Richard Dury

Maurizio Gotti

Marina Dossena

The papers collected in this volume were first presented at the 14th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Bergamo, 2006). Alongside studies of syntax, morphology, lexis and semantics, published in two sister volumes, many innovative contributions focused on geo-historical variation in English. A carefully peer-reviewed selection, including two plenary lectures, appears here in print for the first time, bearing witness to the increasing scholarly interest in varieties of English other than so-called 'standard' English. In all the contributions, well-established methods of historical dialectology combine with new theoretical approaches, in an attempt to shed more light on phenomena that have hitherto remained unexplored, or have only just begun to be investigated. Perceptual dialectology is also taken into consideration, and state-of-the-art tools, such as electronic corpora and atlases, are employed consistently, ensuring the methodological homogeneity of the contributions.

Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21-25 August 2006

English Historical Linguistics 2006

Richard Ambrosini

Edinburgh, late 1860s. Two young gentlemen, their heads buzzing with ideas and artistic ambitions, hang over North Bridge “watching the trains start southward and longing to start too,” the Walter Scott Monument a short way behind them, but their eyes fixed on the tracks leading South, to London and the Continent. In their Introduction the editors see this scene with his painter cousin as symbolically significant for Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing career. Through his connection with Europe, and especially France, he participated in an international exchange of ideas on art which led him in the 1870s to reinvent his relationship with his national literary tradition by exploring a variety of essayistic forms. He would eventually confront the shadow of the Scott Monument when he turned to novel writing in the ‘80s, but the nature of his innovations as a novelist cannot be understood without taking into account the lessons he learned in France. The papers that follow first explore the way Stevenson’s world-view and cultural background interacted with European landscape, literature and painting in that key early decade. Later chapters examine the influence of Stevenson on European writers (Proust, Cocteau, Brecht and Calvino) and on other creative artists. The volume aims to show how European culture contributed to Stevenson’s greatest achievements and then to explain why, with Stevenson ignored by Anglo-American critics for most of the twentieth century, he still remained an admired model for Europeans.

European Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries reinstates Stevenson at the center of critical debate and demonstrates the sophistication of his writings and the present relevance of his kaleidoscopic achievements. While most young readers know Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) as the author of Treasure Island, few people outside of academia are aware of the breadth of his literary output. The contributors to Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries look, with varied critical approaches, at the whole range of his literary production and unite to confer scholarly legitimacy on this enormously influential writer who has been neglected by critics. As the editors point out in their Introduction, Stevenson reinvented the “personal essay” and the “walking tour essay,” in texts of ironic stylistic brilliance that broke completely with Victorian moralism. His first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island, provocatively combined a popular genre (subverting its imperialist ideology) with a self-conscious literary approach. Stevenson, one of Scotland’s most prolific writers, was very effectively excluded from the canon by his twentieth-century successors and rejected by Anglo-American Modernist writers and critics for his play with popular genres and for his non-serious metaliterary brilliance. While Stevenson’s critical recognition has been slowly increasing, there have been far fewer published single-volume studies of his works than those of his contemporaries, Henry James and Joseph Conrad.

Richard Dury

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