Preface to  Eneydos By William Caxton презентация

Preface to Eneydos By William Caxton

Biography Caxton was the first English printer and a translator and importer of books into England. He was born in around 1422 in Kent. He went to London at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a merchant, later moving to Bruges, the centre of the wool trade, where he became a successful and important member of the merchant community. The duchess of Burgundy encouraged Caxton to translate 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' from French to English. In the early 1470s Caxton spent time in Cologne learning the art of printing. He returned to Bruges in 1472 where he and a Flemish calligrapher set up a press. In 1476 Caxton returned to London and established a press at Westminster, the first printing press in England. He printed more than 100 books in his lifetime, books which were known for their craftsmanship and careful editing.

The preface to the Eneydos ‘And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel’ ‘Loo what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte egges or eyren? Certaynly it is harde to playse euery man by cause of dyuersite and chaunge of langage’ ‘Therfor in a meane bytwene bothe I haue reduced and translated this sayd booke in to our englysshe not ouer rude ne curyous but in such termes as shall be vnderstanden by goddys grace’

The orthography of Early Modern English The orthography of Early Modern English was fairly similar to that of today, but spelling was unstable.  Early Modern English orthography had a number of features of spelling that have not been retained: ⟨u⟩ and ⟨v⟩ were considered as not two distinct letters but as still different forms of the same letter. Typographically, ⟨v⟩ was frequent at the start of a word and ⟨u⟩ elsewhere. Also, ⟨w⟩ was frequently represented by ⟨vv⟩. ⟨i⟩ and ⟨j⟩ were also still considered not as two distinct letters, but as different forms of the same letter: hence ioy for joy and iust for just.  The letter ⟨þ⟩ was still in use during the Early Modern English period but was increasingly limited to handwritten texts. In Early Modern English printing, ⟨þ⟩ was represented by the Latin ⟨Y⟩. Thorn had become nearly totally disused by the late Early Modern English period A silent ⟨e⟩ was often appended to words. The last consonant was sometimes doubled when the ⟨e⟩ was added: hence manne (for man) and runne (for run). ⟨y⟩ was often used instead of ⟨i⟩

The grammar of Early Modern English. Pronouns

Verbs The number of weak verbs is increasing due to French borrowings.  The number of strong verbs is decreasing more and more. The decay of the system of strong verbs is marked by the elimination of the differences between the singular and plural past stems. New verbal forms are appearing, including Gerund and Continuous. The development of analytical forms with do

Vocabulary A number of words that are still in common use in Modern English have undergone semantic narrowing. The main sources of borrowing are Latin and French covering 60% of the new words. Words with Germanic origin in contrast, make only 20% of the Early Modern English lexis. Latin contributes the majority of loan words throughout the Early Modern English period and thus, it outdoes the French borrowings. It is surprising that merely 1% of the new words are drawn from Greek since antiquity played a dominant role in the cultural life of the Renaissance. The reason for this low percentage may be due to the fact that “many Greek loans were filtered through Latin or French, and Latin loans through French”.