Ben Jonson, The English Grammar

Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Ed. by J A Roe, University of York
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Domains

Grammar

Dates

First circulation or publication 1640

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Instructional / reference

Resources

It is uncertain when Jonson started the work on his English Grammar (1641). But he refers to its presumably complete manuscript among the works lost when a fire broke out in his lodgings in November 1623. In “An execration upon Vulcan” (included in The Underwood) Jonson laments the destruction of the Grammar’s manuscript:

Was there made English, with a Grammar too,
To teach some that their nurses could not do,
The purity of language. (171)

Jonson rewrote the volume sometime after 1623, though the exact timeframe remains uncertain. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson believed that he returned to the project only in the 1630s and, according to David Riggs, The E…

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921 words

Citation: Vyroubalova, Ema. "The English Grammar". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 June 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=974, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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