Marcus Tomalin. Romanticism and Linguistic Theory

Despite decades of revisionism by both literary and linguistic scholars, the image of politically conservative linguistic prescriptivism still haunts the scholarship of Romantic-era Britain. Several recent and excellent publications on the politics of style may finally dissipate the influence of Olivia Smith’s seminal but somewhat simplistic Politics of Language, 1791-1819 (1984). Language-themed literary studies by Andrew Elfenbein and Jane Hodson, for instance, have complicated simple correlations between linguistic and political conservatism, and between prescriptive attitudes and prescriptive practices. Such rich literary contextualisations have also complicated linguists’ often narrow portrayals of grammatical practice. Marcus Tomalin has chosen a splendid subject for illuminating the intersections of Romantic literature and language. William Hazlitt both practised literary criticism and promoted (or hoped to) grammatical study. His New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue was published in 1809 for the Godwins’ Juvenile Library, but did not succeed as a school textbook. Philosophical in inclination, broad if not always populist in interests, subjective in style and so radical in politics that he supported not only the French Revolution but Napoleon, Hazlitt could knowledgeably participate in debates about language standards and British liberty, common principles and originary mysteries, and especially about whose version(s) of the variable vernacular might validly define the national genius of Britain. In a period with a notably ‘close association between language, society, and politics’ (p. 3), Hazlitt is a wonderful touchstone for attitudes to language, and Tomalin’s monograph successfully represents the range of Hazlitt’s linguistic opinions

Genius · Romance · Romanticism · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology