Blood. Invention. Language. Resistance. World. Five ordinary words that do a great deal of conceptual work in everyday life and literature. In this original experiment in critical semantics, Roland Greene considers how these five words changed over the course of the sixteenth century and what their changes indicate about broader forces in science, politics, and other disciplines. Greene discusses a broad swath of Renaissance and transatlantic literature - including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Camoes, and Milton - in terms of the development of these words rather than works, careers, or histories. He creates a method for describing and understanding the semantic changes that occur, extending his argument to other words that operate in the same manner. Aiming to shift the conversation around Renaissance literature from current approaches to riskier enterprises, Greene also challenges semantic-historicist scholars, proposing a method that takes advantage of digital resources like full-text databases but still depends on the interpreter to fashion ideas out of ordinary language.
"Five Words" is an innovative and accessible book that points the field of literary studies in an exciting new direction.
- ISBN10 022600063X
- ISBN13 9780226000633
- Publish Date 10 June 2013
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 27 July 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English