Transcendental wordplay : America's romantic punsters and the search for the language of nature
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, America was captivated by a muddled notion of “etymology.” New England Transcendentalism was only one outcropping of a nationwide movement in which schoolmasters across small-town America taught students the roots of words in ways that dramatized religious issues and sparked wordplay.Shaped
XXIV, 518 p. ill. 24 cm
9780821413241, 0821413244
1014890407