Cover image for Transcendental wordplay : America's romantic punsters and the search for the language of nature
Transcendental wordplay : America's romantic punsters and the search for the language of nature
Title:
Transcendental wordplay : America's romantic punsters and the search for the language of nature
Author:
West, Michael, 1937-
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Athens : Ohio University Press, [2000]

©2000
Physical Description:
xxiv, 518 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Language:
English
Contents:
Spellers, punsters, and spread-eagle linguistics -- Enlightened Europeans, romantic Americans: origins of our transcendental quest for the language of nature -- Parsing the language of nature -- Antebellum America goes gaga over grammar -- Copyrighting etymological ecstasy -- Thoreau and the life of words -- The ironic drift in Antebellum language philosophy -- Go slow: man thinking -- Wordplay, romantic irony, and the forms of Antebellum fiction -- Savoring the wiles of words -- Whitman's experiments with language -- Thoreau and the sounds of silence -- Walden's antic dialectic between self and society -- Scatology and eschatology: the heroic dimensions of Thoreau's wordplay.
ISBN:
9780821413241
Format :
Book