Table of Contents: The Evolution of English Prose :

Main Author:	McIntosh, Carey
Format:	Book
Language:	English
Published:	Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998
Subjects:	English prose literature > History and criticism Women > Books and reading > Great Britain > History Literature publishing > History > Great Britain Written communication > History > Great Britain Literacy > History > Great Britain English language > Rhetoric English language > Style Courtesy in literature Great Britain > Intellectual life

Table of Contents:

1. The ordering of English. Hypotheses, contexts. Approaches. Cultural insecurity in the early eighteenth century. Cultural complacency in the later eighteenth century
2. Literacy and politeness: the gentrification of English prose. Early eighteenth-century prose. Late eighteenth-century prose. Orality and writtenness. Microscope and telescope
3. Testing the model. Defoe and Paine. Pope and Wordsworth. Astell and Wollstonecraft. Jonathan Swift. Edmund Burke. Shaftesbury
4. Loose and periodic sentences. What makes a sentence periodic? The domains of periodicity. Defoe and the syntax of accumulation. Joseph Addison
5. Lofty language and low. James Boswell. Decorum and genre and Boswellʹs Life. A map of high and low: Arbuthnot and others
6. Nominal and oral styles: Johnson and Richardson. More and less in orality and writtenness. Writtenness and orality in Johnsonʹs prose. Samuel Richardson: the uses of indirection
7. The New Rhetoric of 1748 to 1793. What is rhetoric? What was rhetoric in the eighteenth century? The New Rhetoric of 1748 to 1793. Civilization as a cultural value
8. The instruments of literacy. Grammars. Review magazines. Dictionaries (and encyclopedias)
9. Politeness; feminization. The feminization of culture. "My Fair Lady": Pamela and ladies of the stage. Politeness in the dictionaries. Politeness as a universal in language
10. Style and rhetoric. Style as a mode of understanding. A rhetorical frame. Style-studies and cultural history
Epilogue: language change.