The Language of Early English Dialect Literature

This book is the first monograph devoted entirely to English dialect literature published between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Over the course of six chapters, the author employs frameworks from stylistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and other cognate fields to reveal the rich and varied forms that linguistic creativity takes in the work of dialect writers from across England between 1547 and 1877, ranging from Cumbria in the north-west and Newcastle in the north-east, to Cornwall in the south-west and Kent in the south-east. Challenging the traditional view of dialect literature as backwards-looking and conventional, this book makes a case for its stylistic ambitiousness and complexity. It covers a crucial phase in the history of dialect literature, from the sporadic early attempts of song-writers and pastoralists, to the heyday of the Victorian era, when regional writing flourished in almost every county of England. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of language, literature, dialect, regional writing and identity more generally; as well as students of renaissance, eighteenth-century, romantic and Victorian literature.