Wednesday, August 03, 2005
The grammar of Renaissance literature
From Gert Ronberg’s A Way With Words: The Language of English Renaissance Literature:
The Renaissance verb was in its syntactic behaviour often different from ours, which may cause some bewilderment to readers not accustomed to this. As an introductory illustrative example we make take the ‘verbal noun’ or the ‘gerund’ ... Because of its noun-like behaviour, the verbal noun can be preceded by the definite article: if it is, it cannot take an object but must be followed by an of-phrase instead; if it is not, it can take an object but not an of-phrase; compare the timing of his remarks was unfortunate with timing your remarks well is very important. However, this rigid rule was not a grammatical rule at all during the Renaissance, as we can see from the following two examples:
... it was no hurt to trust downe ones hand, but to get out impossible, without great tearing of the hand to peeces (The Pinder of Wakefield 41)
CORDELIA: What can man’s wisdom
In the restoring his bereaved sense
(King Lear IV.iii.8-9)We would now have to say without greatly tearing the hand to pieces and in restoring his bereaved sense; but a conflation, as it were, of the two structures was perfectly good Renaissance grammar.