes & narrower streetes … quite fill'd up with rubbish, nor could one have possibly known where he was, but by the ruines of some church, or hall, that had some remarkable towre or pinacle remaining.” John Dryden echoes Evelyn's sense of disorientation in Annus Mirabilis, his poem dedicated to the people of London and published in 1667; he describes “the Cracks of Falling houses,” the “Shrieks of Subjects” as the Fire “wades the Streets,” threatens the palace, and lays the city's famed financial centers “to waste.” And he describes, too, the desperate attempts by those left homeless by the Fire to make spaces for themselves in the ruins: Those who have [no home] sit round where once it was, And with full Eyes each wonted Room require: Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place, As murder'd Men walk where they did expire.